♥ Buffalo Wild Wings Launches New Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili Flavored Sauce (Chew Boom): “Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili Flavored Sauce features the flavors of soy sauce, brown sugar, onion, garlic and paprika – and the wings come topped with Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili chip crumbles for an added layer of crunch. Each order also comes with a small sample bag of Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili chips too.”
♥ (Video link) The Simpsons (Balenciaga on YouTube)
♥ Homer Simpson Was Made for Fashion (The New York Times): Al Jean[‘s] “… first pitch to Balenciaga had a similar framing to the one they ended up going with — Marge’s birthday wish — but diverged with Mr. Gvasalia’s character deciding that the brand’s next show would be held in Springfield. When the Balenciaga plane lands there, its models aren’t allowed into the United States because they’re too thin and beautiful. Springfield’s residents become the models, their nuclear plant is the runway, and the ghost of Mr. Balenciaga makes an appearance.”
♥ A Tale of Two DTC Brands: Why Some Soar and Others Crash (The Business of Fashion): “From the get-go, Entireworld did not have a differentiated product. The brand rose to prominence just as sweatsuits became a popular, Instagrammable outfit to wear around town in early 2020 … But the brand also faced competition from labels high and low rolling out colourful sweatsuit sets … [and] struggled to stand out … By contrast, Vuori launched as a men’s activewear brand that tackled a specific market with a specific product. At the time of its founding … the men’s market lacked fitness clothing for men who ‘wanted a healthy lifestyle,’ but did not see themselves as sports-centric as Nike or Under Armour’s customers. At the time, Vuori faced competitors like the newly-launched Rhone, as well as Lululemon, but the apparel giant had not built a strong men’s business until years later. Kudla saw an opportunity to create clothes men could also wear outside the gym.”
♥ A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting Newsrooms (The Atlantic): “In the past 15 years, more than a quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business. Those that have survived are smaller, weaker, and more vulnerable to acquisition. Today, half of all daily newspapers in the U.S. are controlled by financial firms … They’re being targeted by investors who have figured out how to get rich by strip-mining local-news outfits. The model is simple: Gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring as much cash as possible out of the enterprise until eventually enough readers cancel their subscriptions that the paper folds, or is reduced to a desiccated husk of its former self. The men who devised this model are Randall Smith and Heath Freeman, the co-founders of Alden Global Capital. Since they bought their first newspapers a decade ago, no one has been more mercenary or less interested in pretending to care about their publications’ long-term health.”
♥ Elizabeth Holmes’s Office Romance With Ramesh Balwani Now on Display in Court (The Wall Street Journal): “… Ms. Holmes[‘s] … attorneys have alleged in court records that Mr. Balwani psychologically, emotionally and sexually abused Ms. Holmes, which left her under his control … Their text messages vacillated between discussions about software testing or hiring new customer service employees and heart-eyed emojis or pet names for each other—she called him ‘tiger’ and ‘my king’ … People close to Ms. Holmes said they observed that Mr. Balwani was typically deferential to Ms. Holmes in public and that Ms. Holmes seemed to be in full control of decisions made at the company.”
♥ Solving Retail’s Labour Shortage (The Business of Fashion): “Between January and July, job applications per opening declined 44 percent for retail positions, compared with 19 percent nationwide … As of Sept. 30, more than 10 percent of seasonal job postings on Indeed noted that hiring was urgent in the job description, up from 1 percent the year before. Meanwhile, the share of searches for seasonal work was down 39 percent from 2019.”
♥ James Bond Just Singlehandedly Made the Henley Relevant Again (GQ): “… Bond movies are more than mere tentpole blockbusters—they’re also full-fledged marketing machines, capable of minting and moving products at an enormous scale … in No Time to Die … Bond throws the full weight of his commercial muscle behind perhaps his most daring and surprising style move yet: the henley.”
♥ The Abortion Backup Plan No One Is Talking About (The Atlantic): “Pregnant people … can visit an array of websites that will mail them two pills—mifepristone and misoprostol—that will induce a miscarriage when used in the first trimester of pregnancy and possibly even later. The so-called self-managed abortion is therefore an option at least six weeks further into a pregnancy than the controversial new Texas law’s six-week … cutoff for an abortion at a clinic. Though people in other states have several websites to choose from, Texans can visit Aid Access, a website that provides the pills for $105 or less based on income … Only 5 percent of Americans have heard of Aid Access, though, and only 13 percent have heard of Plan C, a website that provides information on different mail-order-abortion services by state … Abortion pills work best in the first trimester of pregnancy, but it takes time to find the service and order the pills, and for them to arrive and make their way through customs. This is one reason Aid Access is now allowing people who aren’t pregnant to order the pills to have on hand and use later if they experience an unwanted pregnancy. The pills don’t expire for about two years … other factors might be discouraging people from pursuing self-managed abortions. The procedure involves severe cramping and heavy bleeding, and in the states that are most hostile to abortion rights, women who self-induce their own abortions must rely on hotlines and text support from faraway doctors if they get scared or experience complications.”
♥ Who Wants Caviar at a Time Like This? (Grub Street): “Bloviating critics like me have been predicting the demise of what used to be called ‘haute cuisine’ for decades now, but as the great COVID hurricane eases slowly off the coast, leaving all sorts of wreckage and chaos in its wake, the old gourmet model of fine dining has never seemed so disconnected, irrelevant, and out of touch.”
♥ Why Fast Fashion Still Has Gen-Z’s Heart (The Business of Fashion): “The youngest generation of consumers can’t get enough of cheap, disposable clothes. Every year or two, a new e-tailer rises to the top, seemingly from nowhere … According to Google, the top four trending fashion brands among US Gen-Z consumers at the start of September were all companies built in the Chinese fast fashion seller’s mould: Edikted, Cider, Verge Girl and Adika.”
♥ If I Am Taken, Will Anyone Look For Me? (The Cut): “Native women face murder rates that are more than ten times the national average, and four out of five have experienced violence in their lifetimes. In 2016, the National Crime Information Center … said that there were 5,712 reports of missing Native women and girls … Federal law has long prevented tribes from arresting and prosecuting non-Native offenders on tribal land, and Native survivors report that at least 67 percent of perpetrators are non-Native … Natives who commit felonies like rape and murder on tribal land fall under federal jurisdiction, which means federal state attorneys, who lack resources, funding, and manpower, are required to pursue those cases but often don’t for the reasons I just mentioned. Also, reservations are primarily rural and impoverished, so they lack sufficient law enforcement and medical services.”
♥ Why Are Americans Still—Still!—Wearing Cloth Masks? (The Atlantic): “Cloth masks are less protective than surgical masks, but exactly how much less remains uncertain … Even if a pivot toward surgical masks wouldn’t be some pandemic panacea, America’s mask inertia is in many ways a symptom of the nation’s single-pronged pandemic response. The country has collectively banked on vaccination to end the pandemic, and one consequence is that attention to other protective measures has lagged. Our vaccines are terrific, but it’s now clear that our best way out of the pandemic does not rely on shots alone.”
♥ World’s Growth Cools and the Rich-Poor Divide Widens (The New York Times): “The overall growth rate will remain near 6 percent this year, a historically high level after a recession, but the expansion reflects a vast divergence in the fortunes of rich and poor countries … Uneven access to vaccines and health care is at the heart of the economic disparities. While booster shots are becoming available in some wealthier nations, a staggering 96 percent of people in low-income countries are still unvaccinated.”
♥ Recently purchased: A&F Mini Sweater Dress and Mockneck Shrug Set (LOVE!), Free People Emmaline Sweater Dress, J. Crew Wool Cable-knit Sweater, Vince Cable Wool Blend Mock Neck Sweater, and PUMA Essentials Fleece Sweatpants.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
