285 kent vibes a la 2012 are here, follower counts & moodboard mediocrity, lots of spelling bees..
an afternoon installment because why not!
Hi!
I got a mini subscriber bump last week from some LinkedIn activity and shout outs (tysm Steph & Lauren) so some housekeeping for the new subscribers (hello!!!!!!):
- I don’t think too hard about this lil newsletter, so there will likely be typos and half-formed thoughts! i focus on sharing stuff in real time while its topical to me vs. perfectly refined opinions.
- the content is usually things i’m noticing via the algorithm or my surroundings (downtown nyc). I am a brand / strategy executive but i post about culture because thats what informs my work. no frameworks, for now.
- you can hit reply and write back to me any time. I love when people do that.
- i usually write once a week, sometimes twice.
Thank you for being here!
heres some ~thoughts~ that have been percolating:
2012 is back fr fr and you can’t hide
Hello:
GIRLS-era 2010’s is being romanticized on the tok. We’re old, fam. I personally will not be revisiting my clothing or shoe choices from this moment. Elder millennials, we’re at the point in the cycle where our more embarrassing era is being resurfaced. I have also been sitting on this one for a while out of fear of making the problem worse, but:
Isabel Marant sneaker wedges back… (given the french/german location of both these bits of content, maybe its a more euro-based trend for now) BUT- Litas are also back..? this cracked me up;
Bc i always look to nightlife as an input, I’ve kind of noticed this percolating via a nightlife photographer i follow. lately his carousels feel like they could just as easily be placed in 2010.
If you’re wondering when the nostalgia train will run out of fuel, I don’t know. A lot of the nostalgia weve been driving is in part possibly because we finally have the disposable income to buy the things we used to want and didnt have the funds at the time. Maybe thats what the zoomers are doing too. Which means this will persist a while longer. (more on nostalgia below)
High Follower Count as a negative indicator
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7664dbb1-b21e-42cf-9682-e557b73fa1b0_1490x1498.png)
I saw Elijah post this and it hit. I’m wondering if this a second or third wave to the backlash against the OG lifestyle influencer set, but it rings true for me. There’s a presumed sense of artifice to A LOT of what we see online but moreso from people who are constantly forced to consider their audience and the economics around it. For those of us whose lizard brain refuses to buy things that are too similar to what everyone else is wearing / using / doing / eating, high follower count for a brand or product reads as “this is already ran thru”. There’s also an impact on this for how products feel for the end consumer when everyone has the same source material:
Why is everyone doing spelling/pronunciation ads?
I think I already posted about the SSENSE kids campaign either on here or my stories, but since then there’s also been the Corteiz effort:
& the much glossier loewe installment:
Anyway my nerd brain wants to see the production budget and analytics of these campaigns side by side in a few weeks for #reasons but they’re all fun.
Memestocks as “a form of self-expression” via Bloomberg
I thought this piece (non-paywalled link) via Bloomberg’s Matt Levine was fascinating. He’s written at length about more speculative asset classes, and was on the frontlines of Wall St Bets / gamestop coverage. He writes in the piece;
With time, I have become more comfortable with the answer to “what are we all doing here?” The answer is “not fundamental analysis.” Maybe it is “having fun online.” Maybe it is “playing a complex game of mass psychology.” Maybe it is “using our investments as a form of self-expression, buying stocks and cryptocurrencies we identify with and feeling better about ourselves if they go up.” The third era is new, and we do not understand the mechanisms here as well as we understand discounted cash flow analysis, but maybe there are mechanisms to discover; maybe in 10 years there will be textbooks on Meme Stock Analysis.
He’s describing the current state of the market, in which seemingly only “sentiment” matters. Mmmm bubbly.
Selling Intimacy & Branded Community
I loved this piece from
in discussing celebrity bookclubs. I wrote about the rise in ‘conspicuous reading’ and how books are zeitgeist-ing back in January. I love how Vik identified some of the challenges and trickiness associated with ‘selling’ and corporatizing Capital C Community.I think what bothers me the most about celebrity book clubs is that they are practically the poster child for the type of businesses that lean way too heavy on “community” as a buzz word when all they are really doing is building a consumer base for their products [..]. In a sense, private membership clubs, like Soho House are at least more honest. They start with an earnest desire to build community and invest a ton of money into it until the rapid growth gear kicks in and dilutes the quality of the community they set out to curate.
👟🩰 Shoes 🩰👟 section + eyecandy
this beautiful Vivienne Westwood editorial from Emily Lipson is absolutely stunning. They used real synchronized swimmers.
Nonnative x timberland are SICK
Street style from Tokyo (layering!!!! so much layering!!) and Shanghai
thats all today! catch you friday maybe
GG x