Dopamine Menus and Bloomer Femininomenons

after school weekend edition

Welcome back to After School Weekend Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. Your support keeps this newsletter going! 💫

Today we’re talking about:

• The return of the J. Crew catalog + why a great campaign isn’t enough

• Why Urban Outfitter’s Vera Bradley collab is good (and UO’s Kate Spade collab wasn’t)

• Indie sleaze update: Cheap Monday is back

• The Hollister top going viral that will make millennials shudder

• Heel sneakers are (really) having a moment

• Gen Z has discovered the 2012 Sky Ferreira classic “Everything Is Embarrassing”

• The new hottest pick-up spot is a run club brick wall

• The airport tray aesthetic (and why there are 50 headlines about it)

• The Symphony Lisa Frank dolphin meme

• Bubble’s very smart lip launch

Plus everything else that happened this week in style, beauty, and culture and what I’m buying/reading/listening to. First, my favorite TikTok of the week — happy NYFW to those who celebrate:

@macy_thompsonnSuch a surreal moment in my career. Lily bloom takes NYFW 🥹😭 #nyfw #fashion #fashioninfluencer

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(She’s joking.)

Who is J.Crew’s new catalog for, exactly?

Only those of us over the age of 30 likely remember physically flipping through the J. Crew catalog, which was discontinued in 2017 after three decades, though scans of the mailer have made waves on TikTok and Pinterest over the last few years.

Erika Veurink, who might as well be the official face of the J.Crew catalog resurgence at this point, is certainly the catalog’s biggest and best cheerleader.

So You Want To Dress Like a 1992 J. Crew Catalogue Model

But she’s not the only one. Across social media, young menswear enthusiasts and cable knit aficionados post videos like this:

@micahottsI need to look like i fell right out one of these catalogs… #mensfashion #fashiontiktok #micahotts #oufitinspo #vintagefashion #jcrew #fashioninspo #greenscreen

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Every brand does not need to focus their marketing strategy on Gen Z — other consumers matter, too! — but I believe that any brand not even thinking about how they can appeal to this crucial cohort (who currently fall between the ages of 14 and 27, meaning their spending power is expanding very quickly) is making a big mistake, and one that will be hard to recover from.