New Nightclubs and and Luxury's Lifeline

"Noguchi lamps the size of small horses"

Florence Pugh was named as Valentino beauty's newest face; TikTok sues Montana to block first statewide ban of app; a trans youth prom is planned near U.S. Capitol; and an afternoon at Cannes with the young hunks of Pedro Almodóvar’s gay cowboy movie, Strange Way of Life.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO LIVE LIKE THIS?, curbed
Reporters asked young New Yorkers about their dream futures, and then calculated exactly how much each would cost to make it a reality here, a place where “parlor windows reveal Noguchi lamps the size of small horses,” families “haul exploding bags of farmers’-market produce back to their lairs,” and people furiously refresh Resy to “pay $27 for spaghetti pomodoro.” Tl';dr: For many of us, a “nice life” in NYC is woefully out of reach.

WHY RESTAURANTS IN MANHATTAN ARE THE NEW NIGHTCLUBS, wsj
A wave of new hot spots “reference a time when their Gen Z patrons were far too young to drink, back when the first iPhones appeared, before Instagram and online reservations, when access wasn’t always about how much you could spend but who you actually knew.” If you squint, you can see young people downing $28 martinis in order to drown out their sorrows related to the previous story.

CHINA’S BIG-SPENDING, PICKY YOUTH ARE GLOBAL LUXURY’S LIFELINE, bloomberg
The country’s shoppers are already some of the world’s most influential, accounting for about a fifth of the $325.4 billion global luxury market. The average luxury client in China is 29 years old — five years younger than peers elsewhere — and spends $800 per week, or 30% more than the rest of the world. Big-spending Gen Zs will propel China to the position of world’s top luxury buyer by 2025, usurping both the US and Europe, according to PwC.

THE PROBLEM THAT WON’T GO AWAY IN CHINA: HIGH YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT DESPITE, wsj
Joblessness among young people aged 16 to 24 rose to a record of 20.4% in April, significantly higher than a few months ago and far above the prepandemic rate of 13% or lower in most of 2019. The rise was all the more surprising given that urban unemployment overall fell to 5.2% in China as of April, compared with 6.1% a year earlier.

GEN Z JUST WANTS A STABLE JOB, vox
This feature builds off a Handshake report about Gen Z employment that we talked about a few weeks ago, but the reporting is very much worth your time.

Though still young at the time, the class of 2023 was old enough to know its parents or friends’ parents lost jobs during the Great Recession, and to feel the stress and economic fallout from it. “I remember driving through the neighborhood seeing people who had been evicted and all their stuff on the lawn,” said Mary Miller, a recent global studies graduate who has secured a job as a public engagement coordinator at a nonprofit. “It was kind of scary as a kid.”

VENMO TARGETS YOUNG CONSUMERS AND PARENTS WITH NEW TEEN ACCOUNTS AND DEBIT CARD, techcrunch
The Venmo Teen Account — which comes with a Venmo Teen Debit Card and has no monthly fees — allows parents to monitor transactions, manage privacy settings and send money to their teen.

MILLENNIALS ARE AMERICA’S LARGEST GENERATION. BUT THEY’RE ONE OF THE SMALLEST GROUPS THAT MAKE UP CONGRESS., cnn
It’s taking five to 10 years longer for millennials and Generation X to reach the same level of representation in Congress as it had been for the past three generations, according to a CNN analysis of recent data from Congress, CQ, and ProPublica.

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