+ Lululemon is currently running a 20% off sale on “Like New” styles; enter code BACKTOSCHOOL20 at checkout. Shipping is free on orders over $125. There are a few half-priced Everywhere Belt Bags (reviewed here) in this section if you don’t mind “almost new.”
+ In other Lululemon sale news, almost everything in the Peloton x lululemon Shop is 50% off, including the Align™ Dress, Scuba Oversized Full-Zip Hoodie, Align™ Tank Top, Wunder Train High-Rise Tight 25″, Align™ High-Rise Short 6″, and lululemon Align™ High-Rise Pant 25″. Shipping is free on orders over $75.
+ What Luxury ‘Dupe’ Brands Get Right About Shoppers (The Business of Fashion): “Brands like Quince and Italic, which also sells relatively affordable, unbranded basics, have taken the fast-fashion playbook of copying luxury aesthetics but promising customers a quality they won’t find at Shein or Temu. While that promise comes with a higher price tag, it still reads as a bargain to some shoppers, particularly those who can no longer afford the real thing … Critics say these start-ups lack their own defining aesthetic, and are dependent on ad blitzes to draw customers. The dupe trend’s longevity is also up for debate; consumers may shell out again for the real thing when they’re feeling more financially secure. Still, brands struggling to compete with fast fashion can glean lessons from the ways that Quince and Italic make the case that their brand is worth it, whatever form that takes. ‘How big can a brand get without having a really defined brand identity? Conventional wisdom would say that a strong brand identity and strong storytelling is really important … But the world is changing so quickly that that may no longer be the case. Maybe you don’t need to really tell a brand story. You just need to be really clear in your value prop and nail that.’ “
+ Would You Pay to Attend a Wedding? (The New York Times): “According to the Knot, the average cost of a wedding ceremony and reception in 2023 was $35,000 — an increase of $5,000 from the year before. The Knot surveyed about 10,000 couples who had married in the United States in 2023. But the approach of selling tickets to a wedding has mostly upset guests, many of whom have expressed the opinion that it is in poor taste for the couple to put their financial burden onto their guests and that there are more cost-effective ways for couples to have a wedding … The cost of being a guest is also becoming more expensive. The average cost of attending a wedding is $580, according to a 2023 study by the Knot, which surveyed 1,000 people who had attended a wedding in the previous year. That was an increase of $120 compared with 2021.”
+ A Fashion Influencer Sues, Alleging a Creator Copied Her “Aesthetic.” Lawyers Say the Case Could Have Big Ramifications. (Business Insider): “One of Gifford’s main arguments in the lawsuit is that Sheil infringed upon her ‘trade dress,’ which is the overall look and feel that distinguishes a specific brand from others. Gifford’s lawsuit outlines the specific color scheme, video-editing style, and content type that make up her online brand. In Gifford’s view, Sheil copied her ‘unique’ brand by replicating several videos that are protected under copyright. However … this would be a hard case to argue because creators often draw inspiration from each other … concerns about copying content aren’t new in this industry … many influencers complaining that other creators are stealing their ideas for content or uploading photos and videos in a similar style to their own.”
+ Meet the Queen of the ‘Trad Wives’ (And Her Eight Children) (The Times): “… look back 15 years or so, when the fourth wave of feminism was breaking … the ‘girl boss’ era, when women were told to be bolder in the workplace, to lean in further, to break glass ceilings … But as the years went on women realised they’d been sold a lie: this individualistic feminism didn’t resolve anything unless you were a millionaire. For normal working mothers the girl-boss era achieved virtually nothing. After years of silence there also began a very public purging, women talking about how mind-numbing weaning is, about the isolation of maternity leave, the challenges of everyday life with irrational toddlers. Paradoxically this made it harder for women to be honest about any of motherhood’s joys. Those who succeeded were seen as smug — or saboteurs. And … along came a group of women who didn’t seem to care about any of that. They advocated for a life that rejected the drive for money, public power and success, and elevated gentle domesticity and hands-on motherhood to an almost divine state. Enter the trad wives … They have a cleaner but no childcare; Neeleman does all the food shopping — kids in tow — and cooks from scratch … Daniel is a hands-on father, taking the kids out to the farm and doing all the laundry. The children appear to look after each other quite well too — there are so many that they seem to have become an almost self-sustaining entity. Still, Daniel says, Neeleman sometimes gets so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week.”
+ (Podcast) Trad Wives: The Influencers Selling 1950s House-Wife Life (The Times: The Story)
+ After 12 Years of Reviewing Restaurants, I’m Leaving the Table (The New York Times): “The first thing you learn as a restaurant critic is that nobody wants to hear you complain. The work of going out to eat every night with hand-chosen groups of friends and family sounds suspiciously like what other people do on vacation. If you happen to work in New York or another major city, your beat is almost unimaginably rich and endlessly novel … So we tend to save our gripes until two or three of us are gathered around the tar pits. Then we’ll talk about the things nobody will pity us for, like the unflattering mug shots of us that restaurants hang on kitchen walls and the unlikable food in unreviewable restaurants. One thing we almost never bring up, though, is our health. We avoid mentioning weight … Partly, we do this out of politeness. Mostly, though, we all know that we’re standing on the rim of an endlessly deep hole and that if we look down we might fall in … the alarming frequency with which men in our line of work seem to die suddenly, before retirement age.”
+ That Feeling You Recognize? Obamacore. (Vulture): “The mood is Obamacore — the outburst of brightness and positivity that took over pop culture upon the election of our first Black president in 2008, and that continued until the wheels fell off eight years later. This was the age of Glee, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Hamilton, seemingly disparate art born out of the same impulse: the feeling of a new dawn, a generational shift, a national redemption … Obamacore positioned itself as sensitive, non-threatening, and relatable … this era remains a fascinating blip, a brief ray of hope.”
+ In a Town Full of Segregation Academies, One Black Family Grapples With the Best School Choice for Their Daughter (ProPublica): “Starting next year, private schools will skim another layer of students from the public schools. In April, as part of a nationwide Republican push, Georgia adopted a new program that, similar to the existing one, uses taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition. At least 21,000 more students could receive up to $6,500 each. Last year, almost 22,000 students tapped into the current program. The average tuition grant was about $4,600. Supporters often tout these programs as means for students to escape low-performing public schools. But the reality is, the tuition grants don’t often cover even half of private school tuition bills, especially for college prep-style schools.”
+ Airbnb’s Struggles Go Beyond People Spending Less. It’s Losing Some Travelers to Hotels. (Business Insider): “… Airbnb used to have a stronger upper hand for budget-conscious tourists. In 2019, hotels commanded an average of 49% more a night in large cities ,,, That gap shrunk to just 26% in 2022 … CEO Brian Chesky mentioned competing with hotels was central to the company’s strategy. He teased the prospect of an expansion of hotel rooms available to book on Airbnb, tied to the company’s ownership of the last-minute-accommodation platform HotelTonight. Last month, an Airbnb executive hinted that Airbnb guests could soon add hotellike extras, like spa treatments and personal chefs, to their stays.”
+ I Love This T-Shirt. Now, Would You Please Cut It? (The New York Times): “Cropping stations have become a new event activity, offering participants a chance to customize merchandise they either received on the spot or brought from home … customization stations that offer cropping have become high-end activities at bar and bat mitzvahs.”
+ Memoirs can open a window into unfamiliar worlds and take readers on a journey through someone else’s intimate history. While I always assume the factual accuracy of memoirs to be far less rigorous than that of academic papers, I was still surprised by my own skepticism when reading Sociopath: A Memoir, written by an author who is a self-proclaimed “highly manipulative” sociopath and compulsive liar. However, if you can overlook critiques of the author’s credentials and the suspiciously-detailed reconstructed scenes from the author’s youth, the audiobook is colorfully narrated and an interesting, if at times uneasy, listen.
In Sociopath: A Memoir, the author, Patric Gagne, presents the argument that sociopathy is a spectrum disorder, and that “fifteen million people in America” are sociopaths “hiding everywhere, in plain sight.” Damningly, she does not offer any academic citations to back up the countless claims she casually makes in the book. While I can appreciate the yearning for representation: sociopaths, after all, have a particularly lurid reputation in pop culture. But Gagne appears to want more for Sociopath: A Memoir. She isn’t content for this book to just show that sociopaths are capable of restraint and are more than the impulsive, (sometimes) violent acts that threaten to define them; she seems to want the diagnosis to be seen as a strength and for what she calls “redirect” (of destructive impulses) to be incorporated into the toolkit for managing sociopathic impulses.
But it all feels too ambitious, even a bit dangerous, for a project born out of a sensationalistic Modern Love essay. I think it adequately satisfies a curiosity that neurotypical people have about antisocial personality disorder and it’s even got a hopeful message–that sociopaths can lead seemingly normal lives–but it loses the plot trying to be something more authoritative.
+ Why Fashion Loves the Next Generation of Tennis Stars (The Business of Fashion): “Interest in tennis right now is also driven by a confluence of cultural factors, from the growing popularity of sister sports such as pickleball and padel to the revival of retro trends that evoke a ‘vintage athletic country club’ aesthetic … the new class of tennis stars offer brands malleability … having a smaller following means players like Gauff and Fritz haven’t seen their images so firmly established in the minds of audiences, which affords them broader appeal beyond performance wear to potentially extend into fashion and beauty.”
+ Chappell Roan Calls Out ‘Entitled’ Fans for ‘Abuse and Harassment’ in New TikToks (Teen Vogue): “… Chappell Roan, whose real name is Kayleigh Rose, took to TikTok to denounce a series of fan practices she feels are ‘not normal,’ including parasocial conduct from fans who act like her friends, resort to stalking, or respond negatively when she turns down a photo request, among other things … This isn’t the first time that Roan has decried similar behaviors from fans. Back in July, the star already admitted she had ‘pumped the brakes’ on what she shared with the world outside of her art after dealing with stalking from fans.”
+ I Hope Trump Kept the Receipt (The Atlantic): “As a senator from Ohio, Vance doesn’t bring a swing state with him; even his family’s roots in Kentucky have been the subject of a multiday roasting by that state’s Democratic governor. Nor does he bring a strong personal following; in 2022, he underperformed the rest of the Republican slate in Ohio. And Vance obviously has no deep convictions, having once called his new boss ‘America’s Hitler’ in private and ‘cultural heroin’ in public. Trump presumably loves watching a former critic debase himself for power, but voters can usually smell a phony.”
+ Families Are Going Into Debt for Disney Vacations (The New York Times): “… LendingTree, a financial firm, published the results of a survey of over 2,000 people that found that 45 percent of parents with children under 18 who have gone to Disney went into debt for the trip. For a family of four, the cost of a one-week trip to Disney can range from $6,463 to $15,559, not including flights or souvenirs … Disney reported softening demand for its theme parks because families, after years of dealing with high inflation, have less money to spend on amusement.”
+ Temu Owner PDD’s Stock Rout Reflects ‘Shaken Investor Confidence’, Analysts Say (SCMP): “A 28.5 per cent stock price plunge … wiped US$55 billion off the valuation of PDD Holdings, the owner of shopping apps Temu and Pinduoduo … The rout came after company executives said they would sacrifice short-term profits for long-term growth and forgo share buy-backs or dividends in coming years … PDD reported a record 97 billion yuan (US$13.6 billion) in the quarter that ended June, up 86 per cent year on year, but lower than the consensus analysts’ forecast of 99.9 billion yuan.”
+ Recently purchased: J.Crew A-Line Midi Dress in Limoncello, Endless Rose Sleeveless Textured Midi Dress, Gap Linen-Cotton Wrap Mini Skirt, Lacoste Organic Cotton Twill Cap, English Factory Gridded Organza Tiered Maxi Dress, Banana Republic European Linen Kaftan Midi Dress, Tuckernuck Stone Alice Dress, and Lacoste Sleeveless Cropped Polo Shirt.
Have a good week, everyone!
