of course sofia richie is launching a baby collection
but amazon though?
QUICK HITS
The most important room in a restaurant these days is the bathroom
NBC sent 27 creators to Paris. It only needed Snoop and Olympic Athletes
I want to know what you did this summer. My friend
and I created a survey to find out. Where did you go? What did you wear? Were you well behaved? Take a few minutes to reflect and complete our survey while you’re at it and I’ll share the results in a few weeks. The more of you fill this out, the more fun it’ll be!Bella Hadid announced a “new chapter” for Orebella in a way only Bella Hadid would. My German friends don’t believe people actually speak this way; I tell them it's a West Coast affliction.
Kylie Jenner, Vogue UK’s September cover star, said she cried when she got the call. “Not Kendall?” she asked when told she’d be the first member of her family to appear on the cover of British Vogue. I love these Vogue cover interviews because they are relentlessly fawning, and I learn absolutely nothing. Wait, that’s not true—I learned that Kylie’s son was named Knight for a while and that she feels misunderstood. She’s actually very shy. Just a girl trying to figure it out. Work-life balance, love, etc. Apparently, everyone the interviewer spoke to mentioned Kylie’s “soul.” Like I said, West Coast shit.
AI wants to count your calories, bite by bite. A group of Canadian researchers with nothing better to do, are building technology that measures the bite-by-bite nutritional value of food—because food journals and scanning barcodes are so “old-fashioned.” Don’t you want to know exactly how many calories end up in your belly? This is them asking, not me. All people have to do is record themselves eating each meal, and the algorithm will do the rest. To get the best results, use forks or spoons— “chopsticks are a little harder.”
One of the founders of Whole Foods is opening a “Holistic Health + Wellness Club” in LA with membership ranging from $300 to $50,000 annually. “Love.Life unites the power of functional medical care, nourishing food, cutting-edge fitness and precision wellness therapies under one roof to promote healing, optimization and community. At the new 45,000 square-foot wellness destination, Love.Life offers the testing, treatments and tracking to transform every dimension of an individual's health. With expert practitioners spanning 20+ disciplines onsite, the offerings reflect the "best of" Eastern and Western modalities and emerging science.”
A few months ago, I wrote about how glucose monitors were becoming a status symbol. (Well, Dazed wrote about it, and I told you how I wish people would do less.) But because everyone listens to “the market” and no one listens to me, continuous glucose monitors will soon be available without a prescription and marketed to people who do not have diabetes. Two pharmaceutical companies, Abbott Laboratories and Dexcom, each won clearance from the FDA to market the products this year. Dexcom has said it expects to offer “subscriptions” for under $100 a month and initially sell them online, starting this month. All this stuff is connected—access, privilege, scarcity, “wellness.” A bigger brain would explain how, but it's Wednesday and I’m not her.
Starbucks just ousted its CEO and replaced him with Chipotle’s CEO. This follows months of pressure from Elliott Management, a major activist fund with a record of shaking up C-suites, which built a sizable stake in Starbucks after recent disappointing performances. Current CEO Laxman Narasimhan will step down immediately, and Starbucks’ Chief Financial Officer Rachel Ruggeri will take over until new CEO Brian Niccol assumes the role next month. Since 2018, when Niccol took over at Chipotle, “revenue has nearly doubled, profits have increased nearly sevenfold, and the stock price has increased by nearly 800%,” Starbucks said. Chipotle stock fell 11% following the announcement of Niccol’s departure. Starbucks stock jumped 20%.
Update: Mars agreed to acquired Kellanova in a $36 billion deal. Next stop, the FTC.
Again, Gabbriette cookbook any day now.
Sales of plant-based meat dipped 19% since May, according to market insights firm Circana, reflecting “broader changes in grocery purchasing due to the continued pressures of cost of living.” This week, plant-based startup Akua announced it was ceasing operations after launching seven years ago and raising $5.4M in funding. Its products have been available at retailers and online platforms like Erewhon, Vons, Pavilions, Pop Up Grocer, and Good Eggs, as well as at restaurants like PLNT Burger and Hula’s Island Grill. In the last year, other plant-based startups like Nowadays, SciFi Foods, and Mycorena have also ceased operations or filed for bankruptcy. Better-known brands like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have also struggled in the last year, with the former finding more success in Europe. Plant based meat is a high cost, low margin business. I don’t feel great about the chances for some of these smaller brands who don’t have the benefit of economies of scale.
What does it mean for It Ends With Us that Justin Baldoni hired crisis PR manager Melissa Nathan? She worked on Johnny Depp’s PR team during the Amber Heard trial.
Dolly Parton enters the beauty founder chat. I dig the rhinestones.
Sable Yong wrote an Op-Ed for Business of Fashion about the slippery slope of beauty transparency. “Beauty secrets are a relic of the last century by now. Transparency by way of authenticity is beauty culture’s strongest currency. Thanks to the internet and social media, one can make a living (and a killing) by putting vanity on display. The performance is just as much about the transformation as the result.” She goes on to talk about the politics of no-makeup makeup and “bare-faced” beauty, the Olivia Culpo Vogue feature backlash, and how posting one’s treatments and diets says more about privilege and access than alleged empowerment. “Empowerment” and “radical transparency” are two ideas I’m grappling with these days because I think they sometimes prevent us from examining and critiquing behaviors by women that could be harmful for women. Many women I talk to experience this tension between disliking when celebrities or influencers deny getting work done and being uncomfortable with the performance of “wellness” and beauty. Sometimes it’s the flippancy that gets me—the ambient influencing of it all, as
calls it. I think it’s weird, but I also feel weird talking about it because I get it. I hear life I so much easier when you’re that much hotter.Rhode is once again pushing their skincare products after months of making a killing off color cosmetics. (They recently surpassed Benefit as the most talked about blush online.) Lest we forget, Rhode is actually a skincare brand, but I’ve speculated on the direction of the business, seeing as their makeup products (and phone case) have been their most successful products thus far. Others have speculated about their reluctance to be a “beauty brand” because of the Rare Beauty of it all. I think the next product they launch will be very telling of the direction the brand is going in.
MLM beauty brand Avon is filing for bankruptcy after incurring $225 million in costs from defending personal injury lawsuits and settlement payments from users alleging talc in its products caused cancer. “We don’t have sufficient liquidity to litigate and/or settle,” Chief Restructuring Officer Philip Gund said in a court filing, with the company adding that the number of lawsuits “will only continue to increase absent a permanent solution.” The end of an era. I read somewhere that TikTok is killing the MLM model anyway. I hope those families get their $$$.
Mark Zuckerberg commissioned a massive statue of his wife for his backyard. It wasn’t even her birthday.
Surprise, surprise! Airbnb is in the hotel business now! On an earnings call with investors last week, CEO Brian Chesky mentioned that competing with hotels was central to the company’s strategy. Last month, an Airbnb exec hinted that guests would soon be able to add hotel-like extras, such as spa treatments and personal chefs, to their stays. Chesky also teased the expansion of hotel rooms available to book on Airbnb, through the last-minute accommodation platform HotelTonight, which they own. Stocks dropped last week, falling 14% in one day after Airbnb lowered its projected third-quarter earnings to between $3.67 billion and $3.73 billion, below the $3.8 billion analysts expected. New data shows traveler demand for short-term rentals is stalling or waning in some parts of the US and for certain types of accommodation. People are getting fed up with rising prices, cleaning fees, and a general lack of quality control, which is helping hotels win over more travelers. This Airbnb life sized Polly Pocket house is cute, though.
The Holdovers star Dominic Sessa will play Anthony Bourdain in the upcoming A24-produced biopic Tony. Matt Johnson, director of the acclaimed 2023 Blackberry feature, will helm the project with a script by Todd Bartels and Lou Howe.
Really, there was no world in which Sofia Richie wasn’t going to launch a baby collection, but I had hoped for better than Amazon—quiet luxury and all. In her first interview since giving birth, she told the WSJ that she will be launching Amazon Essentials by Sofia Grainge, a line of clothing and swaddles for newborns to young children, in time for the holiday season. “I’m really excited about bringing beautiful clothing with affordable and mindful soft materials for kids that won’t irritate their skin,” she said. This pairing makes sense for Amazon, which is always looking to grow its fashion business and would happily settle for being luxury adjacent. It makes a bit less sense for Sofia, brand-wise, but I’m guessing the money is really, really good. Ironic, because the interview begins with Sofia saying she used to take any opportunity related to fashion (we noticed) but is now learning to say no. Her girlboss inspiration is Katherine Power, who founded Merit and Versed and co-founded Avaline and Who What Wear. If that’s any indication, I think it’s safe to say Sofia plans to start several brands in the future.
I’m bullish on Rizz, the new dating app where users can invite friends to watch and comment directly in a chat, and while matches won’t be able to see any of the behind-the-scenes discussions. “Simply make a profile by recording a video or audio prompt, create a group, invite your pals, and you basically have the Potsdam Conference.” The possibilities are endless and toxic, but as my point above shows, people love mess.
Junior bankers at Bank of America are being asked by their managers to alert their superiors or HR if they are pressured to misreport hours. This comes after the WSJ published a story about how junior bankers are routinely instructed to lie about their hours to avoid exceeding hourly limits—which came after the death of Leo Lukenas III, a 35-year-old associate who had worked multiple 100-hour weeks completing a $2 billion deal. Caps on how many hours bankers can work were put in place at the bank roughly a decade ago when an intern died after working multiple all-nighters in a row. I talked to some friends who worked in finance, and they said it was highly unlikely that people would actually report their managers for asking them to misreport hours. That kind of behavior is simply not incentivized. I asked what effect they thought all this bad press would have on BoA. Not much; everyone knows it's no different at any of the other big banks.
Brands are using AI tools to determine whether influencers are “brand safe”—how likely they are to discuss elections or “political hot topics.” Captiv8’s tool, for example, gives influencers a score between A and C, where an “A” means very safe and a “C” signals caution. (If I were an influencer, what do you think I’d score, guys?) Interesting, considering that only a few years ago, brands and influencers were going out of their way to be vocal about social and political issues. Gone are the days of those “should activists be influencers?” think pieces. These days, brands would rather not enter the chat, and I suspect that even when the election is over, many of them will still rely on these tools.
Two days ago, The New York Times announced that its editorial board will stop endorsing candidates in New York races. Today, The New Yorker published a piece saying they were making a “huge mistake.” "It is a paper’s editorial watchdogs that let readers know who has played it straight, who’s been lying, who has potential, and who has conflicts of interest,” the piece read. “Local endorsements are as much a form of public service as warning readers about a coming snowstorm, a road closure, or the outbreak of a disease. They also serve as a carrot-and-stick incentive to candidates to tackle and discuss problems and solutions.” In recent years, The Times has cut back on the number of editorial pieces it publishes, and in a 2020 note to readers, said the editorial board would reserve its view “for matters of great significance.” In their announcement post this week, they also pointed to a trend of news outlets moving away from political endorsements. Is this also a brand safety issue?
Relatedly (because I think these things are related), Substack is on track to more than double its politics and news subscribers in 2024. The number of Substack journalists in news and politics making more than $1 million has doubled over the past year—and is now in "double digits," Substack execs told Axios. The article goes on to name a number of these publications, like The Ankler, Bulwark, and The Free Press, which have tens or hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers and whose founders come from traditional media. We saw many journalists flock to Substack because of layoffs and volatility at their former outlets. I think we’ll continue to see this, but we’ll also see a lot more journalists striking out on their own to pursue creative freedom. Side note: A Substack friend and I were talking about how the experience of Substack is probably so different depending on how established you are. Like, I really never see these massive creators or publications hanging out on Notes. Just me?
I’m considering starting Industry just because of her. A woman who only goes by her first name deserves my attention.
The Starbucks for chipotle swap?? Declining customer base for declining customer base??? Or am i just a “guac is extra” hater???
Begging for some other/none options for these questions cus I had to lie or leave a lot blank!