today and everyday its business insider vs gen z

apparently everything we do is "alarming"

QUICK HITS

• Andreessen Horowitz plans to launch a private equity fund

• Why Revolve is buying Paris Couture House Alexandre Vauthier

• Netflix options novel ‘Happy Place’ for Jennifer Lopez’s Nuyorican

• Major record labels sue AI companies for stealing copyrighted music

• Shein confidentially filed for IPO in London without support of the British Fashion Council

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• The Unwell Network added another fast talking party loving blonde TikToker to their roster. I’m barely on TikTok so I don’t know much about Hallie Batchelder, so I scrolled through her IG page and couldn’t find interesting anything to say except that she has a great jawline. 90% of the comments on Unwell’s announcement post are people being like “where’s the diversity?” Substack can’t handle my take but you can dm me.

  

• Lol Hallmark is partnering with the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL for a new movie, “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story.” Guess the plot.

• Glossier’s second drop for their Summer Capsule Collection includes a bandana and a Utility Sling featuring a key clip, bottle opener, and sunny Three Eyed Smiley charm. The Utility Sling has already sold out.

✨ Today’s Brands of Summer✨

• Rhode’s NYC pop-up went the only way it could go—really well. People lined up for hours to enter the "Pocket-Sized" pop-up, which at full capacity could comfortably accommodate maybe eight employees and twenty shoppers at a time. Thirty-four minutes after opening at 11 am, the rhode account tweeted that the line was closed—they had reached capacity. By noon, the ice cream truck was sold out, as was the blush set online. As I said, this was always going to be a success—girls love rhode and girls love Hailey. The crowd was overwhelmingly young, female and under 30 (an amazing demographic), but I do wonder why they chose such a small venue. When beauty and skincare brands start doing pop-ups, it’s usually because they’re testing retail expansion. We've discussed how more brands are flipping the DTC script and entering retail earlier. Rhode arguably has more flexibility than others (Hailey is hot, pregnant, and famous!), but I wouldn’t be surprised if they made an announcement within the next year. Also, I was thinking about Rhode in the shower (as one does) and remembered that it's technically a skincare line. But by all accounts, their recent makeup launches are outperforming their skincare products in both buzz and sales, so now I'm curious about their strategy moving forward. Will they pivot and focus more on makeup?

  

• Over in Chicago, lines are also forming around the block for Pleasing’s summer pop-up. Pleasing AstroMilk Bar is themed after the brand’s latest nail polish collection. The creative direction is sick. Seriously, just check out their page. The weird eerie animations remind me of the WandaVision series, and the pop up itself looks like something you’d find in the world of Stranger Things. Pleasing is one of those celebrity brands that stay relatively under the radar (which I can only explain by Harry Styles's distance from the whole thing), but their branding is insanely cool and their product rollouts are always exciting. They do fragrance, skincare, beauty, and apparel- yet I promise I’ve never seen their products in the wild.

  

✨ That’s it for Brands of Summer✨

• The Cut is hosting a one-night-only book club for smut and romance fans. The event will be at the Ripped Bodice book club, where all purchases will be 10% off, and VIP ticket holders will have a meet & greet with Tessa Bailey.

• Vox launched a monthly book recommendations newsletter called Next Page, so I will be launching my own monthly book recommendation newsletter called nothing because it’ll just be a monthly Sunday post. I’ll write short reflections on all the books I read that month and provide a few similar books you might want to check out. Doing book recs at the end of each newsletter is kind of a lot, so I’m hoping this is more manageable (and fun!). The first edition will be in July because June ends next week and I’m not doing that.

• A24 is now valued at $3.5bn after raising $75 million in a round led by Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital. As part of the investment terms, Kushner will join the board, and A24 will use the new capital to develop more commercial projects with bigger budgets and A-list talent. Despite A24’s projects being culturally successful, only a few of them have grossed very highly. I think fans will either really love or really hate what this “commercial” era brings. 

• Hot Ones might be hot, but is it hot enough to buy? BuzzFeed sold off Complex earlier this year in a $109 million all-cash deal. Now, they're trying (and failing) to find a buyer for First We Feast, which owns the hit YouTube show Hot Ones. With an asking price upwards of $70 million and a profitable $30 million in annual revenue, it’s not a bad deal. Still, no one’s taken the bait. This is a problem for BuzzFeed, which has over $100 million in debt, holders who could call it in by December, and not enough cash on hand. To put it plainly, they needed to have made this sale yesterday—which, of course, is not a great position to be negotiating from.

• I don’t even like canned food but I recently discovered Heyday Canning and since I’m a sucker for great packaging, I’m going to have to give one of their products a try. Anyone tried something from them?

  

• Things aren’t looking so great over at the house that Elon built bought. According to The Financial Times, tensions are running high between Elon and X CEO Linda Yaccarino. Earlier this month, she fired right-hand man and head of business operations and communications Joe Benarochh for bungling the rollout of X’s new adult content policy. He somehow neglected to inform clients about the changes before they became public. Still, Elon's main gripe with Yaccarino is X’s financials. They’re just not great. And the reason we know this is because he was at Cannes giving almost apologies and trying to woo back the advertisers he publicly cussed out a year ago. (Although he now says this was a misunderstanding). To make matters worse for Yaccarino, Elon recently brought on longtime ally Steve Davis to “review X’s finances as well as performance management,” which sounds an awful lot like job cuts to me. Sources say Yaccarino sees this as a threat to her authority. It is.

• Speaking of crumbling houses people built inherited, Paramount Co-CEOs (there are three of them!) have reportedly hired bankers to evaluate asset sales to pay down some of their debt and strengthen their balance sheet. They also announced layoffs and other measures aimed at achieving $500 million in annualized costs, with ambitions to make the Paramount+ streaming service more profitable. If you’ve been following this saga, you too will be confounded by these developments. Shari Redstone has maintained for months that she does not want to sell her father’s company for parts. While I understand that reducing their debts would put them in a stronger negotiating position, I also think it makes the whole situation more embarrassing for all involved.

• Substack competitor Beehiv has acquired AI website builder Typedream. CEO Tyler Denk tweeted that Beehiv’s future includes both websites and newsletters together, ending with, “we're truly just getting started... no one's safe.” He might as well have tagged Substack.  

• Sophia Coppola and Jacob Elordi are tight.

  sofiacoppola

  

  A post shared by @sofiacoppola

• Today I put it to you that the entire Business Insider newsroom hates Gen Z. But like, are also obsessed?? Every week—unfailingly and like clockwork—they publish some Gen Z think piece. These pieces always call for readers to be alarmed by what society is doing to Gen Z, what Gen Z is doing to society, or what we are doing to ourselves. The words “alarmed” and “alarming” are almost always featured. Today’s alarming finding is about how Gen Z lacks all information literacy. We apparently can't read long articles, don’t trust anything with ads, paywalls, or donation popups. We can tell the difference between rock-solid news and AI-generated memes but simply don’t care. “Where older generations struggle to fact-check information and cite sources, Gen Zers don't even bother. They just read the headlines and then speed-scroll to the comments, to see what everyone else says.” The Google Jigsaw team, which conducted the study, admits they didn't actually poll many subjects, but instead relied on “intense” interviews with a handful of 13 to 24 year olds. They wanted to go deep, not broad. Girl, bye.

• The New York Times plans to move its “The Daily” podcast behind a paywall, making only the three most recent episodes available to non subscribers. If this Business Insider article is to be believed, Gen Z will no longer trust this podcast. Someone go tell The Times.

• M.I.A launched a tin foil clothing line to shield your brains from 5G. The brand, OHMNI, will be sold on Infowars, Alex Jones's platforms. According to a post on her IG stories, “OHMNI is your last frontier at preserving your privacy, autonomy, and rights over your body and your data. This is not your typical artist foray into fashion. This is a necessity.” Okay, I know Business Insider just accused Gen Z of getting all their opinions from the comments section, but you guys need to read the comments section! Too good!!! Sentiments range from “I guess we better call Saul” to “Conspiracy drip was not in my 2024 bingo card” to “I live in Texas I’m not about to turn my head into an air fryer.” The bag is cute.

  

• Bloomberg did an amazing profile on LVMH founder and CEO Bernard Arnault. It’s a great read, and I got you guys a gift link! In other LVMH news, yesterday they announced their acquisition of L’Epée 1839, a Swiss brand that manufactures high-end clocks and authentic ‘objets d’art.’ Interestingly, Arnault also bought a stake in rival Swiss luxury group, Richemont, which owns Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Piaget. Richemont’s stock rose around 24% since the start of the year, outperforming LVMH, which is up just 0.44%. Somethings’s going down.

• Virginie Ward was a no show at her last Chanel show. You guys took the news of her departure a bit too well. 

• PrettyLittleThing is deactivating customer accounts over "unusual high returns activity," and customers are upset. Apparently the reason they’re returning items so much is because of the poor quality—as if PLT is known for anything else. I expect to see more fast fashion brands make similar moves soon. Their margins are usually pretty low and returns are expensive. Sooner or later, this will be the norm. It’s the only thing that makes sense. 

• Levi's tapped Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimz for a new campaign. She’s dancing around her apartment in a pair of perfectly fitted Levi's, looking endearingly uncomfortable as she lip-syncs to a song on the radio. The home decor is great (we love a good staging) and she eats her toast plain: no jam, no butter. It’s all very early 2000s rom com. I love it.

  ameliadimz

  

  A post shared by @ameliadimz

• Rumor has it that Gap—also a lover of dancing ads—could be planning a collaboration with Coperni. There’s been no confirmation from either party, but Lauren Sherman’s intel is always solid. Gap’s partnership with Dôen created a lot of buzz, and by all accounts performed well in every way that matters. Coperni is young, fun, and French—a collection with them would probably perform even better. The general consensus on Gap’s strategy in the last few months has been: great for buzz, but are they selling jeans and t-shirts? Their most recent earnings call says they are. 

• All across America, kids go to bed with a story, a kiss, and a potent dose of melatonin. Some of these kids are getting hooked on the gummy, and most of these parents are getting hooked on the peace and quiet. Everyone suspects there might be long-term side effects, but no one knows for sure. Betty Draper would have been a fan. 

• This T&C article about how plastic surgery is becoming mainstream for men is interesting and all, but for some reason, it got me thinking about how the media reports on culture. When they say people are doing this or that, do they mean Americans in general or coastal Americans? Like, are your suburban Ohio dudes doing this stuff too? I’ve been writing this newsletter for almost two months, and that question has been coming to mind more often. Whose behaviors are the publications we read actually reporting on? How wide does a trend have to go before it's a trend? If you don’t live in a major coastal city I’d love to hear from you.

• I thought I was the only remaining lover of powdered blush, but apparently, it's been on average 79% more popular than liquid blush this year. And speaking of blush, my favorite beauty TikToker,

  toni bravo
  , launched a Substack yesterday. Her first post, about the whirlwind that is your 20s, just gets it.

• I'm going to be vulnerable with you guys and let you know that until very recently, I thought Amelia Gray and Gabbriette were the same person, and by that I mean I thought they were both Gabriette.

  

• Naomi Watts’ menopause brand, Stripes Beauty, got acquired by LVMH-backed L Catterton. I talked about L Catterton recently because they were the lead investor in the Squared Circles’ $40 million round. They also acquired Italian beauty brand Kiko Milano earlier this year. Stripes Beauty, which Naomi founded in 2022, creates science-based products that tackle hormonal issues for women in their 40s and 50s. Naomi founded the brand with Amyris (of colossal bankruptcy fame), and Stripes had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy before she bought it back for $500,000 at auction. On the future of Stripes, Naomi said, “The plan was always to scale. We’re expanding globally and creating more products to meet women’s needs.” I talked about the massive market opportunity for Gen X specific beauty and skincare here. 

• How do we feel about Instagram’s broadcast feature? Every so often I’ll get a notification from a creator or brand asking me to join their broadcast channel. I joined a few at first but stopped because I found the concept weird—it’s basically a massive group chat where only the owner can post. Influencers are using them as a place to seek feedback and share a more “unvarnished” look at their lives, but the savviest of them are using it as a marketing tool. “We’re moving toward this world of creators wanting the same tool sets that marketers might have; to collect email addresses and phone numbers, and just get closer to that direct-to-fan relationship,” said Krishna Subramanian, co-founder of influencer marketing platform Captiv8. “This is a perfect example of creators getting that opportunity.” Substacks, Substack chats, Instagram broadcasts… individuals are acting like brands and brands are acting like individuals and I can’t keep up.