Superfakes and Fanelliheads

"the true cool-kid hours"

Fans want new Rihanna music, so they’re making it for her; Dior Beauty tapped Caleb McLaughlin — the Stranger Things kid — for a U.S. ambassadorship; Pete Davidson, man of the people, hands out pizza at writers strike; and the breakout style stars of King Charles III’s coronation.

INSIDE THE DELIRIOUS RISE OF ‘SUPERFAKE’ HANDBAGS, NYT
“In the pandemic, superfakes went supernova: A killer combo of quarantine malaise, frenzied stimulus-check spending and the rise of sales via social-media sites propelled consumers’ awareness of—and fervor for—these hyperrealistic copycats to new heights; Jordan T. Alexander, a 29-year-old TikTok creator who has made videos about replica bags, told me she sometimes thinks of them as “the democratization of fashion.”

BOTTICELLI'S VENUS IS AN 'INFLUENCER' AND ITALY IS NOT HAPPY, abcnews
Sandro Botticelli's iconic goddess of love in his 15th-century masterpiece “Birth of Venus” has now become a “virtual influencer” in a new Italian tourism campaign. The yearlong promo — designed for global markets to attract younger tourists — is estimated to have cost 9 million euros (about $9.9 million).

THE FANELLI CAFE, AGE 103, HAS BECOME A STYLISH GEN Z HANGOUT, wapo
The venerable pub at the intersection of commercial thoroughfare Prince Street and picturesque cobblestone Mercer Street has morphed into a hypebeast corner.

Weekend evenings are the true cool-kid hours. On a warm Friday night in March, girls with bleached hair, vintage purses and blunt bangs and guys with mustaches, signet rings and semi-ironic Fair Isle sweaters were crowded into outdoor seats well after 10 p.m., smoking cigarettes and shriek-laughing over tables littered with empty glasses.

JAN. 6 RIOTER IN PINK BERET IDENTIFIED AFTER EX SPOTTED HER IN A VIRAL FBI TWEET, nbcnews
“It’s just going to be one of those things for me. I dated this girl that was on the FBI’s most wanted list.” A Los Angeles man identified her to the FBI thanks to the tweet’s popularity. The average post from the FBI Washington Field Office on Twitter gets 10,000 to 20,000 views; the tweet about the woman in the pink beret received more than 7.2 million.

CONDÉ NAST CASTS ITSELF AS ARBITER OF CULTURE AT NEWFRONT PRESENTATION, wwd
Amid faltering advertising revenue, Condé Nast execs pitched the legacy print company as the original influencer at this year’s NewFront event. Condé’s global chief revenue officer Pam Drucker Mann stressed that 40 percent of the company’s digital audience is millennial and Gen Z. “We don’t just make content, we make culture,” she added. (Writes WWD, hilariously: “A succession of executives said the word ‘culture’ so many times, if the audience was playing a drinking game, they would have been falling off of their chairs 20 minutes into the show.”)

SLASH AIMS TO CORNER THE GEN Z MARKET WITH BUSINESS-FOCUSED BANKING FEATURES, techcrunch
“Slash isn’t built for enterprise — it’s built for self-employed Gen Z entrepreneurs,” Cardenas said. Right now, Slash offers a hybrid business/personal banking product that allows users to silo their personal and business funds but manage them from a single dashboard. “Eventually, Slash would like to help young entrepreneurs file their taxes, issue invoices and incorporate new businesses all in one place.”

One last thought: