what did kim kardashian, andrew huberman, and bryan johnson talk about over dinner?
how not to die, apparently
firstly, happy Juneteenth! secondly, today's newsletter is long because as I was writing, things were coming to me. such is a mind free of brainrot. thirdly, big oil wednesday is postponed to next week because of ‘secondly’. enjoy!
QUICK HITS
Do you think Bella Hadid’s relationship with Kim K will survive this? I think it might be the final straw. I mean: Exhibit A, Exhibit B. In Kim’s defense, a lot of grown women seem to be frolicking listlessly in fields these days.
Glossier dropped a summer capsule collection with two new Ultralip shades, a wide-tooth comb that comes in a matching pouch, and a sunset-inspired hair clip with an engraved Glossier ‘G’- all in fun, new packaging. Three thoughts: 1.) It's all cute; a little more AOV never hurt anybody. 2.) Reminds me of Glossier Play, their failed sub-brand of 'dialed-up beauty extras.' Gotta wonder if they're testing the waters for something similar. 3.) Hoping for their sake they release a sunscreen product with this packaging and sell it with a baseball hat or something.
Kim Kardashian’s makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic, has hired JP Morgan to explore exit options for his brand, Makeup by Mario. Its last funding round in 2023 valued the company at over $200 million, and sources previously confirmed to The Business of Beauty that the brand will likely explore a sale in the second half of 2024. Their estimated retail sales for 2023 reached $225 million and are expected to reach $300 million this year.
The Cut will publish its first ever stand alone fall fashion print issue this September. Subscribers will receive it alongside New York's regular biweekly issues, and it will also be available on newsstands. Fun! I recently started listening to this podcast called “Print is Dead, Long Live Print,” where magazine editors will often wax nostalgic about the old days of print. I don't think print is ever coming back—at least not in the way that it existed before. But print is cool; it's special; and for some, it's a collector's item. The future of print is likely more special editions and bespoke collaborations, which we’re already seeing. (For example, high-end outdoor print magazines are currently thriving!) The Cut is doing great work. Lindsay Peoples is doing great work, so now is as good a time as any. If it does well, they’ll probably do more print. If it doesn’t, they won’t. So invest in the future you want to see and all that.
An NYU freshman (and Russian heiress) is suing her roommate for allegedly stealing her designer goods and selling them on TheRealReal. Like I said, The Cut is doing great work. You can’t make this stuff up.
Republican women are predictably mad about the bad things New York Mag said about Republican women. Read it and weep.
Substack is developing a service to help writers sell ads, according to Axios. This scoop was from February, and while we haven’t heard anything since, Modern Retail spoke to Lia Haberman, Erika Veurink, and Emily Sundberg who’ve all partnered with brands on sponsored posts without any formal guidance from Substack. I’ve said before that I don’t mind sponsored Substacks if done tastefully—and they often are. They’re also inevitable as people reach a tipping point of how many subscriptions they’re willing to pay for, and writers seek more ways to monetize. Substack, for their part, will have to walk back their stance on advertising (as they all do) and roll out an ad platform so they get a slice of the pie. Because God forbid they leave any money on the table.
Annie Hamilton (yes, THAT Annie Hamilton) interviewing Honor Levy is the link up I didn’t know I needed. Annie thinks Honor is “a genius among women writers.” Honor says she wasn’t phased by The Cut’s review of her book. Annie thinks she had the perfect childhood for a writer. Honor thinks she had the perfect childhood for an actor. But both agree they wouldn’t be actors now. They quote Sylvia Plath, they quote Bret Easton Ellis, they quote Ethan Hawke. The conversation is everything you’d expect. I think Annie is a natural fangirl.
Everybody wants to sound Puerto Rican now. Thanks to the exploding popularity of reggaeton and the cultural dominance of Puerto Rican artists like Bad Bunny, Rauw Alejandro, and Young Miko, people are showing more interest in learning the island’s “slick, swaggering version of Spanish,” as opposed to the Mexican or Colombian varieties typically taught in US schools. One language instructor said about 10% of his Spanish students have mentioned that Bad Bunny and reggaeton were their main inspiration for learning Spanish, and even Duolingo is exploring ways to incorporate Puerto Rican Spanish into some features. This is really cool because Puerto Rican Spanish has historically been disparaged as the language of the underclass. We love a cultural renaissance. Here for it.
Britain’s richest family spent more on their pet dog than on one of their servants, and now they’re facing jail time over trafficking and staff exploitation allegations. As they should. According to Bloomberg, a woman working for the Hinduja family at their Lake Geneva villa was paid only seven Swiss francs (£6.19) to work for up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Meanwhile, a budget document entitled “Pets” showed how the family spent 8,584 Swiss francs in a year on their family dog. You know what? I’m not even surprised.
Justin Timberlake, at the big age of 43, was arrested yesterday in the Hamptons on DUI charges, and I just hope Jessica Biel knows that people have divorced for less.
Send this to your delusional Gen Z friend who wants to quit her 9-to-5 to become a social media influencer. According to NeoReach, an influencer marketing agency, 48% of creator-earners made $15,000 or less last year, and only 13% made more than $100,000. With the content creator space becoming more saturated, platform payouts shrinking, and brands being more selective with partnerships, I'd advise that friend of yours to like, maybe not. When I hear people say they want to become influencers so they can have more time, flexibility, agency, all that stuff... I get so confused because being an influencer sounds to me like being chained to one of the most toxic ecosystems there is. Literally, no one's got your back. You're always on. It's a lot of work. And if you're not making big money from it, what's the point? But what do I know? I'm just a girl writing a substack!
Deuxmoi working with brands always does something for me; and Violet Grey just partnered with them to tease their new summer scent collaboration that will be coming to Melrose Place.
Bryan Johnson, the tech billionaire who spends $2 million a year to look young, and swaps blood with his 17-year-old son, hosted Kim, Khloe, and Kris Kardashian, along with Andrew Huberman, at his biweekly 'Don’t Die dinners'. They discussed their own mortality while guests enjoyed a meal of broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, and a nutty pudding concoction made with walnuts, macadamia nuts, pomegranate juice, berries, and cinnamon. The dinner ended by 7:30pm because, according to Johnson, sleep needs to be optimized too.
Margaret Atwood, Marlon James, Lena Dunham, and Roxane Gay are being turned into AI reading companions by a mysterious company called Rebind. They will record original commentary on books, which will somehow be implanted in the text and made interactive. Readers will be able to ask questions, and the AI versions of these celebrities will engage in an 'ongoing conversation' with them about the book. The founder of Rebind, John Dubuque, lives in a sprawling mansion near Santa Barbara and has almost no online presence. He made his fortune by selling wholesale plumbing supplies, but there’s no trace of this. Thus far, the only person to turn Dubuque down is novelist Andre Dubus III. Sounds dubious; consider me intrigued.
Brat is apparently the book of the summer, but only in a very specific way- because I rarely see it on bookstagram, but every brand is talking about it. Couldn't tell you if this is a good or a bad thing, so let’s just say it's a thing. Genius of Gabriel Smith to pull that Charli XCX fake email stunt though. What a wave to ride!
Silicon Valley companies are escalating their security vetting of staff and potential recruits because they’re scared of China. Google and OpenAI have already stepped up their personnel screening, and VCs like Sequoia Capital (which backs Elon Musk’s xAI) have also encouraged some portfolio companies to do the same. Meanwhile, OpenAI recently appointed retired US Army General and former NSA Director Paul Nakasone to its board, a move Edward Snowden criticized as a “calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth.” Do with this information what you will.
The US Surgeon General wants to add tobacco-style warning labels on social media platforms, “to regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proven safe.” I don’t know, Dr. Murthy. Aren’t we all in agreement that social media is bad for us at this point? That it causes depression? Anxiety? Rots our brains? Our souls? I’ll give it to him- it’s a good op-ed; a nice idea. I don’t think it’ll happen, and I don’t think it’ll change anything.
The DOJ always has some lawsuit to file, but suing Adobe for hiding termination fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions is something I can get behind. If Adobe has one hater, it’s me. These people are so crooked, and I will never forget how much my broke college self had to pay to cancel a subscription I couldn't afford anyway!
Rare Beauty is recruiting for its College Ambassador Program, and Fishwife is looking for brand ambassadors to share the Fishwife gospel. Smart college students who love beauty and/or CPG will apply.
Asics collaborated with HAY Design on some new colorways for their SKYHAND OG franchise. HAY might not be big in the US, but here in Europe it is. My kitchen runner is from HAY, these storage cans are from HAY, and this lamp thingy is from HAY. I love HAY.
Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ is happening, people! Thank you Lionsgate for making this girl’s dreams come true.
Netflix is planning to open two massive entertainment, dining, and shopping complexes in 2025. They won’t be theme parks, but new 'Netflix Houses' with shopping outlets, restaurants, and experiential activities tied to major franchises like Bridgerton, Stranger Things, and Squid Game. The two locations will occupy former department store spaces at the King of Prussia Mall near Philadelphia and the Galleria Dallas. Netflix said they don’t see these permanent retail destinations as becoming a sizable new business segment but, like previous pop-ups they’ve done, will “serve as marketing vehicles that invite fan engagement, as a way to support the core subscription-streaming biz.” I call this the Disneyfication of Netflix and think it could be huge.
Wells Fargo is losing as much as $10 million a month from their partnership with Bilt, a co-branded credit card that allows users to pay rent without incurring fees from their landlords, while also earning rewards points. Someone clearly did a poor job forecasting key revenue drivers (perhaps those employees pretending to work?), and now they’re attempting to renegotiate the deal with Bilt Technologies, since they’re contractually locked in until 2029.
Nothing delights me more than an interactive story about sandwiches, but I only realized that when I saw this interactive story about sandwiches. I’m moving to New York.
Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin keeps buying Lionsgate stock, and no one knows why. According to a securities filing, Mnuchin’s Liberty 77 Capital Partners acquired $10 million or so in shares of the entertainment company, bringing his stake to 11%. He’s been on a Lionsgate buying spree ever since initially disclosing a 5.5% stake back in September, and then again earlier this year, he upped his stake to 7.9%. When Mnuchin raised $2.5 billion for Liberty 77 in 2021, he said he wanted to invest in companies making 'new forms of content.' In March, there was talk of him putting together an investor group to try to buy TikTok. Obviously, TikTok has since said it’s not selling (allegedly), so that’s a moot point for now. Still, this man is out and about. And between Nelson Peltz, Vivek Ramaswamy, and now Mnuchin, something is in the waters with conservative men becoming activist investors in large media properties.
I just want to acknowledge that Marc Jacobs is doing a thing, and I like it. Their recent TikToks are fun, weird, and irreverent, and they’ve got everyone from Charli XCX, Gabbriette, and Lil Uzi Vert to Christy Turlington, Sabrina Carpenter, and Alex Consani on their payroll. What they’re selling, I’m buying.
I have no memories of Kevin Costner before he was a cowboy, and given his thorough and complete rebrand, I don’t think he wants anyone to. He collaborated with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters on a Mountainside Mocha Latte, so you too can feel like a cowboy. If I were him, I’d make nice with Paramount, shoot some scenes for the last season of Yellowstone, and make sure his mocha latte gets some e.l.f. Mean Girls level product placement throughout the whole season. Really the only way to go.
Gen Z and millennial investors are at least two times more likely than their Gen X and boomer counterparts to invest in expensive collectibles like wine, watches, and classic cars, according to a new Bank of America Private Bank survey. Stocks make up only 28% of younger investors’ portfolios, compared to 55% for older investors. Some of this is due to formative memories of the 2008 stock market crash, but also because newer assets like crypto didn't exist until recently. This article didn't mention them, but Fanatics, a sports merchandising company that also sells trading cards, recently signed a multiyear deal with Sotheby’s to jointly sell rare sports trading cards valued at $100,000 or more. They also hired former Gucci brand SVP Selena Kalvaria as the CMO of their new betting unit. This is another space where young people are investing, and it's worth keeping an eye on.
“When I hear people say they want to become influencers so they can have more time, flexibility, agency, all that stuff... I get so confused because being an influencer sounds to me like being chained to one of the most toxic ecosystems there is. Literally, no one's got your back. You're always on. It's a lot of work. And if you're not making big money from it, what's the point? But what do I know? I'm just a girl writing a substack!”
SAY IT LOUDER FOR THOSE IN THE BACK. Well said!!
I LOVE PRINT!!! There's nothing like browsing a new magazine and the smell OMG. Thank you for recommending the podcast - you - are - the - best