i promise to inform you if I ever get my fillers dissolved
because who am i to ignore the status quo?
QUICK HITS
Emma Chamberlain is now Co-CEO of Chamberlain Coffee, after five years as Chief Creative Officer—the preferred C-suite title of celebrity founders. She will “continue to lead marketing efforts while Hossy takes on traditional CEO responsibilities.” In some circles, they call that a CMO.
This is maybe the third Ella Emhoff profile I’ve seen in as many weeks. I finally took the bait and learned that America’s soon-to-be (maybe) first daughter self-identifies as an “artist, designer, and founder of the knitwear brand and crafting club Soft Hands.” She seems cool, and I’m pleasantly surprised that she seems to have been largely left alone by the press. Very surprised actually.
Okay, so I don’t have fillers—I’m young, beautiful, and easily frightened—but I am fascinated by women who've gotten a lot of work done, even though I sometimes feel like everything I know about cosmetic procedures has been against my will. One of these women is Paige Lorenze, YouTuber and founder of lifestyle brand Dairy Boy, who told her followers this weekend that she was getting all her fillers dissolved after two years without touch ups. I’d always imagined that having a certain amount of filler could cause some anxiety about how it’s all looking today; about whether you look like you have filler. Enough has been said about this topic, and I don’t have anything new to add, but lately I’ve been thinking about how in the same way there’s an “iPhone face,” there’s also a “filler face.” A lot of beautiful women looking beautiful in eerily similar ways.
I find it depressing that Neutrogena’s new skincare franchise targeting Gen Z is called Collagen Bank and focuses on preventative anti-aging, or as they call it, “'pre-aging.” It’s weird to be 25 and feel like an adult baby but apparently without the adult baby skin. Youth isn’t what it used to be, and that’s a tragedy.
Sundays are for Substack essays, and my favorite from this week was Madison Huizinga’s musings on Brandy Melville, parasocial marketing, and brands acting like people for her newsletter, Cafe Hysteria. “Despite Brandy Melville’s omnipresence, the brand had virtually no corporate qualities, at least in terms of appearance. Brandy Melville had zero billboards. No TV commercials, no magazine spreads. No event sponsorships. No traditional, splashy branding pushes. Like Lana del Rey, American Apparel, and many other cultural facets that grew in popularity via the internet, when I looked up from my phone, it was as if I had dreamt the whole thing up.” Brandy Melville does indeed feel like a fever dream because if you’re not a teenager, parent, or marketer, it's so easy to forget they even exist.
And another one bites the dust… sort of. Soft Spirits, L.A’s first non-alcoholic bottle shop, is closing down their Sunset Blvd storefront. “We’re not going away forever, but after much consideration, we’ve decided to restructure operations and let go of our original retail space.” This comes months after Boisson, the NA store which raised $10 million in funding, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, putting a damper on the industry’s (and investors’) enthusiasm for the NA category. I’ve written a lot about Gen Z being the “sober generation,” and while I think a lot of trends are overblown, I don’t think this one is. Anytime I get with a group of twenty somethings, there’s always someone declaring that they’d like to drink less, for wellness purposes. The alcohol industry is worse for it. Vineyards are getting crushed too.
My question is, are people replacing alcohol with NA substitutes and consuming them in the same way? Not from what I see. These drinks aren’t cheap, and let’s be honest, a lot of them aren’t great either. Even when I factor in that the majority of NA beverage consumers also drink alcohol, I’m still skeptical about whether the market needs—and can support—quite so many brands in this category. If I were an NA brand right now, I’d be trying to do what Kin and Ghia have done with Target and get myself some grocery store shelf space. Last month, The Information reported that the surge in drinks vying for shelf space is giving stores the upper hand in slotting fee negotiations. And last week, the WSJ published a piece on “the battle for space in store aisles” as grocers trim down the number of items they stock while pushing their own private label brands. So yeah, competition’s going to be tough. There’s always Amazon, there’s always DTC, but what these dedicated retail spaces like Soft Spirits and Boisson were great for was brand discovery. And that’s a problem NA brands are going to have to solve.
Every other week, I find myself reading a really good story about a celebrity publicist. This week, it was Stephanie Jones, Tom Brady’s publicist, who’s also worked with The Rock, Venus Williams, and Jeff Bezos. In May, Puck’s Matthew Belloni referred to Jones as an “erratic screamer,” reporting that both The Rock and Lauren Sánchez had dropped her as their publicist. That same month, a now-suspended X account and website called Stephanie Jones Leaks appeared, accusing her of unethical and abusive behavior, complete with receipts. A representative for Jones’s company said, “If the former employee who created this fiction had put this much effort and ‘creative storytelling’ into his or her work here, he or she probably wouldn’t have been fired.” Lol. I think we’re ready for a great TV show with a bunch of cutthroat publicists and their messy clients. As a culture, we’ve become so aware of how publicists shape our perceptions of celebrities that now we’re curious about the craft—and the publicists—behind it all. My favorite TikTok follows are the publicists who help me make sense of celebrity breakups and disastrous press tours. My friends and I are always trying to decode what’s real and what’s not. Are they actually dating What does this headline actually mean?
Gstaad Guy launched a jewelry line to go along with your Hermès bag. A bracelet link costs 260 euros, and each charm goes for 70. He wants the brand to be like “speed dating for friendships”—membership club energy on your wrists.
Still on charms, I want to be friends with the kind of girl who goes around wearing a charm necklace that also holds her supplements. I think she’d be fun. Extra points if it's the $183 Lemme x Haricot Verts charm necklace “designed to hold your favorite Lemme gummy.” (I’m only half joking).The last time I wrote about Lemme, Kourtney Kardashian’s supplement brand, a bunch of you wrote in to tell me that you loved their products. Some of you find the brand sketchy. In an interview with Business of Fashion, Kourtney said she thinks of Lemme’s world like Candyland. “We actually call it ‘Lemmeland’—where it’s supposed to be fun, over-the-top, but also calming.” One day, someone is going to make a documentary about Kourtney’s wellness empire. They’re going to talk about how she was the underestimated sister, once called the “least interesting to look at,” and they’re going to include this clip.
Were you even trending this year if you didn’t model for SKIMS?! I’m not a Charlie stan like some of you, but Charlie XCX for SKIMS, shot by Petra Collins, might just be my favorite SKIMS campaign yet. I think there’s something really fun about how pared down and demure the whole thing is, especially since we’re used to seeing Charlie be anything but. I would hate to be an underwear brand that’s not SKIMS right now.
Sara Blakely launched a line of “luxury hybrid stiletto” or “hy-heel sneakers,” and I honestly feel like this entire brand was created to test me because I really do love Sara Blakely. The shoes cost $395 to $595, so I’m just going to plead the fifth and say I’m clearly not the target audience here and can therefore not speak to anything concerning this product. Sorry.
I think it’s important that you all read the comments section of this WSJ article about “American Manhood” so we can talk about it and perhaps be concerned together. So many people’s boyfriends are going to vote for Trump and come November, I require at least a few good articles about how the girls are dealing.
This story about Disney attempting to throw out a wrongful death lawsuit because the deceased’s husband signed up for Disney+ years earlier is kind of insane. And scary. Last October, NYU Langone doctor Kanokporn Tangsuan died of a severe allergic reaction after dining at a Disney Springs restaurant in Florida. According to court papers, Tangsuan had repeatedly stressed to wait staff that she had nut and dairy allergies, but soon after leaving the restaurant, she started experiencing difficulty breathing and collapsed. After being immediately sued by her husband, Disney filed a motion to get the suit tossed out of court, arguing that the Disney+ subscriber agreement Piccolo signed years earlier on his PlayStation called for any dispute — with the exception of small claims — to be “resolved by individual binding arbitration.” Piccolo’s attorneys called Disney’s latest motion “preposterous” and “outrageously unreasonable.” I have to agree.
I’d like someone to explain this new “sober-forward, members-only dating app” to me. Membership costs $29.99 to $49.99 a month, and it looks interesting, but I also don’t get it. I understand that it's for people who want to date other sober people, but this seems like it could be a feature, not a product. Let me know if you know more.
Glossier is expanding their best-selling Glossier You universe with a body crème that smells like (you guessed it!) You. I love the packaging—an “objet d’art”—and this will obviously do really well. In other Glossier news, they’re setting up shop in Dallas next month. And so is Wall Street, apparently. Elon Musk could be posting up a couple of cities away. Maybe I should visit my friends in Texas.
Bella Hadid, also a Texas resident, launched the fourth Orebella perfume today. It’s called Nightcap, after her favorite horse (of course), and smells like vanilla, ginger, and cardamom. It’s spicy and might stain your clothes.
This is my favorite kind of Monday morning story. "Everyone in this laid-back wine country outpost knew someone who had sold property to the mysterious out-of-town developer who dressed like an accountant and drove a pickup." At first, Sonoma residents welcomed the investment from Kenneth Mattson and his partner, Timothy LeFever. But as many of these properties sat vacant, people grew “concerned and suspicious,” and a theory among residents emerged: Was this part of a covert plan to infiltrate the liberal area with Christian nationalists? Was the renamed “The Seven Branches Venue and Inn” a reference to the fringe evangelical movement, Seven Mountains Mandate? The reality was much more tame—your usual story of alleged fraud, bankruptcy, and partners turning against each other. Still, there’s nothing like a real estate scandal to bring a community together.
I think The Onion is great and I hope their new monthly print offering saves them from whatever comes after a media company changing ownership three times in 10 years.
Wirecutter’s paid newsletter subscriptions grew from 400,000 a year or so ago to 2.5 million today, and drove $1bn in e-commerce last year. Now, The Times’s owned recommendations site is launching a podcast to “demystify consumer recommendations around complicated topics.” The first episode will discuss secrets to better laundry, and the second will focus on keeping indoor air clean. Currently, most of Wirecutter’s revenue comes from affiliate marketing or commissions from product traffic referrals to retailers like Amazon or Walmart. There’s also a standalone subscription product. From what I understand, the podcast will be less about recommendations and more “how to.” You know what? Smart. I love a credibility play. Everyone and their mom is doing recommendations these days and the biggest advantage they have over a site like Wirecutter is that people know who they are. There’s often an intimacy there. So putting faces—or voices—to the journalists behind these recommendations could bridge this gap, because podcast= parasocial relationships= $$$. I can see myself listening to the podcast the way I listen to Before Breakfast.
No one is allowed to write an article about how people are joining clubs to find love if they don’t have anything new to add. But while we’re on the topic, the more I think about it, the more this “trend” just sounds like people going out, living life, and meeting people organically. You know, like we used to.
Start-up failures in the US have jumped 60% over the past year, even as AI startups are raising billions in VC funding. According to JP Morgan, you can blame this on the fact that “an abnormally high number of companies raised an abnormally large amount of money during 2021-2022.” Also,
only 9% of venture funds raised in 2021 have returned any capital to their ultimate investors. By comparison, a quarter of 2017 funds had returned capital by the same stage.
there has been a 'huge drop' in the number of companies able to raise money again within two years of their last funding round.
IPOs have dried up, and M&A activity has slowed, which has prevented VCs from returning capital to the institutional investors who back them.
The team behind the A Thing or Two podcast wants their new company to be the Marvel of romance fans. 831 Stories will publish six books by different authors in their first year—distributed by Simon & Schuster and produced by Author’s Equity, with all the stories set in contemporary times and taking place in an interconnected universe. I’m not even a huge romance reader, but I’m really excited about this. There’s been no shortage of articles about the behemoth that is the romance fiction category, and I hope It Ends With Us’s box office success is a reminder to Hollywood that women will pay to watch their favorite romance adaptation, or just good romance in general. I’m also really excited about the interconnected universe concept. In high school, I used to be obsessed with Sarah Dessen books, and I’ll still buy anything she publishes if it’s in the same fictional universe because I’d die and go to heaven anytime a character from one book made a cameo in another. Big Fan, the company’s first book, launches next month (although I haven’t seen it anywhere on Bookstagram), and 831 will offer merch, in-person events, and bonuses, such as a recording of an original song from Big Fan. I’m a fan ;)
you make me smarter!
I love this roundup!