♥ For Banana Republic cardholders, take an extra ~64% off sale styles at Banana Republic with code BRPERK and BRCARD. The Soft Pleated Long Trench Coat that I featured earlier this year is now on sale in both colors at a very reasonable price. Some more picks:
♥ Tariffs Threaten Retailers’ Inventory Discipline (The Wall Street Journal): “Retailers appear to be placing orders early to get them through customs before tariffs hit … But that carries risks. The biggest is that they lose control of their inventory and wind up with too much on the shelves. That would bring back bad memories of 2015 and 2016, when too many unsold goods forced them to offer steep discounts during the holiday season.”
♥ Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster. What if That’s Actually True? (The New York Times): “Nike says the shoes are about 4 percent better than some of its best racing shoes … That is an astonishing claim, an efficiency improvement worth almost six minutes to a three-hour marathoner, or about eight minutes to a four-hour marathoner.”
♥ Burberry Investors Question Destruction of $38 Million in Goods (Bloomberg): “The disposal of unwanted goods shows that Burberry’s turnaround effort under new Chief Executive Officer Marco Gobbetti and designer Riccardo Tisci remains unfinished business.”
♥ Abuse, Neglect and a System that Failed: The Tragic Lives of the Hart Children (The Washington Post): “Federal funding for state child-welfare systems is based in part on how quickly states move children out of foster care and into adoptive families. There is, however, no federal oversight of adoptions, either in state or between states, and there is minimal transparency on how the process works. There is almost no data to determine success or failure rates.”
♥ Chanel Launches E-Commerce In The UK (Vogue): “Joining the beauty and perfume areas of the business that are already available to purchase online, sunglasses has long proved a powerful purchasing point for the house, launching in 2000 through a partnership with Luxottica Group.”
♥ It’s Game Over for Victoria’s Secret, Jefferies Declares (Bloomberg): “Customers have likely moved on to American Eagles’s Aerie brand, which has seen quarterly comparable sales skyrocket. Case in point: The brand has outperformed Victoria’s Secret sales for the last 16 quarters.”
♥ I’m currently shopping the LOFT sale: Use code HOTHOTHOT at checkout for 40% off your order. Or take 50% off sale styles, no code needed. I recently ordered the Wrap Skirt Dress and the Covered Button Strappy Cami Dress.
♥ Don’t Feed the Trolls, and Other Hideous Lies (The Verge): “What the troll, the stalker, and the abuser really want out of the situation is to feel powerful and in control. And they will not stop until they feel it. Therein lies the most horrible aspect of the ‘don’t feed’ mantra: rather than doing anything to address the trolls, the more tangible effect is to silence the victim and the reality of their abuse, or worse, to blame them for it. For far too many who promoted this idea, the true goal was silence, to avoid facing what is happening and the impossible responsibility of it.”
♥ Voter Suppression Is Warping Democracy (The Atlantic): “The new data support perhaps the worst-case scenario offered by opponents of restrictive voting laws. Nine percent of black respondents and nine percent of Hispanic respondents indicated that, in the last election, they (or someone in their household) were told that they lacked the proper identification to vote. Just three percent of whites said the same. Ten percent of black respondents and 11 percent of Hispanic respondents report that they were incorrectly told that they weren’t listed on voter rolls, as opposed to 5 percent of white respondents. In all, across just about every issue identified as a common barrier to voting, black and Hispanic respondents were twice as likely, or more, to have experienced those barriers as white respondents.”
♥ How to Spend It: the Shopping List for the 1% (The Guardian): “Serving the rich is usually not for the faint-hearted. The industries that cater to their elaborate tastes are often very exacting and top-down: the rich expect the best, and are not squeamish about hierarchies.”
♥ Hunting the Con Queen of Hollywood: Who’s the “Crazy Evil Genius” Behind a Global Racket? (Hollywood Reporter): “For the past two and a half years, hundreds of unwitting victims around the world have been ensnared by a small but cunning criminal organization … The scam has created a sense of chaos in the lives of everyone it touches.”
♥ Best Buy Should Be Dead, But It’s Thriving in the Age of Amazon (Bloomberg): “Best Buy’s future will be about getting its people into homes.”
♥ Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers (The New York Times): “While Twitter declined to provide an exact number of affected users, the company said it would strip tens of millions of questionable accounts from users’ followers. The move would reduce the total combined follower count on Twitter by about 6 percent — a substantial drop.”
♥ Public access to the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale starts tomorrow (07/20/18). In addition to the Longchamp Le Pliage Expandable Tote which I reviewed earlier this month, I also ordered the Longchamp Le Pliage Cuir Leather Tote. For anyone looking to shop the sale tomorrow, I’d recommend bookmarking product pages for things that are top of your list, as additional stock is made available on the first day of public access.
♥ Your Haircut Is (Probably) Too Cheap (The Wall Street Journal): “Though men’s hair styles tend to be less complicated than women’s hairdos, there are ways to tell if your barber is up to snuff. Price matters, but the relationship matters more: A $20 haircut can trump a $40 cut if your barber really knows you and gets your hair.”
♥ George Soros Bet Big on Liberal Democracy. Now He Fears He Is Losing. (The New York Times): “Even if you concede that policymakers are ultimately to blame for the income inequality that has fueled so much of the current backlash against globalization, the financial sector has had a major role in worsening it, and hedge-fund titans like Soros are powerful symbols of that inequality.”
♥ What Venezuelan Savers Can Teach Everyone Else (The Economist): “In stable countries, the penalty for a careless approach to saving can hit you a long way in the future. It might be the drawn-out misery of a meagre income in retirement, say. In Venezuela bad decisions lead to ruin—and rather quickly … A sure way to go under is to keep money in bolívares for any longer than it takes to buy essentials.”
♥ Hell for Elon Musk Is a Midsize Sedan (Bloomberg): “Mass-producing a car isn’t rocket science; in some ways, it’s harder. Rockets can essentially be built and checked by hand; a perfect car must come off the production line every minute or so if you have any prayer of keeping pace with the world’s leading manufacturers. Cars are composed of tens of thousands of individual parts and have to withstand snow, potholes, and highway speeds, performing flawlessly for years. They are the largest purchase most people make besides a home, and they’re also heavily regulated lethal weapons that contribute to more than a million deaths each year.”
♥ Tech’s Innovators Are Starting to Ask Permission, Rather Than Forgiveness (The Wall Street Journal): “The tension between the rapid march of innovation and the protection of the public means a never-ending cycle of industries transitioning from invention without boundaries to highly regulated industries such as air travel and medicine.”
♥ How Can You Tell If You’re Actually Getting a Good Deal? (Racked): “Anything like that, the end-of-season sales, you’re buying the things that didn’t sell … It’s a treasure hunt, and you don’t know if what you’re looking for is going to be there.”
♥ The Vindication of Cheese, Butter, and Full-Fat Milk (The Atlantic): “An analysis of 2,907 adults found that people with higher and lower levels of dairy fats in their blood had the same rate of death during a 22-year period. The implication is that it didn’t matter if people drank whole or skim or 2-percent milk, ate butter versus margarine, etc.”
♥ Recently purchased: Topshop Horn Button Side Crop Wide Leg Trousers (love these; now 40% off in both colors!), One Clothing Smocked Off the Shoulder Romper, and J. Crew Classic Button-Front Sundress in Cotton Poplin.
Have a great week, everyone!
