in Brooke DeVard we trust
+ Gap's beauty ambitions and Bumble's big pivot
Hello and welcome back to as seen on.
A friend told me to remind my readers that expensing this newsletter is always an option, so here I am reminding you!
In today’s issue: The Wall Street Journal wants its journalists to become content creators, the end of the editor-in-chief, Meta and TikTok want a seat in your living room, HBO is changing how it pays talent, the rise of high-end matchmaking, another “superbaby” gene-editing startup, Harvard is chasing Big Tech and pharma funding, Gap relaunching its beauty line, Glossier acquisition intel, the end of the founder led era, Bumble mass layoffs and impending pivot, and a bunch of other stuff.
Enjoy!
i-D interviewed Aydan Nix, the new Hadid sister. Her moodboard is: “Girls. Frances Ha. Broad City. They’re all really speaking to me right now as a fresh post-grad living in NYC. It makes me feel better about being a little lost and also probably really annoying.”
Student loan delinquency is the highest on record, with roughly 31% of borrowers at least 90 days past due, according to data from TransUnion. That’s up from 21% in February and the highest rate since the credit agency began collecting the data in 2012. Before the pandemic, only about 12% of Americans with student loans were delinquent.
is leading Architectural Digest’s venture into vintage merchandising. This morning, she sent me a voice note explaining why AD decided to get into the vintage game, and how they’re approaching covering the space.
We kind of stumbled into the vintage thing. It actually started during a random conversation about tariffs—one of those moments where a policy convo spirals into security concerns, as it always does in certain circles. But I was like, wait, we should be doing more here.
I personally spend a whole day just going through our home tours, looking at how people—especially interior designers—style their spaces. I research those designers and pull the same or similar pieces, and a lot of them are only available on platforms like 1stDibs or Chairish. These are unique, high-end pieces that wealthy people use to decorate their homes—designs with real provenance.
At some point, I realized we were already driving sales to 1stDibs through our content, especially from our home tours. We were pulling so many vintage pieces, and I started developing a kind of fluency around that world. So it just made sense—we already had a high-spending audience engaging with it, and we were getting good commission from affiliate links.
But more than anything, I just love vintage. I love learning about these designers, how they influence each other, and seeing how it all connects. It’s beautiful stuff. So I thought, why not actually curate this into a proper product page? Not just a random collection of vintage, but something with a point of view—like exploring a specific designer or aesthetic.
For the first installment, I got obsessed with Clara Porset. She was Cuban, moved to Mexico due to politics, and made this incredible chair… Anyway, moving forward, we’re focusing each edit around a designer or a really specific style. I’m not interested in anything generic like ‘coastal vintage.’ I want niche. Like a Spanish Revival edit with real names behind it. Or Brazilian designers—we actually got inspired after featuring Anita’s apartment, which had some amazing Brazilian vintage pieces. That’s probably our next drop.