▪ I am excited to share that the Tory Burch Catalina 3 50mm Espadrilles is now on sale in two colors on the Tory Burch website (+ an extra 25% off with code EXTRA). The style is well-reviewed and sold out quickly on Shopbop when it was further discounted earlier this week. Some other picks for the sale: Fleming Convertible Shoulder Bag, Color-block Espadrille, Robinson Small Double-zip Tote, Rosalind Ballet Flat, Elizabeth Mid-heel Pump, Fleming Small Tote, Kira Tote, Ashton Sandal, and Laurel Flat Sandal.
▪ Luxury Sales Are Rebounding in China. Just Not in Stores. (The New York Times): “Chinese shoppers are typically younger and heavily influenced by social media … they like to spend their money in a digital shopping culture that is distinct from that of Europe and North America, and they are well versed in price differences across the world.”
▪ (The story that inspired the movie “Tag,” which I am excited to watch despite mixed reviews.) It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being ‘It’ (The Wall Street Journal): “The participants say tag has helped preserve friendships that otherwise may have fizzled.”
▪ 5 Surprising Findings About How People Actually Buy Clothes and Shoes (Harvard Business Review): “Fast fashion has become a buzzword for apparel makers, but many consumers are simply looking to replace an item they already have … in fashion … the aim of 83% of shopping journeys is repeat purchases, and athletic products (87%).”
▪ I thoroughly enjoyed Ali Wong’s first Netflix special, and the follow-up (“Hard Knock Wife“) released last month is even better. As Vulture critiqued, “This is a hilarious special that becomes thrilling whenever Wong tests her own descriptive powers and the audience’s capacity to absorb images of squalor, misery, or pain. It’s bracing, in some ways cathartic, to hear a parent talk this way about their experiences, as Wong does here … But the explosive physicality of Wong’s delivery, and the intensely visceral way she describes what she felt physically and emotionally before and after giving birth, is what gives this special most of its power.”
▪ From Off-White to Nike, Fashion Is Transparent Now (GQ): “… in fashion, transparency means literally that: everything is see-through now … as fashion has approached something like genderlessness, clear plastic made its way to the final frontier: menswear, and more specifically sneakers.”
▪ How Batteries Went From Primitive Power to Global Domination (Bloomberg): “The future of the battery is going to be driven by the car. Surging demand for lithium-ion batteries, boosted by uptake from automakers, has created efficiencies of scale that have sent prices plummeting. Last year alone, the price of battery packs fell 24 percent.”
▪ Nordstrom just added hundreds of new styles to its sale section and I couldn’t resist ordering a bunch to try (and re-try… as sale prices sometimes cast things in a different light). My order: Lush Surplice Maxi Dress, Joules Right as Rain Waterproof Hooded Jacket, Mural Oversize Blazer, and Tory Burch Tatiana Slide Sandal. For anyone interested, the BB Dakota Jayce Lace Sheath Dress that I wore in this post is now 50% off and back in stock in a number of sizes.
▪ The Nordstrom markdown also includes a number of Longchamp styles, including the Le Pliage 21-Inch Expandable Travel Bag (that I love and reviewed here) in a vibrant color.
▪ Men’s Fashion Week Loses Some Luster (The New York Times): “In recent years, not a season has gone by in which a trickle of high-profile names did not quietly disappear from the schedule … With no big-league names left on the schedule, top billing has been given to Charles Jeffrey.”
▪ To Compete with Amazon, Big-Name Consumer Brands Have to Become More Like It (Harvard Business Review): “The first decision for branded companies looking to emulate Amazon Prime is creating an on-demand, always-on direct connection with their customers with a conversational interface … Creating the right use case to motivate customers to then engage with the brand with these tools is the second step … Then, the name of the game is to accumulate more and more relevant data on target customers — but this must be done with privacy and trust at the forefront … Finally there is the application of advanced AI-like machine learning to complete the journey toward the type of deep customer engagement and insights that Amazon Prime has pioneered today.”
▪ How Suicide Quietly Morphed Into a Public Health Crisis (The New York Times): “… many of those who commit suicide have received little or no professional help. Indeed, they rarely tell anyone beforehand of their plan — when there is one. Often the act is impulsive.”
▪ The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready? (The Atlantic): “… the U.S. is disturbingly vulnerable—and in some respects is becoming quickly more so. It depends on a just-in-time medical economy, in which stockpiles are limited and even key items are made to order.”
▪ The Untold Tales of Fashion’s Invaluable Fit Models (Fashionista): “Fit models often work strictly behind-the-scenes, yet the demographics seem similarly homogenous to their model counterparts that work on the runways or in front of the camera instead of in the design studio … this sector of the modeling industry is lagging behind in regards to inclusivity. Perhaps this means that fashion brands don’t take the bodies of women of color into consideration as much as they should when designing collections.”
▪ Is Macy’s About to Reinvent the Department Store? (Retail Dive): “… companies need physical space to allow customers to engage with their products, something that is particularly true of the electronic gadgetry that has streamed into its stores from various brands and startups in the past two years … Macy’s could create a memorable experience for customers while boosting revenues, without taking on inventory … it involves major shifts in how a retailer evaluates success.”
▪ The Trouble With Hollywood’s Gender Flips (The New York Times): “… even when a Hollywood franchise is retooled around women, it still revolves around men — the story lines they wrote, the characters they created, the worlds they built … These reboots require women to relive men’s stories instead of fashioning their own.”
▪ The Stanford Prison Experiment Was Massively Influential. We Just Learned It Was A Fraud (Vox): “A new exposé published by Medium based on previously unpublished recordings of Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psychologist who ran the study, and interviews with his participants, offers convincing evidence that the guards in the experiment were coached to be cruel. It also shows that the experiment’s most memorable moment … was the result of the prisoner acting.”
Have a great weekend, everyone!
