♥ Until 09/17/19, sale styles at J.Crew are an extra 50% off with code EXTRA. Two closet favorites, the Tweed Motorcycle Jacket with Fringe and the Sophie Open-Front Sweater-Blazer (seen here), are still available in a number of sizes online. Some more picks:
♥ Lululemon’s First Fashion Brand, 10 Years in the Making, Is Here (Fast Company): “For the last decade, Lululemon has been quietly tinkering with a luxury streetwear label called Lab … Lab will exist as a separate brand from Lululemon, one that is both more expensive—items range from $80 to more than $500, prices that run approximately 30% higher than existing Lululemon products—and more exclusive, given that it will only be available at about 10% of Lululemon stores … with Lab, the brand wants to stake a claim beyond the activewear industry and in the world of fashion. Lab is a high-end streetwear brand in the same vein as Virgil Abloh’s Off-White, Rihanna’s Fenty Maison, or Supreme.”
♥ Canada Tries a Forceful Message for Flood Victims: Live Someplace Else (The New York Times): “Unlike the United States, which will repeatedly help pay for people to rebuild in place, Canada has responded to the escalating costs of climate change by limiting aid after disasters, and even telling people to leave their homes … Dorian is the third hurricane to strike North Carolina in four years. Many of the places inundated this time … had been hit by one of the earlier storms as well, only to rebuild and then flood again … As of last year, the United States had 36,774 houses and other buildings the government describes as ‘severe repetitive loss properties,’ homes that have flooded and repaired at least twice … More than 1,100 of those are in North Carolina; the average such home has been flooded five times.”
♥ Bergdorf Goodman‘s Beauty Event is here! Get between $25 to $550 off on your beauty purchase with code BEAUTY. My order: SK-II Pitera™ Essential Set, Shiseido Urban Environment Oil-Free UV Protector SPF 42, Darphin Chamomile Aromatic Care, and Cle de Peau Beaute UV Protective Lip Treatment. Shipping is free on all orders, no code needed.
♥ Superfans: A Love Story (The New Yorker): “Most people are fans of something … But the nature of fandom seems to have morphed in the past decade. In the old days … fandom was a subculture reserved for the very young or the very obsessed … As fantasy and comic-book franchises have taken over the entertainment industry, nerd culture has become mainstream. Now that couch potatoes have social media, they have risen up and become active, opinionated participants. As a result, movie studios and TV showrunners have to cater to subsets of diehard devotees, who expect to have a say in how their favorite properties are handled. The ramifications can be loud and, occasionally, expensive … an attack against a celebrity or a beloved character is an attack against the fans, and it is their duty to retaliate.”
♥ How One Family Fell Into—and Dug Out of—an Insurance Scandal (The Wall Street Journal): “When longer-term rates are negative… it is hard to profit from the difference between short-term and long-term rates, the bread and butter of banks and insurance companies … Japan Post said that over the past five years, it sold some 183,000 policies that may have gone against customers’ interests … Japan Post’s core life-insurance products are more like savings plans because they promise returns to policyholders even while they are living. When interest rates were 5% or 6%, Japan Post could offer attractive plans simply by investing in government bonds and letting the interest compound for decades. Today, savers might do as well stuffing their money under a mattress.”
♥ People Are Working Longer for Reasons of Choice and Necessity (The Economist): “Since 2008 the average labour-force participation rate of 55- to 64-year-olds in OECD countries has risen by eight percentage points … The median age of citizens in the OECD is set to rise from 40 now to 45 in the mid-2050s; on current trends, by 2050 there will be 58 retired people for every 100 workers, up from 41 today … The effective male retirement age across the OECD was 68.4 in the late 1960s and then steadily fell to reach a low of 62.7 in the early 2000s. At that point it started to increase, reaching 65.3 by 2017. For women, the pattern has been similar. The effective retirement age fell from 66.5 in the late 1960s to 60.9 in 2000, and then rebounded to 63.7 by 2017.”
♥ The Friends of Ann Event is now live. Until 09/16/19, take 46% off your purchase with code FRIENDS40. Shipping is free on orders over $125, or pick up in stores for free. My picks:
♥ I Was a Low-Income College Student. Classes Weren’t the Hard Part. (The New York Times): “We like to think that landing a coveted college spot is a golden ticket for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. We think less critically about what happens next … Many students from low-income families described having to learn and decode a whole new set of cues and terms like professors’ ‘office hours’ … and foreign rituals like being invited to get coffee with an instructor … all those moments between convocation and commencement where college life is actually lived.”
♥ The Clock Is Ticking for Millions of Fliers to Update Their IDs (The Wall Street Journal): “… Oct. 1, 2020 [is the] deadline … Unless you can use a passport, military ID, enhanced driver’s license … or other approved identification after the deadline, you may show up at the airport and get subjected to secondary screening. Worse, you may not be able to fly. Secondary screening usually involves an interview and efforts to verify identity, and most checkpoints have limited capacity to do that. If there are too many people without IDs, ticketed passengers will be turned away.”
♥ Modern Life Has Made It Easier for Serial Killers to Thrive (The Atlantic): “In 1965, the U.S. homicide clearance rate was 91 percent. By 2017, it had dropped to 61.6 percent, one of the lowest rates in the Western world … about 40 percent of the time, murderers get away with murder … Some experts believe that serial killers are responsible for a significant number of these unsolved murders.”
♥ Sales styles are an extra 40% off at Anthropologie for a limited time. My picks:
♥ The Future of the Middle Class Depends on Upgrading Service Jobs (CityLab): “… many more Americans continue to be employed in low-wage service jobs. Today, jobs in food preparation and service, office and clerical work, and retail and personal services employ more than 70 million people: nearly half of our whole employed workforce.”
♥ Underwear Ads Lose the Macho: How Marketing Has Embraced Real Men (The New York Times): “A number of ads for briefs, boxers and other products aimed at men have lately turned away from old notions of square-jawed masculinity … The emphasis on men with ordinary bodies and others who don’t fit tired stereotypes seems like progress for an industry that, a decade ago, featured a shirtless hunk scented with Old Spice. These days, more and more advertisers are telling men they don’t need to be the buffest or most interesting man in the world, just themselves.”
♥ Would the Internet Be Healthier Without ‘Like’ Counts? (Wired): “Over the past year, Facebook, Instagram … Twitter, and YouTube have moved to deemphasize or eliminate key metrics in the name of promoting healthy user engagement. The trend gave birth to a word you won’t find in dictionaries: demetrication … the changes have been decried by some of the very users they were meant to aid, who view the metrics as an essential part of their experience. That’s left platforms in the awkward position of detoxing users from an addiction they initially introduced to users.”
♥ Until 09/22, Macy’s is running a 30% off sale with code VIP. The list of exclusions can be found here. My picks: Free People Dreamers Jacket, Free People Sistine Hacci Top, Coach Parker Small Shoulder Bag in Refined Leather, Calvin Klein Single-Breasted Coat, Alfani Colorblocked Poncho Sweater, Cole Haan Wrap Coat, Free People Summer Nights Wide-Sleeve Tunic, and I.N.C. Tapered-Leg Paperbag Pants.
♥ Why Are America’s Three Biggest Metros Shrinking? (The Atlantic): “For many years, the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago areas have seen more departures than arrivals among nonimmigrants. Domestic migration to these metros has been negative for most of the 21st century … There’s little mystery about where people are heading, or why: They are mostly moving toward sun and some semblance of affordability. The major Texas metros … have collectively grown by more than 3 million since 2010. The most popular destinations for movers are now Phoenix, Dallas, and Las Vegas, which welcome more than 100,000 new people each year … From 2010 to 2018, immigration accounted for more than 100 percent of population growth in the New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia metros, and more than 80 percent of population growth in the Los Angeles and Boston areas.”
♥ Why Pope Francis Struggles in Africa (The Economist): “With the locus of Christianity moving southward, this troubled continent represents the faith’s greatest hope. According to Pew … the share of the world’s Christians who live in sub-Saharan Africa will surge to 42% by 2060, up from 26% in 2015 … Without that demography-fuelled expansion in Africa, Christianity would be destined to fall rather swiftly behind Islam as the world’s most popular faith. Pew predicts that by 2060 Muslim numbers will be 70% above 2015 levels, whereas the Christian flock will have risen by just 34%. As a net result, Pew reckons, Christians will make up 32% of the world’s population and Muslims just one percentage point less.”
♥ California Approves Statewide Rent Control to Ease Housing Crisis (The New York Times): “The bill limits annual rent increases to 5 percent after inflation and offers new barriers to eviction, providing a bit of housing security in a state with the nation’s highest housing prices and a swelling homeless population … The measure, affecting an estimated eight million residents of rental homes and apartments, was heavily pushed by tenants’ groups. In an indication of how dire housing problems have become, it also garnered the support of the California Business Roundtable.”
♥ Recently purchased: Waverly Grey Nettie Plaid Tweed Coat, Burberry Cashmere Cape Coat, 1.STATE Cozy Knit Top, Madewell Bobble Pullover Sweater, J. Crew No. 2 Pencil® Skirt in Ornate Jungle Print, LOFT Petal Dot Bell Cuff Dress, and Leith Long Sleeve Sweater Dress.
Have a great week, everyone!
