Japan travel inspired-everything, abolish Australia vogue, some longform / pod listening, random links etc
coming to u live from Oracabessa
My view as i write this:
Actual heaven tbh. Anyway onto the bits!
Second order effects of travel; what happens when the yen drops and a bunch of people go to Japan for the first time?
It materially shifts trends in food, beverage, fashion, home decor and more. I pay closer attention to Pinterest trend reports than other various corpo reports (e.g IG) because i legitimately believe a lot of the young, weird, creative folks who push culture spend a lot of time in and around that platform. Very interesting to see the proliferation of Japanese search terms and inspiration sources popping up on this report. (you can also access it via some boards they made here.) I’ve been talking with clients for a while about how even though brands/companies may be organized regionally, the consumers creating trends are not. Think of the most #menswear dude u know and he is just as likely to be looking at Sweden or Japan or wherever else for his key pieces vs. shopping on Bowery.
Anyway - What made camo break out in Nov 23? Can anyone remember?
Other notables:
Charms, DIY + crafting are still major: think water bottle charms, charm bracelets, bag charms, crochet bags, etc
Group activities and their associated ‘aesthetics’ (e.g Book clubs, run clubs) reinforce the trend toward less solo activity
Related… Travel Trends. Solo travel is actually on the up
from a report by SKIFT. Big headlines i thought were interesting:
travel to USA is notably down from 2019 - 2023 (i wonder why!!)
Sport events + concerts are a major catalyst for travel both domestic + international
2023 was a record year for intl travel for Americans, with over 22 million people registering for passports (more than any year on record)
India is one of the countries most eager to visit USA; they have 52% more interest in coming, vs Japan who have gone down -54% lol
intl “wellness tourism” is up 175% (!!), and is favored as a travel motivator by those earning 200k+
interest in solo travel is surging, and a market presently valued at approx $484 billion
Why hasn’t ASICS re-released this 2005 shoe? omg
it has all the ingredients. my god.
I’m so annoyed at Australia right now for a myriad of reasons (cough, Raygun) but this isn’t helping
alright… bit underwhelming for the it girl of the moment (grey background, whoop de doo) also its THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE. vs….
where is the effort Australia? where is the creativity, the taste?
A long read on the state of Social Media
This 13-min read titled “People aren’t posting” is worth your time if you work in/around Social Media. She (Julia Alexander) goes deep into the broken rewards/incentives system of social and how the original premise/promise (connection, attention) no longer delivers. She also predicts two paths ahead of us; either the widest mass or the niche-est focus.
Demographics change, technologies shift, and mediums disappear, but the concept of spending time in virtual social channels isn’t going to disappear. Our future is either implausibly big (Taylor Swift, Christianity) or intimately small (your favorite local D&D podcast, your community subreddit). Media’s middle class is all but eliminated. While this has existed offline for millennia, the fragmenting of our media ecosystem, unprecedented amount of content, and inescapable algorithmic overlords means we have no real control over what we see.
Some pod listening for brain nourishment
The product nerds amongst us (nevermind, i sincerely doubt anyone like that is subscribing to my newsletter 😭) almost definitely listened to Lenny’s Podcast with Nikita Bier but i doubt many others amongst us did. Nikita is infamous for selling his apps to Meta/Discord for many millions of dollars, and saying inflammatory shit online. I got a lot out of this interview as he talked about how a direct relationship/conversation with his customer led to explosive product innovation. Sometimes it is really that simple. There’s a thread here with some nerdier takeaways too, but i do recommend listening.
there’s basically 4 core reasons why people download consumer apps, 3 of which connect back to basic human instincts - people want to get rich or save money (coinbase, robinhood) - people want to get laid or find a mate (tinder, hinge) - people want to unplug from reality (tiktok, fortnite, netflix) - otherwise people have specific utilitarian needs (amazon, uber)
I also appreciated his honesty around how badly his skills atrophied in his time at Meta; a lot of big tech jobs are like this despite the status they command, its nice when folks admit that you basically get paid unfathomable amounts of money to just park your brain cells and take notes for people.
ON OTHER PODS — I also enjoyed a lil riff in this weeks The Cutting Room Floor episode in which Recho describes marketing as ‘not that complicated- it is an agreement with your audience’ (on celebrity lines/brands and why some work and some don’t). She is worth the subscription so go check it, but do it on desktop so Apple don’t take a cut. 👍
~culture~ link digest
great, thorough explainer from Welty about why the Cooper Flagg signing at New Balance made so much sense. At a later date I want to come back and riff on how well NB’s recent brand narratives/lines have held up (“we got next”, “the intelligent choice” etc).
Stanford terminated 23 Creative Writing lecturers last week (i’m sure its nothing!!)
something to do in nyc; the sign museum.
shout out to the homie alex vitlin for sharing this essential Sheena Patel installment of
‘the hater’ column with a treatise on the feigned ‘simplicity’ of rich people opting into a ‘seasonal’ diet amongst other thingsobviously go and look at
’s “social commentary” meme analysis if you too like to critique/overthink memes lolI dont know how to feel about this trend of ‘layoff influencers’, it is definitely a thing lol. I did see this substack recently focused entirely on layoffs and found some of her quickly assembled data interesting; for example, 94.5% of people polled said being laid off changed their relationship to work! That’s gonna have a not-insignificant ripple effect onto work writ large as we continue to see these types of ‘RIF’s occurring with AI adoption. The latest massive jobs numbers revisions (showing that US job growth has been much weaker than reported) are starting to illuminate what i think many people have been feeling intuitively but haven’t seen validated by media.
mules/slides/sandals and birk-like objects are not going anywhere: exhibit 1, 2, 3. to me one of the bigger disruptions to Big Sneaker is willingness for people to try things like this instead
From the IG feed;
sick Marine Serre teaser
love this airmax editorial from toronto
jim jones via kid super is interesting . i cant tell where we are at in the ‘elder rappers in luxury streetwear campaign’ wave. the extreme end of one end or the start of a new cycle?
rly need a chic water bottle holder
Gorgeous editorial to support the release of Jae Tips ‘To do list’ drop with Saucony
Lukes trend reports are back…. send him some consulting coin.
Thats all folks! Have a fab Friday.
GG x
I listen to Lenny when I run
Putting my hand up as a fellow Lenny stan