alex cooper is singing for her supper

sounds like $$$

You know things are getting weird when I publish a newsletter on a Thursday! My month long quasi vacation is coming to an end and the thing I’m happiest about is not having to write this newsletter in PST anymore. For some reason, I find it really hard. So, because I’d rather spend the last week I have with my ld friends and partner completely present, the next newsletter you’ll get from me will be next week Friday, when I’m back in Germany. I might send a June reading report sometime before that. Once I’m back, so will the regular programming- as seen on three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, in your inbox :)

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QUICK HITS

• The art of hard-launching a friend breakup 

• 10 charts that capture how the world Is changing

• Harvard’s $465 million in tax benefits draw new scrutiny 

• The cities where 20-somethings are still getting hired

• Starbucks sales tumble as customers reject high-priced coffee

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• Nothing The Post newsroom loves more than reporting on TikTok trends six months late. Can’t wait to see that social media newsroom they’re working on. 

• This Bustle article about how single adults are DIYing their own dating apps and putting "date me" ads in magazines makes me really sad because I don’t think dating apps will ever do what they used to, and meet-cutes are becoming a relic, and the gender wars are real, and we’re all suspicious of each other’s intentions, and no one wants to risk being the clown. Hollywood isn't even making romcoms to inspire and delude us anymore. Honestly, it's all bad vibes. I don’t know how this is going to play out, but I’m seeing my friends stay single for longer and other friends be reluctant to leave relationships because they don't think there's anything better out there. Like I said, bad vibes.

• Blake Lively says rich people don’t use hair conditioner. Apparently, it’s the reason everyone in Hollywood has great hair. It’s also why you won’t find any conditioners in her new hair care line, Blake Brown. Where does one start? One of the first things Blake Lively tells us about Blake Brown is that it’s been seven years in the making. I actually believe this because if that brand logo was designed anytime in the last two years, it would have a lot less lines. When celebrities come out with a beauty brand, there’s always some suspicion about how much they are actually involved. But I look at Blake Lively’s Instagram, and I look at this brand, and I know with my whole heart she was intimately involved from start to finish. It has Blake written all over it, and that’s all I’ll say on the issue. Side note: why is that Acne Studios logo so prominently featured on her jacket? Could she not have found another jacket?!! 

  

• Jess Graves
  is hosting a “pop-in” market in Gramercy Park during New York Fashion Week, where paid members of her newsletter, The Love List, will be able to meet designers featured in the newsletter and shop a carefully selected edit of independent, female-owned lines. Love it. The evolution of Fashion Substack is a fun one to watch, because the first influencers on any category-agnostic social platform are usually fashion or beauty influencers. So I think a lot of what we’re seeing with fashion Substack—the mainstream media recognition, brand deals,, IRL events, the meta conversations about influence—will eventually spill over to other categories. 

• One of the cofounders of Wildflower Cases launched a cookware brand, and wow guys I have nothing good to say. Worst branding I’ve seen in a long time, and a product range that doesn’t need to exist. It’s actually pretty upsetting. I’m upset.

• The Wall Street Journal did a profile on Demetra Dias, the 17-year-old TikTok star whose style teen girls are obsessed with. I already knew who Demetra was, not because she’s ever come up on my TikTok feed, but because I read

  Casey Lewis
  ’s newsletter. A big part of Demetra’s appeal is how normal she seems. She looks and acts like a your average American seventeen-year-old, which in today’s social media landscape, is a refreshing thing to behold. Demetra’s outfits usually consist of a combination of low-waisted bottoms and a tube top or cropped t-shirt. It’s all very simple, pretty basic actually, and the girls EAT IT UP! As someone whose TikTok algorithm regularly presents her with elaborately constructed outfits by other women in their early twenties, Demetra is a reminder that when it comes to fashion, teens are as unexperimental as they’ve always been, and that despite our collective obsession with individuality, most teen girls still want to look like the slightly hotter version of every other teen girl. I see this style reflected in Hollister’s assortment, in that latest Skims collection, and in the Gap x Madhappy collab. It’s jeans and a t-shirt. Crop tops and short shorts. Loungewear and the occasional cute dress. Sneakers. 

  

• Thinking about how Brat green summer is going to wreck so much havoc on landfills. It’s an ugly colour and you know it.

• For a minute there, I thought this Graza partnership with Little Spoon was just about the mini bottles, and I was going to get existential about the state of CPG. But they actually worked together on a “Little Drizzle” baby food collection featuring two new flavors made with Graza oil. I know nothing about the baby food market, and I won’t pretend to. Zero insights, but the general consensus on Graza’s Instagram post was “iconic collab,” so it must be true.

• About a week ago, Julia Harrison sent me a Substack DM asking if I’d like to join a creative community she was launching. saloon is the first Substack-native creative community and networking hub for people in media & PR, fashion & beauty, editorial, food & beverage, and events. Their invite-only Discord channel will be a space for members to find jobs and freelance opportunities, facilitate partnerships, advertise and curate upcoming gigs and events, and share industry secrets.

  Julia Harrison
  told me she wants it to become a “curated and glammed-out Craigslist” and that current members include industry professionals from outlets like Vox, NBC, AD, Bon Appetit, Domino, GQ, brands like Loeffler Randall, Cassis, Saie, Brooklinen, as well as editors, chefs, writers, and influencers. I somehow forgot to ask how getting a Discord invite works, but the saloon newsletter will be sharing opportunities, events, gigs, and recommendations from the Saloon community, and is available to paid members. I might do a longer interview with Julia because this feels important.  

• Starface (finally) launched clear pimple patches, and it made me think about how a lot of my favorite brands start off with some product or idea that’s bold, innovative, and contrarian to create space for themselves in a category. Once they’ve done that, they often fall in line with the mainstream to expand. A lot of brand loyalists get peeved about this, but I don’t think it's a bad thing. I think of Fenty, Parade, and Glossier—brands that at one point defined newness and innovation for about five minutes until they became the standard. There’s a whole new group of people Starface is going to reach with their clear patches, because I promise you, most people above the age of 25 do not want to walk around with a yellow star on their face.

• Who else is having fun watching Alex Cooper sing for her supper? I’m talking about her recent Instagram content promoting her Olympics partnership with Peacock. One can only hope that the enthusiasm she brings is commensurate with that paycheck. In the last few months, Alex has been a paid guest at the Kentucky Derby, thrown the first pitch for the Red Sox at Fenway Park, and now she’s in Paris hosting Olympics watchalongs for NBC’s Peacock. For each of these gigs, she’s had one task—bringing in the “female viewership.” Alex played D1 college athlete and rose to fame as a Barstool girl, so this is a natural evolution of her brand. And we know sports’ influence in fashion, beauty, and culture at large is only growing, and with an emphasis on female engagement, so this is a great position for her to be in.

  

  Taking a broader lens here, I’ve been thinking a lot about “cool girl” influencers. Women like Alex and Alix and Hallie who are fun and funny, who look like beauty influencers but aren’t strictly categorized as such, who have the bodies of fitness influencers without the lifestyle that goes with it, and who bring to mind Gone Girl’s “cool girl” monologue. They’re everything Amy Dunne wishes she was. These influencers are great for brands because they appeal to the male gaze while still cultivating the girl’s girl persona. They can do beauty but they can also do sport. They can be aspirational but are often strategically vulnerable. They’re great for a photoshoot but even better with a microphone. Possibly the best kind of influencer to be.  

• Yesterday, I knew Arki Busson as the Swiss millionaire baby daddy of both Uma Thurman and Elle Macpherson. Today, I know him as the Swiss millionaire who wants to build the Hollywood of the East. Yeah, another one of those. With help from the Rothschild family, Louis Moore Bacon’s Moore Capital, and the New Jersey government (which granted him up to 50% of project costs as tax credits, capped at $400 million), Busson plans to turn 70 acres of former Texaco property into an Old Hollywood-type studio. Plans for 1888 Studios include 23 soundstages across 17 buildings, encompassing over 1.5 million square feet of end-to-end film-production services, a loading dock, and a helipad. Busson said he was inspired by a 2019 article in The Economist predicting content spending would surpass oil and gas investment, reflecting increased demand for production facilities as streaming services create their own original content. (Except we’re seeing the opposite trend as streaming companies lean towards licensing over original content to cut costs, but okay). I googled “is Arki Busson rich?” and this is what came up: in 2020, his hedge fund, LumX, was delisted from the Swiss stock exchange after posting years of losses and falling out with auditor EY, which said its financial statements “do not give a true and fair view of the consolidated financial position of the group.” But all sources agreed he has the right friends. 

• Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and other tech billionaires are openly brawling with each other over politics. “In Silicon Valley, the spectacle of tech billionaires attacking tech billionaires has suddenly exploded, as pro-Trump executives and their Democratic counterparts have openly turned on each other. The brawling has spilled into public view online, at conferences, and on podcasts, as debates about the country’s future have turned into personal broadsides.” I love mess. 

• The heir to the Hermès luxury fortune who said he was going to leave all his money to his gardener is now saying that fortune has vanished. In the latest twist to the longstanding mystery surrounding Nicolas Puech’s billionaire status, a Swiss court this month threw out the reclusive 81-year-old’s allegations that his former wealth manager, Eric Freymond, had a role in the disappearance of his $13 billion fortune. Puech’s lawyers claim Freymond mismanaged his fortune or that he was duped over a period spanning more than twenty years, during which time at least some of the stock was sold. In fact, Puech no longer owns any Hermès shares, but didn’t realize it because Freymond received all his bank statements. The court ruled that “The ‘gigantic fraud’ to which he was a victim was undetectable to common mortals.” Yikes. Puech became a family outcast after his alleged role in LVMH owner Bernard Arnault’s attempt to take over Hermès over a decade ago. On an Hermès earnings call last week, an analyst quizzed Executive Chairman Axel Dumas about whether Puech still owns the shares he claims have disappeared. Dumas replied, “we don’t have a way to see and control them.” I feel bad for that gardener.

• In just over four years, Meta’s Reality Labs division, which makes AR, VR, and metaverse products, has lost nearly $50 billion in the last four years. For context, that’s about the market caps of Snap and Pinterest combined. Now, less than a year after its launch, Meta is scraping the celebrity AI Chatbots. They were weird and people didn't want them. So much money is going to be lost trying to make AI use cases stick, it's going to be ridiculous and borderline morally deplorable.  

• The top 10 podcasts reach 35% of U.S. weekly listeners, according to Edison Research, and the top 25 reach nearly half of listeners. Wild. I remember being shocked when I found out that The Joe Rogan Experience was the number one podcast in the world because mainstream media makes it seem like a fringe culture thing only weird men listen to. I sometimes feel misled by the media I consume about what most young men are really like and what they want. I see celebrities like Timothée Chalamet, Harry Styles, and Jacob Elordi held up as the new ideal, and I forget that they’re more a reflection of the desires of a certain kind of liberal twenty-something woman and less a reflection of who your average young American man aspires to be. I think most of them will still rather be like Brad Pitt or George Clooney 30 years ago. So when I see stats showing that the majority of men under 30 support Trump or learn that almost every guy I know thinks Joe Rogan is a "real one," I’m thinking to myself, are we talking about these same guys with their itty-bitty shorts and oversized totes? The baby boys who make TikToks with their girlfriends? I think it’s confusing. I think a lot of young women are confused.

• I looked long and hard for the “AD” label on this Hypebeast post pushing Friend’s AI Necklace, but I could not find it. “In addition to your real-like companions, Friend is your new digital one that’s been crafted to tackle a variety of life and social situations. You speak, it listens – all the time. Whether you’re playing video games with friends or eating a chicken sandwich, it’s there listening. After speaking to the necklace, it pauses to contemplate its answer and will then send a message to your smartphone… Also since the Friend is always listening, it has the free will to respond or reach out to you when it desires.” Behold the creepiest ad I’ve ever seen.