My tiny apartment poodle prank life
and chatting with AI about legal agreements
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In today’s issue:
A beauty influencer trying to bring back skinny jeans
A 24/7 hotline for canceled celebrities
Why people are spending $50,000 on an iPhone
I’m launching something soon…
Notes from a messy desk
I have three weeks to move to London, and things are starting to feel real.
On the to-do list: get a UK phone number (what if I just don’t have a phone? Could be chic!), open a bank account (will they see that I bankrupted a company and simply say no?), find a storage unit for the things I refuse to part with yet refuse to ship, sell a few Yamazaki Home organizing thingalings on Facebook Marketplace to people who love to ask, “Is this still available?” and then disappear into the abyss, and figure out what to do with my car lease (Lord how I wish they drove on the right side of the road over there).
All of this while launching something exciting (because what is life without a little unnecessary pressure?), flying this weekend to speak at a conference next week, and heading to Alabama to shoot something fun—but also still working, because, you know, capitalism. Oh, and replacing the custom gutter that blew off my house during LA’s recent fires and winds (which last weekend turned into hail and flooding). Hey, at least I can spend my time inflight highlighting extraneous items on my CPA’s invoice that I refuse to pay for.
I’m also living in some sort of tiny apartment prank life with 3 (also tiny) poodles who, each time I walk into a room, follow me silently like toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe. I then inevitably forget what I entered that room to do, turn around to leave, and have to do a kind of dance to hop over them to leave the room. This is a lot of detail but maybe someone reading this can relate to how something like this might trigger the existential rage it does for me.
Alright, back to consulting with ChatGPT on how much it’ll cost me to buy out this car lease.
Wheels Up,
Sophia
Collabs on my radar
ILIA Beauty and Halfdays collabed on a ski set in the former’s lip shade colorway. LA-based designer Juliet Johnston created a collection of bralettes, bloomers, and scarves for Oddli. Alix Earle dropped skinny jeans for Frame. They’re called The Alix. Ghia and Alice Mushrooms just dropped a “happy ending” hazelnut spread. Jewelry brands Heaven Mayhem and Real Fine Studio collaborated on a three-piece collection with studs, a tennis bracelet, and tennis necklace, and it’s almost sold out. KENZO and visual artist Verdy collabed on a collection described as “2000s video game vibes.” It’s fun. The Kith x Brooklyn Museum custom varsity jacket is so sick. Interior designer Heidi Caillier created a vintage-inspired collection of rugs and pillows for Joon Loloi. Abercrombie dropped a White Lotus collection. The Barbour x Flower Mountain sneakers are cute. Marfa Stance and Mickalene Thomas launched a special edition collaboration on reversible patchwork rain coats. Stoked for designer Dilara Findikoglu’s collaboration with lingerie brand Boux Avenue. Mane and Ouai collabed on an anti-frizz kit, which you can shop at Sephora. British designer Samuel Ross – who interned with Virgil Abloh – is dropping a four-part collaboration with Zara. Scent-centric bodycare brand Baude is dropping its first artist collab with the designer behind Pipenco. It looks cute.
Last week, you were really into the Lacoste x CLOT reversible cashmere cardigan and Zara x and wander fleece jacket. They were the most clicked collabs.
Links to make you smarter and more interesting
The life coaching market in the US is expected to grow 4.85% a year through 2030. There’s never been a better time to start your own coaching biz, especially if you have a niche you can speak to. Coaches that help with pregnancy, burnout, midlife crises, career breaks, co-parenting, elder care, and other specialties are charging hundreds of dollars an hour to give people advice.
BTW – If you’ve been ready to take the leap into starting your own coaching business, I can help you.
Running club participation went up 59% around the world last year. Social feeds are blowing up with running content: what someone’s wearing on a run, actual live footage on the run, training for a marathon, hanging out with a crew of local runners. It’s why the Business of Fashion believes running has a big fashion opportunity right now. Related: it looks like Staud is dropping an activewear collection this week.
Champagne shipments and sales dropped last year because people aren’t in the mood to pop bottles. “Champagne is quite linked with celebration, happiness, et cetera,” LVMH Chief Financial Officer Jean-Jacques Guiony said on an earnings call. “Maybe the current global situation, be it geopolitical or macroeconomic, does not lead people to cheer up and to open bottles of Champagne.”
Top investors are posting at least once a month on LinkedIn and scaling back on Twitter. It’s also how they’re scouting founders to invest in. If you’re building something and don’t have “Stealth Startup” on your LinkedIn yet, now’s the time.
ShopMy, the affiliate platform I share my shopping recs on, just raised $77.5 million in Series B funding. Puck’s Sarah Shapiro notes that ShopMy targets fashion girl influencers and startup founders. Co-founder & CEO Harry Rein says that they’re “combining the authenticity of creator content with the precision of performance marketing, we're empowering brands to transform creator partnerships into a scalable performance engine,"”
On that note, you can shop my favorite skincare products, travel essentials, and winter favorites.
Levi’s used Google’s analytics ecosystem and daily algorithms to figure out that everyone, not just Gen Z, wants baggy jeans. “There’s also a whole lot of people that used to wear a 501, and they love their 501s,” Levi’s Chief Digital Officer Jason Gowans said regarding the brand’s straight-leg jeans. “But they’re also now leaning into our wider-leg fits. That was something that was at least a little bit of a surprise to us.”
Celebrities and influencers can pay to access a 24/7 help hotline if they get canceled online. It’s part of insurance company Samphire Risk’s new cancel culture policy that also provides 60 days of crisis management and protection from misinformation, blackmail, and deepfake images.
Americans spent $186 billion on their pets last year, which is more than they spent on childcare. It’s an industry that usually isn’t rocked by an economic recession – Gen Z and millennial pet owners increasingly view pets as part of the family, and aren’t willing to skimp on them, even if they’re at a financial low point.
Threads, which has more than 300 million monthly users, is testing ads in the US and Japan. After the TikTok ban drama, brands are likely feeling more hesitant to invest ad money on a platform with a precarious future. Investors think Threads could become a $5 billion market.
JCPenny’s AI makeup artist rose conversions by 108% last year. It’s part of a larger trend of bringing more AI into the beauty industry – McKinsey forecasts the tech generating $10 billion for the beauty sector.
Yahoo’s big rebrand hinges on millennial nostalgia. And it might be working: The company said it saw a 125% increase in new users connecting their Gmails to Yahoo Mail on their desktops, and traffic on Yahoo News on mobile is up 10% year over year.
An iPhone loaded with the TikTok app is being sold on eBay for $50,000. It has over 4,000 views in the last 24 hours and 62 people keeping tabs on the listing. It’s part of a larger trend of people selling their TikTok-loaded devices online after the ban, since new users aren’t able to download the app after it’s been reinstated.
With TikTok’s future hanging in the balance, rival platforms are willing to pay influencers to come over to their services. Social commerce app Flip is offering grants ranging from $6k to $100k. Substack announced a $20 million creator fund to pay influencers to move their paid subscription audiences to Substack. And Meta is reportedly offering creators monthly bonuses of up to $50k to post on Reels before other platforms. Like TikTok.
More from my rich universe of endeavors
I may include affiliate links, which means I receive commission on purchases made from some of the links. But I’ll only show you stuff I really like.
Digging these posts! I honestly never heard of SubStack until a few months ago, seems like a cool platform.....
This collab roundup - so good!! I’m opening every link in a new tab like a mad woman 🙏
Maybe go for a brick Nokia phone for your new +44 number? Could be so liberating. I still miss my mini cooper I sold to move to London. Now I’m back in the land of malls (New Jersey) and yearning for my car.
Best of luck with the lease and all!