Dupe Swaps and Acne Negativity

"embrace the machines"

Here’s what Gen Z wore to the Met Gala this year; Squid Game star HoYeon Jung opens Louis Vuitton’s Seoul show; Gen Z is going into debt to jet set; and most parents would be supportive if their Gen Z children didn’t want to go to college.

UNLOCKING GEN Z’S LUXURY SPENDING POWER IN 2023, voguebusiness
A new survey from Vogue Business and cashback platform Rakuten shows that Gen Z luxury spending is growing 3x faster than other generations. Around 60 percent of Gen Z respondents have made luxury purchases in the last 12 months, compared with 18 percent of baby boomers.

LULULEMON TO SWAP ‘DUPE’ LEGGINGS FOR ALIGN ONES, fashionista
Lululemon is inviting shoppers to trade in their Align dupes for the real thing at the brand’s first experiential event. Dubbed the “Align Leggings Dupe Swap,” the pop-up store is located at L.A.’s Westfield Century City Mall on May 6 and 7. On TikTok, #lululemondupe has nearly 185 million views and #aligndupes has another 11 million views.

GOODBYE ‘ACNE POSITIVITY’: TIKTOK AND INSTAGRAM ADS HAVE SOME BOLD CLAIMS ABOUT CLEAR SKIN, glossy
Sometimes zit stickers just aren’t enough. On TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, a new crop of ads are targeting Gen Z with an old-school “clear skin” approach to their messaging. With phrases like “say goodbye to” or “eliminate” acne, brands in multiple product categories — from light devices to vitamins — are tapping into messaging for an audience that is acne-negative and looking for quick answers.

THE TOP 10 BUZZIEST COMPANIES GEN Z WANTS TO WORK FOR—NONE OF THEM ARE IN BIG TECH, cnbc
This year’s graduating class is “prioritizing stability, and they’re quite turned off by the volatility they’ve seen in the news around Big Tech,” according to a new report from Handshake, Gen Z’s favorite job platform. While interest from 2023 grads for major tech brands is down compared to the class of 2022, applications are up for jobs in retail, finance, and manufacturing. Interest in Raytheon is up by 209%, Nike is up 103%, and Toyota is up 101%.

AN ART PROFESSOR SAYS A.I. IS THE FUTURE. IT’S THE STUDENTS WHO NEED CONVINCING, nyt
While many educators are skeptical (…at best) of tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney, professor Lance Weiler, who runs the Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, is preparing his students for an “art world that is gradually embracing the latest digital tools.”

THE CHRONICALLY ONLINE THIRD CULTURE IS REDEFINING ASIAN AMERICA, nbcnews
Sheer exposure to a mass online community has created an undaunted, self-sufficient generation of Asian American young people. And “for a generation of Asian Americans raised on social media, whose culture has always been ill-defined, stereotyped, asterisked, relegated to the sidelines and viewed in the shadow of whiteness, coming into their own means putting a heritage they once tried to bury on full display.”

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