It’s Wednesday as I’m writing this and I feel like that Liz Lemon What a Week clip, which is an incredibly millennial way to say… I’ve been busy. BLERGH! NIGHT CHEESE!

(I love 30 Rock so much)

I leave for Provincetown on Saturday and then head straight to DC the following weekend to officiate a wedding! I am going to take the week off from posting, but expect some fun stuff when I get back that I’ve been thinking about doing beyond the weekly write ups. And as always, if there’s anything interesting in the world of retail that you want me to dig into, collaborations or beyond, send it my way. If anything drives this newsletter, it’s curiosity. Also - more comments on these posts. I love all of your comments.

In today’s extra long post:

• Back at it again with actual white vans

• A deep dive into Supreme’s insane collabs for FW26

• J. Who

• The kids will be alright quesadilla bite

• I can’t believe I just said that^^^

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Fugazi x Vans <> Fugazi

I’ve been following this for a while but this past week had some interesting updates that we need to discuss. Fugazi is a punk band. Fugazi is also a brand.

Fugazi, the punk band, started in DC’s hardcore scene in the 80s, and has had a devout following of fans, both for their music and their anti-capitalist views. They refuse to work with corporate record labels, price their tickets extremely low to promote affordability (which often meant random venues), don’t sell merch and are even anti-moshing, because barricades cost money. Fugazi the brand is an LA-based streetwear brand that I hadn’t heard of until a few months ago when this all started. Their About page on their site says they are a “post-structuralist commentary on streetwear and the modern-day consumerist phenomenon,” which they say is from an Instagram comment.

Groan.

On June 24th, Vans executive Steve Van Doren announced the collaboration by holding a slip-on shoe in one hand and a trademark registration certificate in the other, saying “This is a Vans shoe, this is Fugazi. Get the picture?” while punk music played in the background. They deleted it or I’d put it here, but word quickly got out to the Fugazi fans and naturally, they were mad. An anti-merch brand doing a collab? No way.

In July, Fugazi (the brand) did a pop-up in Paris during Men’s Fashion Week where they gave out mismatched shoes - a nod to Vans original practice of selling single shoes if a skater destroyed one in action. Van Doren issued an apology on Instagram, calling out the connection between skateboarding and punk music.

Then things got quiet. Until last week, when Fugazi (the brand) posted a video. I actually like the video - it has a VAN full of VANS. It’s a winking way to admit that they messed up without actually owning it. And with presumably lots of inventory to offload, they announced that they were selling the shoe collabs for $5 (the same price of Fugazi’s initial concert tickets!) drawing big crowds. Clever.

I don’t care about punk music, I’m not cool enough. And while I’m not cool enough to skateboard or know about growing streetwear brands either, I have to say it’s a bad look for both the sneaker brand and the streetwear brand. Vans very clearly knew what they were doing with their initial video - and if they didn’t, their team is not aware of the culture that is so deeply rooted next to theirs. On top of that - a company with a market cap of $5.5B can easily write off these shoes. And for Fugazi the brand - started by USC college freshman Trevor Gorji 8 years ago (his dad is a principal at a PE fund, which I figured out in less than 30 seconds), it feels like a lame way to not admit fault for not doing your research. To be fair, Gorji said his parents never put any money into the brand, and it looks like they’re making some cool stuff, but it still feels against the ethos of the “original” Fugazi (which of course, they never trademarked).

It reminds me a lot of the Satisfy x Adidas hardcore debacle from a few months ago - when the culture is not the costume of an upstart hotshot brand. And to me, it looks especially bad for a skateboarding brand to not know punk history.

Going back to the word “fugazi” - the band and the brand use it in different ways, but it really sums up the whole ordeal. The band uses it to reference the Vietnam War slang meaning “a chaotic, messed-up or dangerous situation” - Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In. The streetwear brand uses it to mean “fake”. Sometimes this newsletter writes itself.

Supreme FW26 Collab Review

Big news in retail this week - SKIMS just named Erin Magee as its Chief Design Officer, the first person to take on the role. To be blunt, Magee is fucking cool. It’s an inspired hire for SKIMS, because while Supreme has had its ups and downs, Magee was there for over 20 years, helping it turn into a cultural behemoth beyond just a streetwear brand, including collaborations with brands like Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co, and Rimowa. She also built her own brand, MadeMe, a counter-culture female-first brand that would sound annoying if it didn’t feel so truly her. She has figured out how to make Supreme seem both absurd but also prestigious - it’s secret sauce - and I expect some really interesting stuff to happen at SKIMS with her taking bigger creative swings.

I’m happy for her and excited to watch what she does at SKIMS. But the Supreme FW26 lookbook just dropped last week, so let’s see what crazy collaborations they are up to this season.

Supreme x Lambretta

We need a Lizzie McGuire sequel but Paolo is a new age fuckboy. I’m saying “fuck” a lot in today’s newsletter.

Supreme x De Sede

It looks like a baseball mitt, like a couch that Preston Waters would have bought for his mansion in Blank Check (1994). Tyler always makes fun of me when I wear my Dodgers hat because I can name three players (talk about fugazi!), and he was saying we need a new couch…

Supreme x Keen Ramps

Also great for Preston Waters’ mansion.

Supreme x Dyson

I actually love when Supreme does home appliances and other related home goods with purpose. I have a Supreme x Pyrex glass measuring cup that is one of my favorite belongings.

Supreme x Titan Weight Belt

So what if I said I actually wanted this….

Supreme x b.b. Simon

No notes. They’re Swarovski crystals!

Supreme x JBL

The most annoying person you’ve ever seen hiking is carrying this and blasting that Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR album from last year that no one talked about.

Supreme x Gremlins

This is me writing about Q4/holiday for Mutual Interest this year.

Supreme MIni Mics

Honestly, really smart.

J. Crew x Emma Chamberlain

J. Crew has an identity problem. Last year they got in trouble for using a model that was so handsome people figured out it was generative AI. This summer, they were going full Bruce Weber Abercrombie mode. They did a bizarre summer camp with a bunch of non-influencer influencers that kinda made me feel sad for them. It doesn’t feel like they know who they want to be, but to me, it’s pretty simple: we just want things to feel like the @lostjcrew archives, especially in wake of the Carolyn Besette and JFK Jr “resurgence.” We want things that look like they’ve been around forever.

But it feels like they’re pivoting in the opposite direction of that (or at least trying to) and towards Gen-Z trends with their new Emma Chamberlain partnership, which is focused on the brand’s new “tiny rollneck” sweater. Emma Chamberlain is cool. She is one of the few celebrities that I think actually has style. But this Y2K influenced nonsense feels so Gen-Z coded, while the sweater itself does not. Casey Lewis, the writer of one of my favorite Substacks, points out that the Gen Z girls are actually looking for things that are longer as pants go more low-rise. Vogue reported on cool girls like Zendaya and Alexa Demie going for long tees too. The timing feels off - if anything, it’s primed for millennials cosplaying as Gen-Z.

It’s hard to know if J. Crew is reaching for straws or just trying to find a new demographic. With recent leadership moves like former men’s creative director Brendon Babenzien leaving and Stacey Levitt coming in from Walmart to lead ecommerce and Kathleen Van Nest Pierce coming in from Dyson as President, it feels like they’re realizing that their first resurgence attempt post 2020 bankruptcy didn’t get them as far as they need to be. It’s time to roll up their sleeves (my favorite corporate phrase) again. They defined aspirational dressing for millennials when we were starting our post-grad jobs (remember the J. Crew Gingham Shirt?) and wanted to dress like an army of Don Draper dupes but it feels like they never figured out how to help people feel like they have true personal style. And with many outlets claiming prep is bigger than ever, it feels like a strange move for them to move away what made them J. Crew in the first place.

BIG-ASS BAG

Tiny rollneck girlfriend, big-ass bag boyfriend. No, that’s literally what Lululemon is calling this 80L monstrosity, priced at $248. You just know a gate agent hates to see this guy coming. Also, who is naming the colors at Lululemon? This bag is Rumble Crumble and Lime & Yours.

Sweetgreen x Fishwife

A few weeks ago Sweetgreen and Fishwife dropped a tinned fish nicoise salad. I was going to go try it (investigative journalism!), but I honestly don’t really like canned tuna because it makes me feel like a cat. This is a smart collaboration, though.

The tinned fish category has had a glow up - it’s expected to pass $15B globally this year. Premium tinned fish started getting “mainstream” through the natural wine bar boom in the late 2010s and into the pandemic. Brands like Fishwife, Fisherman’s Market, Patagonia and others repositioned it as something fun, Euro, and cheffy - just look at the brand Minnow, created by the team behind NY cool kid mainstays like Hart’s and Cervo’s. But a category can only grow through so many orange wine drinkers, so recently tinned fish has had a bit of a pivot towards the GLP-1ers and Chads - it is packed in protein, convenient, and shelf stable. Soylent if it wasa stinky.

Sweetgreen, however, is in distress, especially after the Q2 2026 earnings call. Comp restaurant sales declined by 6.2%, and profit margin decreased to 13.1% (the company has stated it needs 20%+ to cover corporate overhead costs etc.). And then came cyclospora earlier this summer. The brand has missed it’s earnings the last 8 quarters in a row (full disclaimer: I own Sweetgreen stock, but I am just kinda pretending it doesn’t exist). Why? Fresh food is expensive, growing in price much quicker than non-perishables, and their investments in things like their Infinite Kitchen (remember when Sweetgreen called themselves a “tech company”) come with massive upfront costs.

I don’t think Sweetgreen is doing the collab because tinned fish will save the company (it won’t), I think they’re employing a quicker drop strategy to bring in people more often. Whether it was Alice Waters’ very good peach and goat cheese salad a month ago or deep discounts on wraps, it feels like they’re doing more quick chances at consumption to get their customers to say - we need to get Sweetgreen now. And while the collaboration might help with that, I actually think it does way more for Fishwife, who is demonstrating to customers the ease of using tinned fish on their salads as a protein source. Euro summer meets boy kibble.

Chipotle x Gen Alpha

Chipotle has partnered with a Generation Alpha influencer (?) Salish Matter on a kid’s menu item. Launched a few weeks ago, it’s a cheese quesadilla with white rice, black beans, and hand-mashed guac, served with kid’s chips and chocolate milk.

Salish Matter started out making videos with her father, leading her to create her own content and getting crowned the winner of the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Award for Favorite Female Creator. She now has over 28M followers on YouTube alone. She also has a skincare line with Sephora.

According to Datassential’s February 2026 research, Gen Alpha significantly influences where families choose to eat and develops strong preferences for food brands and restaurant chains at an early age. And as kids move online at an earlier and earlier age (42% of kids have a phone before they are 10!), it makes sense that Chipotle is finding the kids where they are - on social media.

This move is smart for Chipotle, who has struggled the last few years, to tap into larger family orders with bigger spends - I suspect we will see other “family friendly” brands follow their lead and start to tap into Gen Alpha creators. It’s smarter than a television spot.

Table Scraps

I need a better name for this section. Ideas?

@swiftieloverxoxoOpening Day 2026 #spirit #FnAF #freddy

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@karyastreetstyleMy fashion conspiracy theories grow #fashiontrends

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Collaborations I’d Actually Buy

The Kelly Wearstler x Zara Home collection that we talked about here drops next Thursday! I like a lot of the furniture, the lamps, and the candlesticks.

See you in two weeks!

Thank you for reading. I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I’m always open to interesting conversations with people, ideas for the newsletter, and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com or reply directly here.

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I capped off my lake boy summer on Lake Arrowhead this past weekend. Absolutely perfect weather and vibes, making it very hard to come back to 95+ degrees forecasted for the next 10 days, which also makes it hard to believe we are so close to September. The pumpkin spice latte returns to Starbucks next week, August 25th.

Speaking of fall, a collegiate edition for today’s post:

• RushTok has become fully commercialized

• Merch gets girly

• AI gets a bid

• The Social Network is a timeless movie

Sororities x Brands

Frats were never for me (which, at least in 2009, made me a “GDI”) but I can’t get enough of RushTok. Every year it feels like Christmas in August, ushering a new group of girls on my feed trying to get into their dream sororities. It’s a fascinating deep dive into a very interesting (and maybe somewhat insane) demographic, but I think why RushTok actually works is that they seem so genuine in caring so much about this. I’m rooting for them even if it is a cult.

@aggieaxoOn Cloud 9 for MC ‘26!!☁️☁️ #aggieaxo #alphachi #tamuaxo #tamurush #cloud9 @Max van Otterdyk

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While it feels like Rush and bid days have become engineered for social media (I would watch a Homecoming style documentary about the making of their dances) over the last few years as RushTok took off, it feels like the brand collaborations have really become a thing this year. Nike partnered with Gamma Phi Beta at Alabama and ASU’s Delta Zeta with a custom embroidery truck. The ASU chapter also had Kayda from Love Island? Poppi continued their growing ambassador program (more on that later) and customized cans of last year with even more activations and sorority partnerships. The University of Arkansas’ Kappa Delta chapter was sponsored by General Mills and Lucky Charms (I reached out to Stellar Party who did the install, because I need to know everything). Clothing brand Edikted kitted out multiple houses with clothes so they can look like 2000s Disney Channel cartoon characters. Coconut Cult yogurt created an exclusive Princess Cake flavor (in Big and Little Edition?), available online and at sorority houses. Khloe Kardashian’s Khloud, a protein and collagen chip (!?) brand that cannot be doing that well considering I always see it on sale, sponsored ADPi at Alabama.

When I was a student, Red Bull ran an ambassador program that was basically just hot girls coming to parties and handing out Red Bulls to us. This is the new version of that, and the ambassador programs seem to be growing as a marketing strategy. Poppi, one of the OG ambassador programs since 2021, received more than 11,000 applications for 250 spots this fall - according to Inc, that means it is harder to get into than Harvard. Many other brands like Bubble Skincare (18,500 ambassadors!) Kendra Scott and goPuff are following suit - referral marketing can boost conversion rates by 5-25%, and this is one of the most important times for young people to actually figure out their preferences. Many students are making independent purchasing decisions for the first time. This is the reason brands like Nike are investing at such a pivotal life event.

It also should be noted that ambassador programs are growing as an option while the job market gets scarier for new grads. More than 60% of this year’s graduating class felt pessimistic about their career prospects, with half citing generative AI as part of their concern. 15% of freshmen are applying for internships to get ahead, even though internships are declining, more than 15% since 2023, with technology jobs down 30%. Parents are even paying upwards of $5K for internship career coaches. A role as a brand ambassador can give students marketing experiences and professional experiences they are looking for.

I really don’t have any notes, other than that I think sororities missed the potential to collaborate with one of the biggest brands in the Greek space this year, THE ODYSSEY. I need to see sirens dancing to Not Like Us.

LoveShackFancy x Fanatics & Parke x ‘47

It’s like if Jett and Pookie had another baby - LoveShackFancy, the frilly and femme line of floral dresses and more from Rebecca Hessel Cohen is partnering with Michael Rubin’s “bro co” Fanatics. Fanatics numbers are insane - they’ve quadrupled their business since 2021 with a product mix of apparel/merch (54% of revenue), trading cards (38% revenue), and sports betting (8% of revenue, though I am sure it will grow quickly - they just landed an NFL sportsbook partnership). Fanatics did almost $13B in revenue last year, which was a 60% increase from the year before, and believe they can get to $30-$50B in annual revenue within the next 10 years. They’re a behemoth when it comes to licensed apparel, but the LoveShackFancy collaboration feels like an interesting move.

But the collaboration is coming at the right time. Not only are they partnering with schools like Alabama, Georgia, and Texas with a huge contingent of sororities, women are getting more and more into sports. Women’s sports viewership is growing - women viewership of the NFL grew 54% last year, with similarly large increases in the MLB (50%) and NBA (45%). You could claim it’s the Taylor Swift effect, but it’s probably a proxy for something larger - the cultural conversation. Sports have never been easier to watch on streaming and it feels like live events have never been more exciting or social (think about all the people who decided to become soccer fans for the World Cup). While school pride is definitely the most important factor for the Love Shack Fancy crowd, more women than ever are actually enjoying the game, too.

Parke is my favorite brand to hate on because I don’t get the hype, but they definitely know what they’re doing. This Tuesday they announced their partnership with ‘47, the sports licensing company that’s been around since… 1947. Utilizing ‘47’s NCAA licenses, they are launching official Parke apparel for nine different schools, helping them connect with the collegiate consumer who may not be into what their campus store has to offer… and most likely setting them up for future partnerships with ‘47’s national sports league licenses. I like imagining what these girls (from different schools?) were talking about before they all hopped into the vintage land rover.

“We try to stay close to our com­munity and notice how they want to show up as Parke in dif­fer­ent parts of their lives. Hon­estly, one of my favor­ite parts of build­ing Parke has been grow­ing along­side our cus­tom­ers as they move through dif­fer­ent life stages. That’s why we launched bridal for the engaged and newly mar­ried, and Mommy & Me for those step­ping into moth­er­hood. Back-to school is just another chapter we love being a part of. Whether someone’s start­ing high school, head­ing to col­lege, back on cam­pus or a proud alum, it deserves the same care we put into everything else. We’ll keep fol­low­ing whatever feels true to where our com­munity is in life.” - Chelsea Parke Goles

For anyone wondering, four schools are lucky enough to get both collaborations: Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Texas.

RushTok x A16Z x AI

Continuing with the sorority girl theme. Olivia Moore, a partner on the investing team at Andreessen Horowitz, ran a really interesting experiment. It should be noted that Andreessen Horowitz has invested billions of dollars in AI and was posted on their official sites, so there’s clear intent for the experiment to make AI look positive. On top of that, Prof G Media reported yesterday that 86% of VC funding has gone to AI companies (up from 65% last year).

a16z

Your Favorite Creator Isn’t Real—Does it Matter?

America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts…

Read more

15 days ago · 183 likes · 16 comments · Olivia Moore

Her post above is worth a full read, but Moore created an AI PNM (potential new member) named Janie to see how the Internet would respond. Janie looks like Mrs. Frizzle’s origin story, which is part of the charm - her look was designed by Moore to be someone that the internet would root for. The first thing I saw about this was WWD’s post on the Nikes, which were clearly AI-generated. After only a few posts, there were Reddit conspiracies and theories that it was the Kendra Scott team (who have apparently used AI for marketing before).

While it almost feels like a relief that it’s NOT a brand (for now) and instead just an AI-focused VC firm (hah), the most interesting part is how people reacted when it was eventually confirmed. Janie’s new fans were mostly okay with it. It was both a lesson on AI literacy and a commentary on getting involved in stranger’s lives. And Moore makes some good points - people do seem to enjoy AI-created content, especially when it’s not trying to trick them (think about Lil Miquela or the AI fruit dramas).

But that’s extremely optimistic for a technology format that still doesn’t seem to have much net benefit beyond doomscroll entertainment. Moore is vocal about the fact that AI video creation is getting better and cheaper fast, but she doesn’t consider the implications that this has on trust between brands, creators, and “creators”. As AI becomes more common and harder to identify, brands are going to have an even harder time controlling their presence. But on the flip side, is a human-created OOTD really that much different than an AI-created OOTD? To me, they’re becoming similar, especially if we are seemingly willing to watch both. And while Moore is correct that proper disclosure changes the relationship, this opinion comes from a planned experiment where the culprit was always planned to be revealed at the end, Scooby Doo style. What happens when a brand doesn’t tell us what it’s doing?

Wayd x Frats

I saw the below tweet and had to dig in.

Wayd - it stands for “what are you doing” - is an upcoming social media platform designed around “authenticity,” launching this fall. The app is a “passive social networking app” that generates life updates and recaps for your close friends. It’s for your friends that love checking locations on Find My. It feels a little creepy, but so did Snapchat. Their tagline is “WHAT IF THE NEXT SOCIAL NETWORK WORKED LIKE A SELF-DRIVING CAR,” which, I don’t know? I’ve only been in one Waymo. I appreciate that the app seems to also be about social connection (Gen-Z is often documented as the loneliest generation - 67% of Gen-Z says they feel lonely). The app is backed by investors who were involved with Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest.

What I find most interesting is how they are connecting the start of famous social media platforms to college campuses - the site references Facebook, Tinder, and BeReal all starting on a college campus. And with “Wayd House”, they’re specifically targeting fraternities with the idea of exclusivity. Mark Zuckerberg’s quest to be a part of the final clubs is clearly a forever feeling for tech guys. Good excuse to post one of the best movies (and scores) of all time!

Wayd is at one house per campus, and they claim to be able to fund as many parties on the Wayd budget for the entire semester, plus a cash bonus and income based on downloads. They allow involvement with growing the app (remember those ambassador programs!). I want to hate it, but I can’t knock the strategy. Exclusivity and competition can make anyone interested, even without knowing the details.

Brand Partnerships I’d Actually Buy

A new series, I think?

• I really like the intent behind the mfPen x New Balance collaboration and the “ripped off” N actually feels unique and interesting, but it does make me wonder if we are returning back to chunky sneakers.

• I don’t know why Tan France, the fashion expert (don’t get me started on the french tuck), has a home goods line but Bobby Berk does not, but I do really like these lamps from his new collaboration with Castlery.

• Lots of cool things to peruse through on Adidas’ collab-only Collaboration Archive sale, but it looks like stuff is selling out quickly.

Table Scraps

Apologize for anyone on a GLP-1 because you are about to be fed.

@sofia1089unicorn frappe has tasted foul since 2017 #unicornfrappuccino #pinkwall #2016 #la

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@sydloveeShe really just goes with my flow 👑 #momprank #sisters

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Missed Partnership Opportunity Of The Week

Every brand should be collaborating with Chanty Beluga. I’m being serious. The entire reason that this whole silly bit works is because it’s the opposite of AI Janie. I loved that she went and spoke to the boys at Perfectly Imperfect and that she told them she has a “possible brand partnership with Vagisil in the works.”

Next week: millennial things!

Thank you for reading. I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I’m always open to interesting conversations with people in the retail industry and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.co

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A lot to talk about today. I finally read Yesteryear and found it fairly meh, but am halfway through Ben Lerner’s Transcription and think I’m enjoying it, though I’m also confused. I have been watching The Hills and felt the best brain itch when both Tom Sandoval and Emily Weiss were in subsequent episodes. I liked this piece from the NY Times about how Gen-Z doesn’t know how to dress. I broke my spending freeze to order some stuff from GU, Uniqlo’s sister brand, and was pleasantly surprised (especially at super low prices). I’m also quite impressed with Patagonia’s Worn Wear program and UX. This song by iKeda is the M.I.A. 2008 vibe I didn’t know I needed this summer. I hate the way WTRMLN WTR is spelled (like a DJ from 2008!) but I do think it is my new healthy boy post-workout treat.

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I’m in Lake Arrowhead this weekend and am looking forward to it. It really is lake boy summah!

In today’s post:

• Gap’s first fumble in a while

• The power of pickles

• Prep goes in two directions

• TATE MCRAE!

Gap x Celebrity

I love turning a celebrity into my mortal enemy. I have been a Chappell Roan hater since day one. Ryan Reynolds is a more obvious one. Don’t talk to me about Lizzo or Russell Wilson. It must be noted that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is the opposition’s supreme leader in my one-sided battle, and he will always be in that position.

Unfortunately, I am questioning if I have to add a new member to The List.

Gap has been on what the kids are calling a “generational tear” these days. It’s truly one of the best brand turnaround stories I can think of financially, strategically, and from a partnership perspective. I’m calling this “The Zeitgap.” They know how to bring in celebrities at the right time and in the right ways, much better than most brands. But let’s go back in time and look at their total strategy to see just how they got here.

CHAPTER 1: The Start

1989 Gap launches the Individuals of Style campaign, featuring celebrities like Joan Didion, Spike Lee, and Lenny Kravitz in bold, black and white photography by Annie Leibovitz.

1993 Gap releases its Who Wore Khakis ad campaign, featuring photos of iconic figures like Gene Kelly, Salvador Dali, and Ernest Hemingway wearing khakis. They weren’t posing for Gap, these were just photos of them in khakis, but it really worked. Khakis became cool.

1998 - 2003 Gap starts leaning into its celebrity partnerships in own commercials. Daft Punk dancing with Juliette Lewis. Madonna and Missy Elliott. LL Cool J rapping (wearing a FUBU hat, which he used to help the brand take off in sales!). Under Mickey Drexler (my king), Gap saw revenue increases every year from 1995 to 2002, reaching a peak of $16.3B.

2003 - 2010 More celebrities. The SJP and Lenny Kravitz one is actually so good. SJP has zero steez so it feels like the scene in a rom-com when the down on her luck protagonist tries on a bunch of clothes (my favorite trope). Also, I’d play ping pong with Patrick Wilson. However, things started to feel stale with their merchandising, marketing, and value proposition once Drexler left in 2003. And come 2006, sales started to decline (and this is when big mall brands like Abercrombie started to really take off) as they chose to stay in their same lane.

CHAPTER 2: Dormancy

2010 - 2020 Gap swung away from the celebrity strategies but lacked a POV. Stores started closing and sales were struggling. Malls were becoming deserts. Gap’s sales were essentially flat from 2010 to 2020. They also had that awful logo redesign in 2010, which I think represents everything you need to know - they had lost the entirety of what made them The Gap.

CHAPTER 3: The Curse of Kanye

In June of 2020, Gap announced a ten year (!) partnership deal with Kanye West to create Yeezy Gap. It felt monumental at the time, and was also a reminder of one of Kanye’s greatest songs - Kanye truly worked at the Gap before his career took off. The markets responded well - Gap stock jumped 40% in one day after the announcement. This wasn’t an ad or a cosign, it was actual products being designed by one of the biggest leaders in culture (at the time…). Something happened between the two partners though. Only two products were launched in the first 18 months, and by 2022, the partnership was terminated due to disagreements on Gap not fulfilling its promise to open Yeezy stores (during a global pandemic, mind you). Don’t forget the Balenciaga garbage bag merchandising, a symbol of the dumpster fire the partnership ended up being

CHAPTER 4: A Smart Reset

2023 - Now

This is when things took an upswing, thanks in large part to the new leadership of Richard Dickson (who previously helped turn the Barbie movie into the behemoth it was at Mattel). It was a return to form with celebrity partnerships, but instead of creating the moment, Gap was now identifying and joining it. Whether that was Tyla dancing to a viral Jungle song (25M views on YouTube) or Troye Sivan dancing to a Thundercat jam (23M views on YouTube), these brand deals were timed at the perfect moment.

And then came last year’s KATSEYE video (78M views on YouTube!). The Gap team paired one of the hottest music acts of the year with a Y2K friendly track for a partnership that felt like it launched a million ships. I’ve probably watched this video 20 times and just watched it 3 times. Gap’s merchandising and revenue was also succeeding, with 2024 and 2025 showing YoY increases to revenue. 2025’s fiscal year was the highest gross margin in the last 25 years. It feels like they’re taking what worked under Mickey Drexler and reinterpreting it for an internet world.

So back to The List.

We’ve talked about Malcolm Todd on Mutual Interest before. He’s the nepo baby/industry plant who went viral, only to cause the Spotify and Kalshi debacle. With a completely sold out 38-stop tour starting in a month, it feels like he’s only set to grow. I don’t really care about his music, but I thought he was just someone I would let allow in the background - no harm, no foul. Until he decided it would be a good idea to cover one of the greatest pop songs of all time, Robyn’s Dancing On My Own.

This Tuesday, Gap launched its newest ad campaign for the fall season. It stars Malcolm Todd and Inde Navarrette, the buzziest new actress of the year from the horror hit Obsession. Maximum virality.

I have a lot of thoughts and almost none of them are positive. Compared to last year’s KATSEYE video, it feels cheap. It’s ugly. I don’t understand why they wait a full minute to bring in Inde Navarrette. Malcolm Todd does not wear clothes, the clothes wear him. He also almost sounds off key (which is maybe part of his charm!), but it sounds really bad. Did you know that that other lame cover by Calum Scott has more than 3x the Spotify plays than the original Robyn version? Girls and gays, get the [REDACTED] up!

I have no experience in advertising but I think from a business perspective this is a great example and warning on how to iterate and build off an existing successful strategy, especially in a quickly changing consumer landscape. Gap, as we saw, has been doing this for years. Their in-the-know Individuals of Style campaigns led into the historically minded Who Wore Khakis ones, only to become commercials that each had a different lens, whether that’s allowing LL Cool J to freestyle about denim or Claire Danes to take off Patrick Wilson’s pants. But recycling the exact same virality strategy only gets you so far. And separately, with Gap making moves in the fragrance space recently by bringing their 90s scents back (cool!), it feels like a big miss to not bring in 90s talent.

Malcolm Todd, you are in The List’s purgatory… for now.

Liquid IV x Grillos Pickles

As protein grows more and more in every single CPG category, the hate for sweet things only continues. I disagree, I think we should let our sweet tooth freak flags fly every once in a while. But people love to tell you what’s secretly high in sugar, from ketchup to salad dressings to hydration packets like Liquid IV.

So I think the Grillos Pickles x Liquid IV collaboration is pretty genius. It actually started out as an April Fool’s joke, but then people actually wanted it to be made. Plus pickle juice is full of electrolytes already. The electrolyte category is one of the fastest growing beverage subcategories (155% YoY growth!) but does suffer from a few things: sugar and health concerns, flavor saturation (no sense of newness) and a mature US market. Pickle flavor can save that.

Plus, pickles are having a huge moment, with dill and briny pickle flavors to be found in every single Trader Joe’s aisle at the moment. There are pickle martinis and Cheetos and mayonnaise and lip balm. And Grillo’s is leaning into the craze fully - they’ve already done a Bloody Mary mix with V8, a hard seltzer with Two Robbers, a pickle beer with PBR, and a cream cheese with Pop-Up Bagels.

Grillo’s is using their partnership strategy as a differentiator against the more tenured competitors like Vlasic and Claussen. The global pickle market (hah) is almost $15B, Grillo’s is the new kid on the block, or at least that’s what they want you to think - they started in 2008 and were acquired by King’s Hawaiian in 2021, and have more than doubled their store count in the last 4 years (32K stores nationwide). And some of that growth is due to how they maintain themselves as a brand that still feels local, fresh and young by being thoughtful and having fun with the partnerships they are doing.

“It’s not like, ‘Grillo’s is too big.’ It’s like, ‘hell yeah, Grillo’s is crushing it’ because we are still very involved with the subculture and smaller things that keep us grounded as a brand.”

-Eddie Andre, Vice President of Branding (and their first employee!)

A big brand that can pivot and iterate but still seem small is one of the hardest things a high growth brand can do, and Grillo’s is crushing it.

J. Press x Vito’s

I don’t really know what to think of J. Press’ recent strategic changes yet. The very classic Americana brand known for Shaggy Dog sweaters and the Take Ivy lifestyle recently brought on Jack Carlson - the founder of Rowing Blazers, and they’ve been leaning into heritage even farther. I’ve been less than enthused in the past - capsules with brands like Alex Mill, Faribault and Buck Mason just felt a bit… expected.

Which is why the Vito’s collaboration feels a little more fresh. Vito’s is new - it was founded in 2025 by Victor Netland, who prior to starting the brand gained quite a following on IG himself by dressing well and looking like a guy that probably has an amazing Hinge profile. He’s 26 years old (and makes me feel terrible about not having my own menswear brand!) but his youthful perspective and interpretation for prep style is what gives him clout. The product itself is simple and classic with just the right amount of personality. This is quite nice.

Nothing exclusive to the collaboration yet besides Vito’s product just being stocked online and at J. Press stores, but I do think it signals that J. Press is being thoughtful about where to take the brand next. And they need to - if this is to be believed, they’re hitting $10M in revenue right now with their Japanese parent company (fun fact: there are 3 J. Press stores in the US, but over 80 in Japan) Onward Holdings trying to get them to $100M within the next 5 years. That’s pretty wild, but getting in with the cool kids early feels like the right step. Malcolm Todd, STAY AWAY!

Bode x Yale School of Music

Same preppy vibe but an almost opposite strategy.

Bode is partnering with the Yale School of Music on their latest collection, which is tied to the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. It’s extremely specific and feels elitist, but I think that’s the point.

Bode’s problem is almost the opposite of J. Press. They’re a newer brand that doesn’t have the legacy that they want - there have been multiple pieces over the years where founder Emily Bode compares herself to Ralph Lauren - but they can’t seem to scale. In practice, their custom design ethos (even when it is produced in mass) feels like “new nostalgia” - a reinterpretation. So their new strategy to partner with old institutions like the Whitney Museum and Yale School of Music feels like a way for them to connect to the history they don’t have.

As trends change, I will say I have stopped paying attention to the brand like I did in 2021, but with recent store launches in Japan and Paris and expansion into womenswear, it feels like they’re still making moves. I don’t think a Yale partnership is going to move the needle on bringing them back to their heyday, but I do think it shows that they’re thinking about how to tell their brand story more fully as “heritage” becomes a bigger and bigger buzzword in apparel.

Tate McRae x Neutrogena

@tatemcraeOn route to Chicago @Neutrogena #Sponsored

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My friend Sean (hi Sean) reached out to me about this one with a voice note that felt urgent. Tate McRae was at risk of being cancelled.

McRae, who looks like a popular girl in high school that would have not known I existed, continues to grow in star power. Two years ago I was at Charli XCX and Troye Sivan’s SWEAT tour when she came out as a surprise guest, and the crowd didn’t seem to really care or recognize her. But after the success of a few singles on her album last year (Sports car is perfect to me) she’s quickly qualified herself as a main pop girl.

She’s been a brand ambassador for Kenvue owned Neutrogena since early 2025, but this week got the brand a lot more attention than they were maybe expecting.

As part of the Hydro Boost campaign (which sells a bottle every 2 seconds!!!) she posted a post-show routine TikTok featuring her using a few Neutrogena products. Commenters went crazy, accusing her of using make up wipes without actually removing the makeup and using products incorrectly. Fans asked her to apologize for this.

The uproar here is all about the authentication problem with influencers. Many think she’s lazy, and with a brand partnership estimated to be in the seven figure range (plus they sponsored her tour!), it’s easy to be critical.

You have to wonder, though - is it on purpose? Comments and shares make things go viral. We wouldn’t be talking about this if she had just taken off her makeup. The post is still up, so Neutrogena doesn’t seem upset. I feel like with the increase of AI, one of the reasons people love the AI fruit videos and more is because in our doom-scroll, we have a reason to pay attention - to prove we are smarter than the robots. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a part of their media strategy to actually gain attention. Tate, if you’re reading this, I’d love to talk! Hopefully Kenvue and Neutrogena don’t put Tate through the revolving door!

Table Scraps

Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week

If you know me and are literate, I probably have told you to read The Shards. I’m an unapologetic Bret Easton Ellis fan but this is my favorite novel of his and one of the best books I’ve read in the last five years - it’s gay and scary and thrilling and sexy and evocative and funny and dark and meta, all at the same time. The TV series, which premiered last week, went from originally being developed by Luca Guadagnino of Challengers to Kristoffer Borgli of The Drama to… Ryan Murphy. Of course I was worried - but so far I think the show is fine (and it makes me appreciate the book even more).

What I’m way more disappointed in is FX’s obvious miss for merchandising opportunities. The book is absolutely loaded with references to brands in their heyday. Armani, Mercedes, Porsche, Pierre Cardin, Gucci, Jockey, Esprit, Camp Beverly Hills… the list goes on. The style and aesthetic in the book (and show) are so fully defined that I was hunting eBay for weeks for vintage Buckley and Harvard-Westlake merchandise after I first read it - I want to dress like these characters. There’s so much fun potential with a series so stylish and nostalgic. Esprit has been mounting a comeback for the last few years. Imagine if Sporty & Rich did a Camp Beverly Hills collab? White Claw could bring back fuzzy navels! Honestly, this is maybe the biggest missed opportunity since I started writing Mutual Interest.

It’s been too hot to wear anything that isn’t sweat-wicking around the house. Mirror selfies will return next week.

Next week: tinned fish and cookies.

Thank you for reading. I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I’m always open to interesting conversations with people in the retail industry and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

It’s Wednesday and I’m still in recovery mode from the bachelor party. Can’t hang like I used to.

I’m going to start blocking posts soon for paid subscribers only. Subscribe now while there’s a deal!

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In today’s post:

• A face (for chicken nuggets)

• A fleet (of sneaker collaborations)

• A war (with Pacsun in the middle)

• A man (who lied about shrimp tails in his cereal)

• A thought (to expand into new partnership categories)

• A trick (of a full Juicy Couture licensing strategy)

Shoes x Shoes

I keep a rolling list of retail collaborations I see and want to talk about on here. Recently, it’s been filled with shoe collaborations:

• Jacquemus x Timberland Partnering again after their 2025 collaboration, the French brand brought its “lagoon blue” colorway (from their most recent runway show a month ago!) to VF Corp owned, New Hampshire based Timberland’s boat shoe model. Hard to pull off unless you’re Steve Zissou, but if you can… le respect.

• Doc Martens x MHL MHL is secretly one of the coolest brands out there, the simpler offshoot of Margaret Howell. They collaborated with fellow British brand on the 1461 style. Would wear.

• Vinny’s x Bare Knuckles I think these are awesome. Maybe I’m ready for a bad boy era. Vinny’s, the best loafers that I recommend to everyone, has done collabs with cool guy brands like Mfpen, Aaron Levine, and Soulland as well.

• Converse x Noah They’re continuing to build on their initial launch this spring, with a kelly green skate shoe. I do think it’s cool that Converse funded the half pipe in their new LA store. I can’t pull off high Chucks because they make me feel like a cartoon character.

• Converse x No Problemo Converse is notoriously struggling - down 30% in the last year - so it’s no surprise that they’re trying to be cool guys and get some hype. The collab with Aries sub-label No Problemo, is inspired by “1970s science fiction, UFO folklore and coming-of-age cinema”. Hmm.

• Adidas x Kith Nothing new here, they have been collaborating since 2016, but they did roll out a larger amount of styles in accordance with the World Cup.

• Adidas x Disney “adidas Originals continues their ongoing collaboration with Brain Dead and Disney, this time joining all three forces to launch a collection inspired by vintage football culture.” Nothing says vintage football culture like Disney. The Adidas x Disney collaborations runs even deeper - they also have a wide range of princess and villain themed shoes. I feel like Dimes Square girlies would love the rosette on these.

• Birkenstock x Repetto Covered here in full!

And while some of these are interesting and cool, I want to talk about the sheer number of them, because it feels like shoe collaborations are extremely common. Here are some reasons why:

1. Shoes are the highest margin category in fashion. Manufacturing costs represent only 20-25% of a shoe’s final retail price. The Adidas Samba, for instance, is produced for $16 and retails at $80. If you’re considering where to collaborate with a brand, it makes sense to do one that is lower risk and allows you both to still make some money. The economics make more sense. Especially when you can charge a premium due to scarcity and collectability…

2. Shoes have a larger resale market that clothing mostly doesn’t. Collaboration shoes, especially those in pristine condition, can easily be resold for more. The resale market for sneakers is estimated at $10B, and is growing (in comparison, the entire sneaker market is valued at 10x that at $104.5B). That’s absolutely crazy to me. While resale impacts the brands less, it does create more earned media, cultural cachet and longevity.

3. Scarcity sells. 46% of millennials are willing to pay premiums for personalized or limited designs. Scarcity makes you feel special. Limited collaborations with “strong cultural cachet” can command 2.5x mark ups.

4. Fit is less fickle. Apparel collaborations can be risky because you’re combining two brands with potentially different fits. Shoes are more standardized (though it does annoy me when a brand recommends sizing up or down - like, change your sizing then?), so you significantly lower your chance of returns and exchanges, which add costs quickly.

5. Shoes are a walking billboard. Shoes are worn more and seen more. It’s efficient marketing.

6. Production is simpler. Standard footwear MOQs are around 50-100 pairs per SKU (no customization). The lasts and molds are already created for the Jacquemus sneaker, they just need to source the “lagoon blue” suede. The style is already completed, it’s just adding the collaborative elements. And shoe collaborations often have a much easier SKU simplicity - the efficiency and ease between doing 1-2 SKUs across multiple sizes vs. a full apparel collection with multiple colorways and styles is obvious, especially in a retail industry where forecasts can be all over the place.

I wish I had a poignant statement on this, but the shoe collaborations do seem to succeed. I took a look through my own closet and found my Bode Nikes and my Jacquemus Nikes and my Dime New Balances and my Juliana Salazar New Balances and my Norse Projects Keens and a pair of cheetah print Adidas x Noah shoes that I should probably sell, because 7 years later they’re going for 5x what I purchased them for. But maybe that’s part of what makes these collaborations feel less special - when everyone is doing something, it’s hard to stand out.

Travis Scott x The Odyssey

I did not know Travis Scott was in the Odyssey, so imagine my surprise when the problematic rapper behind one of the best workout songs ever showed up in the first few minutes. He did well, I’m not going to lie. I think it’s cool that Christopher Nolan cast a modern day scribe as the bard, but I think Letterboxd thinks differently.

I’m not sure if La Flame is trying to become a Serious Actor, but I really hate that he decided to do an apparel collaboration for this movie with Cactus Jack and Nike. If you’re in a Christopher Nolan movie, you gotta just put your head down and do the work, like his baby’s aunt once said.

The shoes are… something. The design utilizes the Nike ACG moc design and includes a spine detail pulled from Agamemnon’s helmet on the heel and the Cactus Jack backwards Nike logo (in pony hair the color of Penelope’s red wine!). They are for cast and crew only, but he decided to also announce them on Jimmy Fallon for some reason. I would love to see Anne Hathaway wearing these.

Despite the shoes being cast and crew only (which must be much larger than that 100 per size minimum order quantity - almost 700 people worked on the costumes alone!), Scott also launched a site for normies with t-shirts and a leather bag. I guess he is honoring Zeus’ Law in a way by allowing everyone some access. The merch won’t ship for 5-6 weeks, which makes no sense for a movie that will have lost a lot of its chatter by then. Then again, Travis Scott fans are their own specific breed, and Travis Scott and his Cactus Jack brand continue to grow, despite backlash over the last 5 years - he’s done partnerships with brands across categories like McDonald’s, Audemars Piguet, Hot Wheels, and Fortnite - the Cactus Jack ecosystem is purposely supposed to create all categories as valid. It’s so impressive that USC is launching a course this fall about Cactus Jack. It filled up within 20 minutes.

Pacsun x Ulta Beauty

It’s officially back to school time! Pacsun and Ulta Beauty, which both focus on 16-22 year old female audiences, announced a collaboration last week. The collection includes two beauty essential kits featuring top Ulta brands for this demographic and a limited edition sweatshirt that confusingly says “Who’s Gonna Stop Us?” in the least aggressive font I could think of. They launched it exclusively in the SoHo store last week, and will expand to 100 Pacsun stores and online today.

@arianamejiaa🚨HUGE NEWS🚨for my beauty and fashion lovers... @Ulta Beauty & @pacsun have come together 🧡 this is a very limited drop so be one of the only ones to get your hands on this!!! kits available 8/2 & hoodie available online and on tiktok shop 8/6 #ultabeauty #ultabeauties #pacsun #urgirlari #UBxPacsun

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I like when big brands with the same demographics work on something that builds the basket. This is PacSun’s first time doing a beauty product partnership (they did a denim line with Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty last year). It’s part of Pacsun’s larger partnership strategy, which includes brands like F1 and a soon-to-launch Pacsun Target collaboration. Pacsun is doing well as a brand - their revenue has grown 10% per year over the past two years. They’re a Gen-Z focused store brand (remember, Gen-Z loves malls!), but have been growing digitally with TikTok Shop specifically - $50M in 2025 alone!

Don’t worry, the collab will also be available on TikTop Shop.

The partnership is also good for Ulta, a brand at an interesting point in time. They’re enormous - $12.4B - but stabilizing as it becomes easier and easier for new brands to compete, whether that’s TikTok Shop or Amazon or new brands. It’s caused their stock to drop over the last few years, especially as their operating margins dipped lower and lower as they focused on large digital investments. This is a low-cost way for Ulta to acquire or grow brand equity with the important Gen Z demographic, without massive tech investments.

A little bit of partnership gossip, but I find it interesting that Pacsun is separately partnering with Target, who ended their long running in-store Ulta Beauty shop partnership this month. It feels like those celebrity dating maps that show break ups or when you find out two people you know from different circles went on a date once. Maybe I need to create a Mutual Interest version.

Instacart x Chain x General Mills

Chain is a pop-up restaurant started by The Office’s BJ Novak and chef Tim Hollingsworth that started in early 2021 creating fancified versions of chain restaurant classics. John Mayer also designed the logo, and a bunch of other Hollywood types and nepo babies are somehow also involved. I think it’s an extremely clever idea and they were ahead of the times - there’s a reason everyone loves Hillstone and every menu has to have a burger they call “THE BURGER” now - they want elevated versions of what they grew up eating. Nostalgia marketing, like we talked about last week.

Since the early days when they were doing unsanctioned collaborations of Outback Steakhouse Bloomin’ Onions and McDonald’s McRibs, they eventually got the attention of some of the honchos at Yum Brands and Darden and more and started to do official collaborations. Crunch wrap supremes with wagyu beef. A Pizza Hut pan pizza but with truffle ricotta. Chainfest brings in a bunch of brands for a weekend festival of collaborations. Fox Entertainment acquired an equity stake last year including a media development deal. The thing has legs, especially for a pop-up idea started as a pandemic side project.

Chain has made two recent announcements that I think speak to the scope of where they are planning to take things.

First, they are partnering with Instacart and chef and content creator Frankie Gaw on “Cart Classics”. It’s a one night only pop-up dinner focused on reimagining classics like chicken and waffles, mac & cheese and tacos in a bag with interesting flavors, similar to what Chain does. I’ve seen Frankie’s thoughtful concoctions and incredibly designed and plated foods for a while, but love to see him getting that check.

I saw the Instacart news last week and was intrigued with Chain expanding beyond restaurant partnerships, but I was much more blown away when this week they announced their upcoming residency at the Westfield mall in the Valley. They’re bringing in big celeb chefs like Roy Choi of the Kogi empire and Calvin Eng of Bonnie’s (great cookbook!) to put together nostalgia fusion creations. This represents them looking at more permanent, long-term spaces (in the very total US demo-testing friendly Valley…) for the first time. I love that it’s in the mall, which feels both nostalgic and like a Gen-Z push (remember, Gen-Z loves malls!). It also includes a line of desserts and snacks with General Mills brands like Lucky Charms and Honey Nut Cheerios. I think it only makes sense for Chain to expand out of restaurants and into more ways for us to be sentimental about what once was.

This collaboration strategy is also Danielle Fishel AKA Topanga Lawrence from Boy Meets World’s dream. Her posting on this is interesting to me, as one of the only people who probably remembers that her husband was the one who falsely claimed there were shrimp tails in his Cinnamon Toast Crunch (owned by General Mills) and then got accused of “emotional abuse and gaslighting by former romantic partners.”

Juicy Couture x Stoney Clover Lane

More nostalgia, this time from Juicy Couture. Juicy Couture has had a long comeback in accordance with the Y2K resurgence. The brand was actually founded in 1997 as a maternity wear company before it got into the hands of celebrities. At its peak, the brand was making $600M annually and had over 120 store locations. As the trend died down, they were removed from most chains and sold exclusively at Kohl’s, closing down every store.

Side note, I loved Biz Sherbert and Ali Royal’s fashion dive on what people were wearing at Wisconsin’s World Lumberjack Finals - more Y2K than you may think!)

American Style

What Wisconsin's wearing

Hi everyone, this week’s style report comes to you from writer Ali Royals, who traveled to Wisconsin for the World Lumberjack Finals (I love Ali’s daily outfit series, which she puts together via her outfit prompt hotline. Recent prompts include Viva la Vida, the fourth studio album by Coldplay, and wisdom teeth). Enjoy her true blue reporting from Amer…

Read more

a month ago · 61 likes · 8 comments · Biz Sherbert and Ali Royals

Authentic Brands Group, which owns brands ranging from Reebok to Eddie Bauer to Brooks Brothers to Aeropostale to Forever 21, purchased them in 2018 for $185M. And they’ve actually brought it back to somewhat glory through an interesting licensing model - no stores, only licensing deals with manufacturing partners. Juicy Couture collects guaranteed royalties, often a percentage of revenue, without taking on the inventory risk - they work with notable brands like Elizabeth Arden and Steve Madden, who are in charge of production and forecasting while ABG and Juicy Couture provide brand vision. This seems to be working - as of 2024, Juicy Couture produced $324M in revenue, and the brand seems to have entered the zeitgeist again but with new, younger customers - 70% of their customers are aged 14-28.

@sabteenwitxhbeen obsessing over peter’s juicy couture fit #spiderman #spidermanbrandnewday #brandnewday #peterparker #juicycouture @Sony Pictures @Marvel Entertainment

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They somehow even landed product placement in the new Spiderman movie (as does Tom Holland’s non-alcoholic Bero - Spiderman also takes a sip of a cocktail at a party and grimaces… the non-alcoholic agenda is still alive and well).

Their new collaboration with Stoney Clover Lane is a great example of how ABG works. They’re pairing two brands built on a specific era of American girlhood. Stoney Clover Lane was founded by teen sisters, and after taking off with customizable patches, have turned into a bit of a collaboration powerhouse of brands that feel like people want to show off - greek letters for the sorority girls (happy RushTok to you and yours), a plethora of Disney merch, sports teams for the WAGs. A brand known for customization knows that fandom can easily translate to identity, and are picking smart brands to collaborate with. The Juicy Couture partnership is a mix of nostalgia for millennials and accessible Depop vintage vibes for Gen-Z.

Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week

Habit Burger & Grill, a burger chain based in California, is also bringing in celebrity chefs. It’s the start of a residency focused on experimentation with international and trending flavors. For the first iteration, they’re joined by Food Network chef and LA native Jet Tila, who is launching three new dishes.

These types of guest chef collaborations are super common these days (for what it’s worth, the Alice Waters peach & goat cheese salad currently at Sweetgreen is excellent). The only reason I wanted to write about this one is because they’re really missing a marketing opportunity.

This meme is Jet Tila. He even developed a chicken nugget menu item - the Korean Fried Chicken Bites, which is “chicken nuggets in a spicy gochujang sauce, sprinkled with everything bagel seasoning.” This is chicken nuggets. Habit should do a chicken nugget collaboration series. Bring on King Curtis next!

Next week: no clue. Stay tuned.

Thank you for reading. I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I’m always open to interesting conversations with people in the retail industry and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

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I’m on a flight to DC right now for a bachelor party on a lake in Virginia. Maybe it’s performative, but I’m especially excited for a Friday night trip to the county fair.

In this week’s post:

• The new fruitopia (bring it back you cowards!)

• Dior is figuring out it’s legacy

• Nostalgia is not fool proof

• A picture of me and bestie

Fruit Roll Up: The Hybridization of Fruit

It all started when Chrissy Teigen posted about cotton candy grapes.

(This was in Chrissy Teigen’s heyday, mind you. Yes, I owned Cravings at one point.)

I was curious enough that when I saw them at my local Wegmans (the best grocery store in the world) I had to splurge and buy. They did, in fact, taste like cotton candy. It felt like a revelation. A Jimmy Neutron brain blast. Not because they tasted great, but because they clearly did not taste like the grapes I was familiar with.

Now I see fruit hybrids everywhere. Tangelos. Mandarinquats. Blueberries that taste like peaches. Blueberries that taste like cosmopolitans. They were talking about pluots on How Long Gone last week and Mark Rush just posted yesterday in kumquat (an excellent Substack all about fruit) about the history of the plum and apricot hybrid. Did you know pluots and plumcots are different? Pluots have a majority of plum. I did some investigative journalism and went to Sprouts this week to count the amount of total hybrids: 18.

So how did this start? And where is it going?

Unfortunately, the snozzberries of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory are not real. But there IS a fruit-forward version of Wonka. Luther Burbank!

Luther Burbank was an American botanist and pioneer in agricultural science whose work spans fruits, flowers, grains, and vegetables. He created the Burbank potato in 1875 in his early 20s after his father passed away. Burbank sold the rights for it for $150 - less than $5K with inflation - which eventually became the chosen potato for McDonald’s french fries. He used the money to move to California, where he created over 800 new varieties of fruit hybrids. More than 100 plums alone! He also took his views on cross-breeding to influence much more problematic and racist views on eugenics and selective breeding… so, uh, careful with your Burbank stanning.

Burbank’s work paved the way for this all to turn commercial, of course. The big boom in hybrid fruit can only be credited so much to agricultural science - most of it is really an IP licensing and marketing story.

The global hybrid fruit seed market was valued at $11.2B in 2024, and is projected to reach $15.5B by 2031 at a CAGR of 6.8%. This market encompasses anything related to the cross-breeding of fruits together - this can be for improved flavors or textures, increasing yields, enhancing nutritional profiles and even creating hardier species to resist climate change (side note: a lot of interesting stuff is being done with wine grapes in cooler American climates - will save that for another post).

But while there is maybe some valor in creating fruits that can handle tougher conditions and sustain longer shelf lives, I want to focus on the commercial aspect of it all, and why there is a recent boom in hybrid fruits at our grocery stores and on our menus. Let’s look at International Fruit Genetics. IFG is the company that holds the license of the cotton candy grapes I mentioned. They first naturally created the fruit in 2003 after mutating a tiny, fragile grape created by the University of Arkansas to taste like cotton candy with hardier California grapes - but it took over 10 years before it actually got to shelves, where it was the first grape identified beyond color. More than 34K tons of cotton candy grapes are produced and sold annually.

Cotton candy, it must be said, also does not even taste good. It tastes like sugar.

But with research and time comes higher prices - Cotton Candy grapes command 40%+ price premiums over conventional grapes. Sun World’s Autumn Crisp apples are similar. But grape growers are actively replacing conventional grapes with hybrid varieties because the premium pricing justifies the royalty cost. Over 2800 hectares alone (10.8 square miles - or 2x Griffith Park for my Angelenos) were replaced with licensed varieties in 2025 alone - this helps farmers diversify their risk and extend growing seasons. The work is the same, but the payoff can be greater.

And there’s of course, consumer demand as well, otherwise these farmers would not be making these changes. A few consumer drivers:

1. Health is wealth. The shift away from processed foods and towards whole, natural foods still counts when it’s a hybrid fruit. It’s health conscious, but still a little indulgent. Treat culture but make it healthy.

2. Sugar preference. Sugar consumption has been declining (in 2020, Big Sugar put out a report saying that added sugar intake has decreased by nearly 25 percent since 2000. Are we supposed to feel bad about that?). But people still love sweet things. Hybrid fruits help - especially when they’re in flavors like Cotton Candy or Candy Hearts grapes.

3. Premium grocery. It’s not just Erewhon, grocery retail has expanded into Good & Better and fully into Best. Specialty grocers, farmers market, and overall premiumization makes these fancy fruits (remember the $19 Erewhon strawberry? Or the square watermelons of Japan?) easier to sell, and a way to differentiate.

4. Content. This is like how I Instacart pink castelfranco lettuces from the Eataly across town when I am throwing a dinner party. Fruit is visual. People love hauls. A new fruit only gets people excited, especially when it has a random flavor you would never expect like peach flavored blueberries.

5. Availability. I get excited when new fruits drop at the grocery store (fig season is coming!). It’s like sneaker culture but for those that got through the Bon Appetit drama of 2020. Companies like IFG are purposely controlling their production volumes through their licensing agreements to allow for this feeling of scarcity and excitement, and it works.

These trends mirror most of the categories and industries we talk about on Mutual Interest - the ability for a collaboration to gain interest in a crowded market - but this time, it seems to be generally positive for the way people live and eat. Now we just need schnozberries and schnozberry flavored wallpaper to actually exist.

Dior x Trinity College

Jonathan Anderson, the Northern Irish fashion designer, announced last week that Dior’s newest collection will be presented at Trinity College in Dublin’s Old Library. It’s the first time they’ve ever shown in Ireland. I have been feeling extremely meh about Anderson and his new tenure at Dior in general, but this is cool for a few reasons.

Anderson is from Northern Ireland, yeah, but this show of respect to an Irish monument goes further - Ireland-born Carmel Snow, the Harper’s Bazaar editor in chief, is the one who came up with the “New Look” moniker after seeing Christian Dior’s debut, catapulting him to fame. The person who unknowingly launched Dior to a larger audience is finally getting her story told via two heritage institutions. Not only that, but the timing is perfect - the library is closing for renovations next year, the first in more than 300 years. What better time to celebrate heritage and luxury?

Too often, fashion brands seem to just do things for the attention. I was texting a friend the other day about how every fashion house (Loewe, Bottega Veneta) is doing an ice cream stand this summer, with no real reason. In a world of too many activations and collaborations, doing something that actually speaks meaning to the brand feels refreshing!

Other than it being an absolutely gorgeous library and space for a runway show, Anderson has actually taken literary references often. The book tote collections (which don’t feel that different from me buying a Great Gatsby t-shirt from Urban Outfitters in 2007) showcases novels like James Joyce’s Ulysses and Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Plus, Ireland has a vast history of writers, from Oscar Wilde to Sally Rooney. It makes me actually excited to see the collection. I seriously hope they do Trinity College merch. Dark academia vibes are forever in once you’ve read The Secret History.

Reese’s x Oreos

Maybe we should be as critical of nostalgia-based marketing as we are of recycled IP-based movie franchises.

I saw the most confusingly strange advertisement for Reese’s and Oreo this week. I didn’t even know this product existed, but last year Hershey and Mondelez released two new products: an Oreo cookie with Reese’s peanut butter creme and a Reese’s peanut butter cup with white chocolate and cookie crumbs inside. I must admit I’m intrigued.

But then I saw this ad, and I have more questions than answers. It’s supposed to be a play on the Parker twins’ preference for Oreos and peanut butter in The Parent Trap. Cute! But in classic collab fashion, they go overboard and convolute the messaging by doing far too much.

• Why is Reese’s hosting a “TWIN RETREAT” in the first place?

• While I love Amy Sedaris, I need to know what they thought she added acting against Lindsay Lohan, the true brand deal win here.

• Why is Amy dressed like Chessy?

• Who gave them those Reese’s and Oreo necklaces and why?

• Reese’s has a standalone peanut butter SKU?

• Why has The Parent Trap 2 not been greenlit?

• Why is this ad so long?

• Who is Lindsay Lohan’s plastic surgeon?

The craziest part of this all? Oscar winner Patricia Arquette directed the ad spot.

If anyone has tried these products, I do want your reviews.

Crayola x Alex & Ani

Another nostalgia fail?

Crayola collaborated with Alex & Ani, a millennial jewelry (?) brand on five charm bracelets earlier this year, continually expanding the partnership over the last few months. I learned about it this week, because it seems they’re really pushing content and social ads in line with back to school shopping. They should hire a better social marketing team, because they’re clearly targeting the wrong people (me). Or maybe they’re doing whatever they can to deplete their presumably excessive inventory of bracelets that look like a crayon melted around your wrist. There can only be so many Ms. Frizzle’s in one school!

But let’s talk about both brands and their strategies.

Alex and Ani is (are?) not doing great. The brand, started in 2004 by Carolyn Rafaelian, filed for bankruptcy in 2021 and were then acquired by Lion Capital private equity. Rafaelian is also fighting over misused assets with her sister. It’s like Succession mixed with Real Housewives of Rhode Island. I assume Rafaelian is probably in the running to replace Liz in season 2.

It really does seem like she is grasping for straws. The collaborations on her site range from Crayola to Twilight to the New York Botanical Garden to Harry Potter to IT: Welcome to Derry (WHO IS BUYING THIS?). I’m surprised they aren’t doing a Reese’s and Oreo version. Beyond creating limitlessly unnecessary fan merch, Rafaelian also launched a company this year called Alchemist Mint, a precious metals mint company producing coins from copper sourced from the Statue of Liberty’s 1984-1986 restoration. It supports the higher end Metal Alchemist, a brand that “creates a new experience with metals through a fusion of artistry, science, and soul.” You could not ever guess the collaborations that her precious metals minting company is doing. Nelson Mandela and Snoop Dogg under one brand umbrella.

But what about Crayola? The Hallmark owned brand is also in a challenging place - screen time is up, with children ages 5-8 average 3 hours and 28 minutes of screen time per day. 40% of children have a tablet by age 2! I can’t find any Crayola data since Hallmark is privately held, but Crayola’s strategies of expanding haphazardly into the licensing and partnership space suggests a nostalgia-backed strategy. Their “My Favorite Color” partnerships strategy encompasses brands like Goodr sunglasses, Glad storage containers, Timex watches, and Bogg bags. It almost feels like a direct response to the millennial pinks and taupes that millennial parents forced on their kids, the colors that the standard Crayola boxes never had.

And while I do find nostalgia marketing grating, it seems like it works. A Wharton Behavioral Lab study showed that nostalgic content produces a 2.4x higher emotional response rate than non-nostalgic content. Consumers are even willing to pay 10-15% more for products that evoke nostalgic feelings. Maybe that’s why Hailey Bieber loves 1996 so much. It only makes sense for brands stuck in their own ruts like Crayola and Alex & Ani to capitalize on the emotions with their own products or through new collaborations.

Missed Partnership Opportunity Of The Week

So maybe I’m sometimes pro-nostalgia. An Alexa Chung x Los Angeles Apparel collaboration would break the side of the internet who had MySpaces.

Table Scraps

Next week: why are shoes the go-to collaboration?

Thank you for reading. I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I’m always open to interesting conversations with people in the retail industry and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

Different type of newsletter today - our first interview!

I devoured Anna Dorn’s newest novel, American Spirits, over a poolside weekend in Vegas (paid subscriptions only). It’s pretty much everything I like in a summer novel - it’s propulsive and twisty, brings in multiple character perspectives, and ends with a bang. It centers around two of my favorite things: pop music and being gay. It includes a dedication to Lizzy Grant and has multiple references to Britney Spears’ best album.

Anna is a writer, based in Los Angeles, who has written ~hot girl~ (this is a compliment!) books like Perfume & Pain and Exalted (which I have not read, but sounds like every astrology person I know should). She also wrote a book under a pen name, The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey, which feels perfect for anyone missing Real Housewives of Rhode Island like me. I love her writing style and how she brings cultural moments and her own obsessions into something poignant and purposeful. American Spirits does just that.

American Spirits is the rare book I have read that feels central to what we discuss on Mutual Interest - a lot of it explores consumption and celebrity and where fandom lives between that. There’s been lots of weird things happening with fandom (standom?) the last few months - Chappell Roan and Brazilian footballer Jorginho’s beef regarding how he treated their daughter, the Club Chalamet debacle, Hudson Williams’ confrontation with a fan last week. Celebrities, understandably, just want to be left alone. But on the flip side, there’s an ever growing need to involve their fandoms into their lives. Many of our biggest pop stars want their fans to get more and more involved, as the more avid a fandom is, the likelier they are to spend more (Taylor Swift’s latest album had 34 distinct versions). American Spirits explores the way the music industry uses easter eggs and rumors to fuel fandom, and that’s why I wanted to speak to Anna.

Our interview is below:

In the book, there is a Reddit group that focuses on the theory that Blue, the pop star, has a secret relationship with her producer, Sasha. The mystery of it all seems to create more chatter and wilder fandom, so they drop hints and clues to add additional fervor. Do you feel like pop artists and celebrities have to include their fans in their personal lives to connect with them?
I don’t think celebrities have any obligation to include their fans in their personal lives, no, but I do think the best pop songs are about love, limerence, and heartbreak, and it’s only natural for fans to speculate.

Recently, it feels like the craziness of stans is starting to have backlash. I’m thinking about ClubChalamet and Chappell Roan’s security guards or how weird people are getting about Heated Rivalry. What are your thoughts on the current state of “stanning”?
It’s funny, a lot of people seem to think my book is some kind of critique of parasocial relationships and stanning culture. But honestly I’m a fangirl myself and it’s helped me through some dark times. I tend to see stanning in a fairly positive light. That said, Taylor Swift fans and particularly Gaylors freak me out.

In the book, a subreddit is created worshipping the imagined lesbian relationship between Blue and Sasha. It reminded me of the long running rumors of Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss, among other theories. Curious if your book has found its way to the r/Gaylor community yet.
It has, and I’m thrilled! It’s also been discussed in r/LanaDelRey which thrills me even more. To me this is a much bigger deal than a glowing NYT review!

Blue has multiple albums released throughout the novel in different ways. What’s your perspective on album rollouts? Any that you thought were especially successful or terribly done? Any that inspired American Spirits?
The Brat rollout was pretty flawlessly executed. In my book, Blue recording Mood Onyx in that cabin and surprise-releasing it during the pandemic was inspired by Taylor Swift’s Folklore.

Blue seems to be stuck in a back-and-forth dilemma of making art for herself and being a commercial success. How do you think success impacts an artist’s music?
I think Blue’s struggle is my struggle. There are a lot of artists who are like “I don’t care what my audience thinks, I’m just going to do me.” Blue is not like that, and I’m not like that. Because I really have zero idea how to judge my own work. It would probably be great if I was less swayed by external perception, but I feel like that’s all I have. My editor is often like “don’t pay attention to Goodreads.” But I want my audience to like my work. And if I hear that they’re responding negatively to something, I’ll take that into consideration in the next book. I’m really reliant on my audience to steer me in the right direction.

Your last novel, Perfume & Pain, was your biggest novel to date. Did you ever feel pressure impacted your creativity while writing American Spirits?
Well I sold American Spirits before Perfume & Pain came out, so no, because I’d already written it. But Perfume & Pain’s success made me incredibly nervous to release American Spirits. It was my 6th book if you count the book I wrote under a pen name, but it was by far my most stressful release. I went a bit loco when it came out. But I’m good now, I swear!

It feels like the quest to be viral can easily deflate creativity. How do you think TikTok and social media has impacted pop music?
I like social media as a democratizing force. I much prefer TikTok deciding what’s popular over record execs.

I laughed at the gay guy fandom in the book and how Blue loved her gays. Was that inspired by Lana or someone else?
The gays love Lana! The melancholic gays. I’d say my fans are mostly made up of depressive gays as well.

Editor’s note: cosign.

@iandkleinService #fyp#viral#barmitzva#omover18#fypシ゚viral

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You reference brands often in the book, but in a way that really helps paint the characters. While one character wears Eckhaus Latta, another justifies her closet being from The Row. Interested to hear how you “dress” a character when you’re writing.
I love fashion but I’m so cheap. I could afford to wear Dôen but I refuse to pay for it. I can’t afford The Row but even if I could, I wouldn’t. So I live vicariously through my characters who lack my stinginess.

There’s moments of the book when there’s both discussion of Blue’s own influences and her own pop daughters. I see the “daughter” conversation a lot on Twitter: who influenced who the most, who paved the way for who. Is there room for true originality in pop music?
I think most artists are a product of their influences. There are some where I can’t clearly map the influences, like Lorde, but that kind of sui generis quality is incredibly rare. I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other, though.

Editor’s note: Lorde forever.

Blue has an obsession with “real America,” something I think we see a lot of pop stars and brands both connect and co-opt for profit. Camo hats for Chappell Roan and then Kamala Harris, Lady Gaga’s dive bar tour, gay guys in Silver Lake wearing Carhartt and gas station sunglasses, even Beyoncé doing a Levi’s partnership for Cowboy Carter. Why do you think a more “country” look gets objectified by more affluent demographics?
Slayyyter also comes to mind here with her Midwestern trash sensibility. And Ethel Cain, who still lives in the Florida Panhandle and refuses to move to LA. The New York Times called her “the most famous girl at the Waffle House.” I think the bourgeoisie has always romanticized working class aesthetics.

Mutual Interest is focused on retail partnerships and collaborations. I’m interested to hear what brands you’d expect the three main characters (Blue, Sasha, and Rose) to partner with.
Blue would partner with Red Bull. Sasha would partner with Moog. Rose would partner with Freck Beauty, or some other makeup company known for its freck pen.

And now for some fun questions.

Favorite album this year?
Slayyyter’s WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA!!

Favorite song this year?
“drop dead” by Olivia Rodrigo.

Favorite Lana album?
Ultraviolence.

Best concert merch?
Kanye’s Yeezus merch was pretty good...

Gaylor — yes or no?
No but I’m obsessed with them.

Who would you have play the three characters in a movie?
Dakota Johnson as Blue. Addison Rae as Rose. Chloe Sevigny as Sasha.

Editor’s note: this is PERFECT.

There’s a lot of zodiac sign talk in American Spirits. What’s your pop star sun/moon/rising?
Addison Rae rising. Lana del Rey sun. Britney Spears moon.

If Anna Dorn was partnering with a brand, who would it be?
Diet Coke.

Thank you again to Anna on taking the time to answer my questions! You can follow her on Instagram or her very good, fragrance-focused Substack here. And you can purchase American Spirits here - if you do read it, please let me know. I want to hear your thoughts!

Next week: what’s going on with all of these hybrid fruits?

I’m writing this from the shade of a coffee shop but am still sweating. An older guy is in full business professional and is drinking a hot coffee. Power move.

Random things I have enjoyed this week: The Invite, the Eartheater album, my first ripe nectarine of the season, Andy Baraghani’s super fresh chicken salad recipe that tastes even better leftover, 5+ cosmopolitans in one weekend, Joachim Trier’s 10 year old DJ set on Soundcloud (apparently he does this regularly at Becco, a wine bar in Oslo), how cozy the new Ann Patchett novel Whistler feels even when you don’t have an air conditioner, Flynn McGarry’s market reports, listening to Bill Buford’s absolutely insane Among the Thugs (also one of the best book covers… ever?), the Zuni Café recipe for summer fruit shortcake and FINALLY feeling excited for The Shards adaptation (READ THE BOOK!) after the trailer dropped.

Speaking of chicken salad… I was also featured on my friend Sara Tane’s Substack about a very delicious chicken salad recipe I inspired her to make! It’s amazing, she even brought me some to rub in how much better her version was than mine. I told her it would make her strong because it has Skyr in it and the day she posted this she hit her max back squat. Talk about collaboration and partnerships!

This Shit Rocks

no. 199: cheddar sour cream & onion chicken salad!!

Last weekend, I went with a group of pals to the Crystal Springs campground in Sequoia National Park, and it was a truly lovely weekeend. We made chicken caesar wraps (watch it here), swam in a lake, drank so many Modelos, saw many HUGE tree trunks, and consumed an impossible amount of Nerds Clusters. It was awesome…

Read more

2 months ago · 36 likes · 2 comments · Sara Tane

In this week’s post:

• Ballet culture

• Prediction market fraud

• Hypebeasts enter hospitality

• Fan fiction erotica

Birkenstock x Repetto

Is ballet cool? I feel like we’ve seen a resurgence in ballerinas in culture, especially after “coquettecore”. I realize I always talk about Olivia Rodrigo, but she used ballerinas in her ”stupid song” video (which does not even come close to the levels of cool of Kanye’s Runaway, one of the greatest videos of all time, sorry). Black Swan celebrated it’s 15th anniversary last year on IMAX. This extends far beyond media and into apparel.

The ballet flat is on trend for women from brands like Chanel and The Row. “Sneakerinas” from brands like Wales Bonner and Puma were called the shoe of the summer. For men, low sole shoes are still having a moment from brands like Dries Van Noten and Maison Margiela. My most worn (and truly, most complimented by strangers) shoes are my Lemaire flat slippers, which make me feel like a mean dance teacher who never made it big. Maybe these shoes are all a direct response to the chunky New Balance dad shoes, which were probably an affordable normcore response to the chunky Balenciaga sneakers. Monochrome dressing like a ballet student has never been trendier. NikeSKIMS’ spring collection was a direct rip of Capezio. And obviously being skinny is very back, but now supplemented with GLP-1s (11% of Americans are currently using a GLP-1).

But there’s also growth beyond just looking like you can do a pirouette- it’s actually growing as a sport and fitness option as well as a cultural experience. Adult ballet class enrollment is up 31% since last year alone. The New York City Ballet’s pre-pandemic subscriber base was 1,800 - now it’s 14,000. In 2023, the majority of NYCB’s attendees were under the age of 50, up from 41% in 2018 and driven heavily by their under-30 discounted program.

All this to say it is perfect timing for German-based Birkenstock to partner with French ballet brand Repetto. They’re launching three styles - available TODAY - that emulate ballerinas without being a pointe shoe. The Repetto brand’s shoes are actually somewhat popular already with trendy girls - Kate Moss popularized them in the early 2000s, and Lily Rose Depp is known for wearing them all the time.

The interesting part of this all to me is the convergence of customers through authenticity - Repetto CEO herself said that “dancers often slip into their Birkenstocks after rehearsals, making them part of the everyday rituals of dance.” And in a world where forced mandates to return to work is constantly making people miss the comforts of home, a Birkenstock that looks like a ballet flat feels fitting. I expect these to sell out very fast.

Spotify x Kalshi

What’s the version of gaydar for industry plants? Induplandar? I have induplandar. I instantly knew sombr (no, I didn’t forget the “e”) wasn’t the indie kid he purported to be. I should note that I do not have any issue with industry plants if they are popular. Lana Del Rey, I will always love you.

The newest industry plant on the market is probably Malcolm Todd, whose dad was an executive producer on shows like Scrubs and Spin City. His sister is Audrey Hobert, who is also having a big moment. I think they’re both talented!

Unfortunately, Todd’s quick rise to fame gets messier with the massive rise in betting on prediction markets. It feels like everyone’s straight boyfriend or husband is using betting markets like Kalshi, DraftKings and Polymarket. Spotify and Kalshi are currently in contention after Spotify caught over 500K “artificial” streams for Todd’s big hit, “Earrings,” towards the end of June, right in line with an increase in Kalshi bets. Traders noticed, flagged it with Spotify, who confirmed the manipulation. A bit too late though - Kalshi had already paid out for the bets.

Spotify, which claims to have extensive detection services for illicit streams (I’d hope so, but they were also just part of a lawsuit after a random guy used a bot farm to stream his AI-generated songs and make over $10M), is now asking both Kalshi and Polymarket to remove its logos from their websites.

This is a larger, crazier concern beyond the music industry though. Kalshi, which only became legal in the US right before the 2024 election (hmmm!), has become a global force, starting partnerships this year with CNN, CNBC, Fox News (!!!), and even the Golden Globes. As betting and prediction markets rise in popularity with the surge of AI, how can we actually confirm what is real versus what is manipulated? I’m thinking about Geese’s rapid growth last year only being found to be engineered, or even how there is no way tweets are actually receiving the amount of views they say. How can we really know how many people stream a show? And when it impacts many other lives than just shareholders, how can we more effectively monitor it for bad behavior?

I expect a lot more conversations on this in the future. I also expect someone to set up a bot farm to bring Mutual Interest to the top of the Substack charts. Can’t talk here, message me on the Jeremy Renner app.

Hailey Bieber x Gap

Two of Mutual Interest’s favorite topics - Hailey Bieber and Gap - are collaborating! Gap is launching the “The Hailey Jean” capsule collection today, featuring reworked versions of her favorite styles in multiple washes and with a pocket that says 1996, the year she was born. Gap continues their massive celebrity collaboration successes after Katseye and Victoria Beckham, this time with the consumer power that Hailey Bieber has shown with Rhode and the iconic Erewhon smoothie that started it all.

There’s not really much here to say other than that it’s smart, but I do want to list all of my favorite Hailey Bieber quotes from the Vogue article.

Editor’s note: Okay, love it.

Editor’s note: Like she said, she got super involved.

Editor’s note: She was born in 1996.

Editor’s note: If you are Hailey Bieber’s tailor, please let the Mutual Interest community know if you are safe.

Editor’s note: she really loves 1996, the year she was born.

Editor’s note: Tyler, do NOT read this.

Editor’s note: Hailey Bieber was born in 1996.

This is all in jest, but let’s be honest, partnerships like this don’t actually need press. She already sells it.

Manny Pacquiao x Mayweather Boxing + Fitness

I love a petty king.

Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. are long-time boxing rivals, much of it stemming from their 2015 fight, which ended up being a huge let down. What was supposed to be the “Fight of the Century” ended up being a quick, low stakes win for Mayweather Jr. He ended up winning more than $250 million. HBO and Showtime together made a record 4.6M pay-per-view buys. The Wikipedia page reads so 2015: Justin Bieber was in Mayweather’s entourage, Jimmy Kimmel did a photobomb, and Jamie Foxx sang the National Anthem (?).

11 years later, the rivals are in a much different place. Mayweather Jr., who has made an estimated $1.1B over time and one time dumped $50K into a swimming pool to watch people at a party jump for it, has apparently defaulted on debts and is now in big trouble with the IRS. His gym franchises, one time operating with more than 70 locations, have cut that number to less than 30. Meanwhile, Pacquiao continues to make smarter financial moves, including expanding his own network of franchised gyms and launching MannyPay, a FinTech platform (sure, whatever).

They were supposed to fight again this year at the Sphere, but that got postponed due to contractual disputes. And then Manny Pacquiao’s team took over the lease on Mayweather’s Hollywood gym and turned it into Pacquiao Prime Boxing Gym. There is no way this is just a business decision, and personally, I love it.

Madhappy x Four Seasons

Madhappy, the Gen-Z forward clothing company that calls itself a “community of optimists” (sure, whatever), opened its first Pantry cafe in their West Hollywood flagship in 2023. It’s gorgeous, designed by the team at PlayLab, Inc. It’s not the first café/store concept we’ve ever seen, but they do feel like one of the best new brands to do it. For the food and beverage program, MadHappy partnered with a bunch of LA hot spots - AWAN ice cream, Courage Bagels, Jon & Vinny’s - and even a very hypey coffee roaster from Japan, Hotel Drugs. I can hate on overpriced sweatshirts but I cannot hate on their impressive business model and growth - they know and pay attention to their customer and definitely serve as a blueprint for the many copycats that came after. It now feels like every originally online native brand puts a coffee shop in their first brick and mortar store.

As the Madhappy brand continued to grow, they thoughtfully expanded, opening nine stores and an additional four seasonal pop-ups within three years. Three of those new stores also had Pantry cafés within them.

That’s why this newest Pantry café concept is so interesting to me - Pantry by Madhappy just made its debut at the Four Seasons Resort in Maui. While there is some merch (of course), this is the first time they’re not opening inside their own store, instead expanding their side-concept with a tenured hospitality brand known for a commitment to luxury. Madhappy is continuing to grow into a lifestyle brand and it also creates a nice halo effect for their product quality. For the Four Seasons, it makes them feel fresh and trendy and “hip with the kids” without going overboard. I can’t really think of any one else doing this; on quick search, every Ralph’s Coffee or Cafe Kitsune has a store attached. I’ll be interested to see how Pantry cafes expand, both with the Four Seasons and beyond.

@miamigirlsdailyLocated in the four seasons in Maui Hawaii #maui #pantry #madhappy #hawaii #coffeetok

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Additionally, I see that Madhappy is teasing a collaboration with Roxy - very smart. Boardshorts are back, baby!

Xero Shoes x Literary Sport

A collaboration I would actually buy! Cool kid “refined activewear” (sure, whatever) brand Literary Sport is collaborating with Denver-based Xero Shoes for a very cool looking pair of cord sandals. Instead of the traditional paracord, they replaced it with navy leather and a silver bead. These are flip flops for people who wish it was easier to drink a martini at the beach.

Unfortunately they’re sold out in my size, but if you are a women’s 9 or a men’s 13, get your toes ready.

Louis Vuitton x Unicef x FIFA

Louis Vuitton is celebrating 10 years of their UNICEF partnership in the most Louis Vuitton way possible. The Unity Time Object, which sounds like an Avengers plot device, is a diamond studded soccer ball made of golden steel that comes in a one-of-a-kind bespoke Louis Vuitton trunk. Nothing says “supporting children in vulnerable situations around the world” like diamonds. I have to admit it looks very cool. It was auctioned off at an undisclosed price by Sotheby’s a few weeks ago. Louis Vuitton is also selling bracelets and earrings in support of Unicef, which just feels like a $350 LiveStrong bracelet. I should do a deep dive on LiveStrong.

On top of that, a Louis Vuitton trunk will showcase the World Cup trophy again this year for the fifth time, with the trunk being presented during the the World Cup final on Sunday, which will be carried out by a “FIFA legend.”

Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week: Wattpad x FIFA

You thought horny sports ended at Heated Rivalry? Fan fiction fans are creating their own narratives with World Cup players. The biggest example is Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland, two former teammates who publicly have developed a bromance and respect for one another. On Wattpad, they have (fictionally) developed more than that. The most popular story has been read 952K times (and is over 5 hours long). There are over 1500 stories about the World Cup in general on AO3, another popular fan fic site.

Serialized fan fiction platforms, estimated at $6.8B and with a CAGR of 14.2%, are one of the fastest growing segments in digital content. Within the next 8 years, it’s projected that 1.2 billion new users will get into fan fiction: 14% of the current global population. And it’s as lucrative for the writers as it is for the platforms. Just within the last year, fan fiction properties have secured adaptation agreements worth over $340 million!

Sports continue to find growth through women - just think about Taylor Swift’s contributions to NFL viewership (estimated at $1B!) or the amount of women I know who love F1. So let’s get official with a partnership! I was surprised to see just how advanced Wattpad’s brand partnerships function is - they connect creators to brands like Maybelline and JCPenney, allowing brands to co-produce content from existing popular content to include their products. Imagine an official FIFA partnership. On the reverse side, Quinn, the audio erotica app, has done a lot with celebrity partnerships, from Traitors’ Rob Rausch to Shawn Hatosy from The Pitt to the Heated Rivalry Boys themselves - they should bring Erling Haaland on to speak to us in his Norwegian accent.

BONUS Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week: Harry Potter x rem beauty

Feels like people are apprehensive about the new Harry Potter series coming to HBO this Christmas. Ariana Grande and rem beauty could change that.

Next week: Speaking of fan fiction… Mutual Interest’s very first interview (!) with the author of a book I could not put down.

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I’ve started really thinking about how to grow Mutual Interest beyond my network. If you have low-cost marketing ideas, text or email me. And as always, reach out to connect on anything else! You can reach me with fan fic concepts and any retail collaborations you find at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

Hope everyone enjoyed some time off for the 4th. I was in Michigan with Tyler’s family enjoying super long summer days out on the lake (plus the new Madonna album, which I got to listen to in her hometown, and the thoughtfully bizarre Black Bag by Luke Kennard). I’m looking forward to leaning into LA summer over the next few weeks.

In this week’s post:

• The milky way

• The Minions are NOT immune to American beauty standards

• You seem pretty sad for a girl so into Legos

• 1738!

Charles Melton x Big Milk

Some weird stuff happening in dairy right now.

Charles Melton has had a really interesting career - he started as a replacement actor on the insane teen show Riverdale and eventually found a starring turn (and Golden Globe supporting actor nom!) in May December with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. This year he starred in Beef S2 and will be in Nicholas Winding Refn’s new film, Her Private Hell, which I’m excited for despite seeing that it has 2.2 stars on Letterboxd. I also saw him walking his daughter in a stroller in Atwater Village a few months ago.

Last week Melton posted some editorial-esque images of him drinking milk in a.. suggestive way. He has been crowned 2027’s Milk Man. Sorry, but this video is so funny. “Is this real milk? IS THIS REAL MILK?”

Of course I was intrigued, and when I looked into it, it’s tied to an account called @gonnaneedmilk, which is MilkPEP (Milk Processor Education Program) attempting to bring cow milk back. It’s Got Milk all over again, and feels like a significant pivot in strategy for the account, which previously was focused on using influencers (and Lance Bass making glittery space milk in partnership with Supergirl?) to provide milk-friendly recipes.

The new initiative is specifically claiming that milk hydrates better than water, which is… Big Dairy propaganda. Harvard’s Medical School claims the very old data that they are citing is not definitive. Of course, milk is filled with nutrients - only months ago I was talking here about how I am now obsessed with lactose-free chocolate milk post workout - but the idea of bringing an Owala filled with 2% to a HIIT class is both funny and gross to me. Comments on the post also seemed generally upset.

I think it’s interesting that MilkPEP chose an Asian-American as their spokesperson, since it’s actually been widely studied that more than 90 percent of Asian-Americans are lactose intolerant.

But, I can’t argue with Melton’s mass appeal. Plus, the celebrity angle is something that MilkPEP has seen success in, though the results are more middling than you would expect. Got Milk was started in 1993 to reverse the decline in milk consumption caused by a few things: the introduction of brands like Snapple and many new soda varieties, the normalization of lactose intolerance, and diet trends turning against dairy. The California Milk Processor Board decided to do something, enlisting Michael Bay (yes, Bad Boys/Armageddon/Transformers Michael Bay) to direct it’s first ad, which wasn’t focused on the benefits of milk at all, but a humorous way of looking at the moments you “need” milk.

They eventually switched to the celebrity milk mustache format we all know, starting with Naomi Campbell in 1995 and eventually expanding to everyone from Britney Spears to David Beckham to the Simpsons to Batman. Here’s a full archive. The Kim Cattrall one is my favorite. But while the campaign led to 90% national recognition and a place in pop culture, it didn’t lead to as much success financially. In the short term it grew by around 5-7% through the mid 90s, but eventually petered off, failing to reverse the bigger declines in consumption seen since the 1970s.

Even more surprising, milk is actually already back - milk is actually increasing its consumption rates now. Fluid milk sales increased .6% in 2024, driven by whole milk consumption, and ending a 14-YEAR stretch of declining fluid milk sales. 88% of US dairy executives cite protein as the reason for the growth, which is also evidenced in trends like cottage cheese sales increasing 20% between 2024 and 2025. I’m nterested to see what MilkPEP does next - it feels like Charles Melton might just be the start for what Big Milk is planning.

Minions x La Roche-Posay

I love the minions. I think I maybe saw Despicable Me on a plane once, and despite not knowing the Minions lore, I love them. I love the giant minion that you see outside of Universal Studios when you drive on the 101.

I told Tyler the other day that I was “chief minion” in our household, and he corrected me, saying that the entire point is that they’re all equal. Okay, egalitarian!

With the launch of their new movie last week (which is apparently a love letter to classic cinema?!) Illumination and Universal Pictures have of course been putting out all of the stops with their merchandising and partnerships endeavors for their SEVENTH Minions movie. They partnered with Wendy’s on kid’s meals with banana Frostys and launched a green mustard (anyone remember green ketchup?) in connection to the new film’s antagonist, Goomi. There are Guess Jeans collaborations and storage solutions and more. But what I wanted to talk about is their partnership with La Roche-Posay, which at first feels like it can’t be real.

La Roche-Posay is one of the fastest growing skincare brands, targeting €3 billion in revenue this year. This new partnership is them clearly going after the high-growth pre-teen skincare market. Pre-teens (Gen Alpha) are becoming more and more active users of skincare, heavily influenced by Tiktok beauty influencers. Phones cause us to look more at ourselves, and this is true for kids too (51% of children 8 and younger have their own cell phone or tablet). Children 12 and under spent $2.4B on skincare and acne products last year - their regimens average 6 products and cost $168. That’s wild to me.

But I like what La Roche-Posay is doing (beyond my love for the Minions). Sure, it feels disruptive and a bit random, but it’s also purposeful. It’s one SKU, and they’re focused on acne education, creating the “Derm Minion” character and claiming that “skin care should not require a dictionary” in line with the Minions own language. The Derm Minion character is shown about to make potentially dangerous skincare mistakes and learning from them.

I also love how the minions say “La Roche-Posay.”

Olivia Rodrigo x LEGO

I feel like I talk about Olivia Rodrigo a lot on here, but she keeps on doing interesting things! Plus, I think this strategy is the opposite of what the Minions are doing.

She just launched a LEGO collection that is supposedly capturing “the emotion and energy that has made the singer-songwriter one of the defining artists of her generation.”

The five new limited-edition sets are inspired by her albums and include various easter eggs related to her songs and path to stardom. I am laughing at the very different receptions on the r/lego and r/OliviaRodrigo subreddits - the Lego fans seem to be tepid while the Olivia Rodrigo fans are, of course, excited and ready to empty their bank accounts.

LEGO’s strategy here isn’t to appease their die-hard existing fans, but to bring in new ones. And while I believe a lot of those are probably going to be preteen girls, Olivia Rodrigo is at an interesting point where she is transitioning into an artist with adult fans (beyond gay guys), too. A lot of critics are saying the album is her personal best and one of the best of 2026. The new album is heavily influenced by artists like New Order and The Cure that the parents of those preteen girls love.

And the LEGO adult market is both massive and growing. I learned that they are often called AFOLs (adult fans of LEGOs). LEGO’s 18+ sets represent a significant portion of their revenue, including their Botanical line, which Olivia was the first partner to collaborate on. As of 2024, LEGO’s 18+ labeled collection (meaning bigger and more expensive sets) represented 15% of the total SKU count. And this strategy has worked, with LEGO Group consistently outpacing its competitors. 86% of adults say that hands-on building helps them unwind from work, and 75% say it helps them practice mindfulness.

Plus, collectibles are growing quicker than ever as well across segments. There’s a reason Michael Rubin, the founder of Fanatics, can fund his annual white party! Sure, collectibles represent a “deliberate retreat from screens,” but things like trading cards and even Labubus represent a bunch of big trends driving consumption: scarcity, personalization, and nostalgia. It should not be surprising that Pokemon trading cards are growing ($2.7B!) faster than ever, driven by millennial spending and super rare cards (Logan Paul sold a card for a record-breaking $16.5M this year… after purchasing it in 2021 for $5.2M).

Fetty Wap x Jimmy John’s

A little bit more nostalgia this week. Fetty Wap is out of jail and has partnered with Jimmy John’s on the #1738 Fetty Wrap Meal. Launched last week, it’s a buffalo chicken wrap and buffalo flavored chips. The promo code was WRAPQUEEN.

I forgot Fetty Wap existed, even if I will never forget how good of a song 679 is. I think Jimmy John’s is playing into the nostalgia of it all. Fetty, along with his new album, is doing a “Nostalgia Tour” to celebrate 10 years of making music. And even if there’s no reason for a rapper to have a wrap beyond the pun, they’re being silly with it and playing into the nostalgia of it all, which feels like a good brand pivot after being in jail for drug trafficking.

If anything, I wish that Jimmy John’s was calling out that they’re employing formerly incarcerated workers (the national formerly incarcerated employment rate is 27%, which is higher than any national unemployment rate, even in the Great Depression).

Also - this new song is kinda beautiful…

Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week

After multiple margaritas on the 4th of July, I became an innovator. I saw a box of Samoas and decided I needed to use that in my s’more. A sa’more, if you will. It was delicious, the mix of chewy toasted marshmallow with crunchy coconut… I had two. I tweeted it and it randomly went viral on a level I have never seen (I don’t know why I’m back to tweeting all of the sudden, either).

Innovation is American. S’mores seem to be having a moment - I saw a s’mores croissant the other day, La Colombe had a s’mores draft latte the last few years - but it feels like there are product development innovations yet to be found. The global marshmallow market (I’m laughing) was $3.8B. A surprisingly small 14% is attributed to seasonal consumption. But I think we can change that with the introduction of my best new idea.

Ferrera’s Nerds Gummy Clusters are now the number one selling non-chocolate candy in the United States. The main appeal of them is the mix of chewy and crunchy. Imagine a marshmallow with chocolate covered graham cracker flavored Nerds coating it. A Ferrera x Jet Puff collaboration could have been the greatest thing worth celebrating for the 250th anniversary of the United States, but we will have to wait until next year to see if any of the candy execs are reading Mutual Interest.

Next week: partnerships… for adults!

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I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I'm always open to interesting conversations with people in the retail industry and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

We went with two pro-Vegas friends for the Rosalia show after snagging better Vegas tickets than the ones we managed to get in LA. If you know me, you know that I have an insanely dense Google Map ready for most cities, including places I’ve never travelled to but imagine I may end up some day. I checked to see what I had for Vegas and came up with zero saves. Our much more Vegas acquainted friends planned the entire thing, which was such a nice element of the trip. Maybe I should plan less.

I leaned into the Vegas experience as much as I could. After the first night I tweeted this to my 400 followers:

And that really is how everything made me feel. One edible and I’m suddenly a cultural anthropologist! The people watching in Vegas is some of the best I’ve ever done. Something about the crowds you’re in makes it feel like you can eavesdrop on any conversation.

The best way I can describe Vegas is that the entire time I felt like I had both more and less money than everyone else in the room. It’s both empowering and demoralizing. It’s truly the great American melting pot, with all types of people inhabiting it’s hotels and restaurants and casinos. It is also a melting pot in that it was literally 100 degrees. But the town provided me an illuminating way of looking at American consumer behavior.

“Las Vegas is often a reflection of the broader U.S. economy. Because we operate at high volume across every consumer segment, shifts in spending and behavior tend to surface here first.”

Below, a recap diary of what I saw and what it might mean:

FRIDAY

1:12 PM The airport has slot machines.

1:55 PM Check into hotel. The hotel staff member, Tyler, is training in a new employee. Tyler (employee) and Tyler (boyfriend) connect on their shared name. She then lays out about 20 rules, all clearly memorized.

2:04 PM I unpack. My rule is that I unpack if I am staying anywhere more than one night, otherwise I feel like a vagabond. Tyler has to finish up some work. I’m unemployed, so I sit on my phone while it charges. Maybe I am a vagabond.

2:08 PM I realize I forgot to pack underwear, the cardinal sin. I check Uber and DoorDash for options to order from - there’s very few. The hotel has stores, but I don’t think I need Bottega Veneta underwear (I’m unemployed). There’s a Lululemon a mile away, which feels both extremely close and very far.

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2:30 PM I convince Tyler to go down to the pool, which our room overlooks. I scope for hotties and see none. We get there and finally find two chairs. It’s a wide range of people hanging out at the pool: entire families, bachelorette parties, girls in extravagantly and confusingly designed swimsuits who look way better than their boyfriends/husbands taking photos of them at the pool, retirees. We need to eat something, we scan the QR code and grab $39 cocktails. They come out in giant cups, which almost makes the price feel like a steal. We split a Thai chicken wrap that comes out within 5 minutes.

3:52 PM Our friends have arrived and come to meet us at the pool, and we head in for a drink in the casino. I have an espresso martini because I need the caffeine. Tyler tries to order a coffee, the server tells him they don’t have it, he asks about the espresso martini, she says they’re pre-mixed. Everything here is built for efficiency.

4:48 PM I win $60 bucks playing blackjack. It honestly feels great.

4:57 PM Head back to the room. A couple comes into our elevator and confirms with our group that we are “not going to fart in there.” We laugh to be polite. I think everyone followed their rules but never confirmed.

5:24 PM We try to find Tyler a coffee, but there’s no coffee maker in our room. Hmm, nothing in the mini-bar either. We try to call down to the desk to see if they forgot our coffee maker, but no one is answering. I check room service, a pot is $17 and will take an estimated 53 minutes. He decides to grab one at dinner. I’m not really hungry so I take an edible, which I realize is like when the inhabitants of the Capitol drink that vial so they can throw up to eat again in the Hunger Games.

6:30 PM Dinner at Cantina Contramar, the new outpost of Dua Lipa and I’s favorite Mexico City restaurant, Contramar. Everything in Vegas feels like it came from somewhere else. I’ve seen multiple families with kids wearing In-N-Out hats in the few hours I’ve been here. There’s a Mother Wolf in our hotel. There’s a Delilah and a Carbone and a Catch and a Nobu. Our friends talk about one of their other favorite hotels which is owned by a Chinese conglomerate but has only Los Angeles restaurant concepts.

6:41 PM The server asks us if we’ve ever been to the Mexico City location - we probably look like that type of gay guy. We tell him yes. He excitedly asks us if we had the fig tart. We tell him no. I ask him if it’s on the menu here and he tells us no, but all of his guests who have been in Mexico City loved it, which feels sad.

7:23 PM I love a sommelier who acts like I made the smartest pick, especially when many of the bottles are 4+ times as expensive.

7:33 PM The food has been Contramar-level good, but the vibes are off. The Contramar in Mexico City is in the most beautiful light filled dining room. I have already realized that Vegas hates windows.

8:17 PM We’re in the courtyard of Absinthe, which they call the Green Fairy Garden, ahead of the show. A server comes over and takes our order, she asks me if I want a double, but in a way that it would be embarrassing if I only got a single. I nod my head.

9:00 PM Absinthe is maybe the most interesting slice of America I have seen yet. There are old straight couples, young gay couples, multiple people wearing fedoras, groups of friends, even some families. It’s described as “unapologetically raunchy and undeniably hilarious,” and the reason we are here is because our friends loved their last time when they went via the recommendation of RuPaul, who told them it was his favorite show ever. I get it, it’s very entertaining - a circus loosely guided by a green absinthe fairy and two comedians playing a ringleader and assistant.

9:09 PM The first act is a man who is supposed to look like he is holding a tray with a beer bottle on it as he climbs up multiple chairs, but it’s clear that the bottle is glued to the tray. The next act is a couple doing acrobatics to Christa Perri’s a thousand years, which is an insane musical choice. It feels like a very sad way for the acts to really kick things off, but it is impressive. Then a man comes out in his neon green underwear and starts climbing inside a plastic tube of sorts, suspending himself in the air, curled up like an embryo. I take a moment to wonder who this is for. Then we have an impressive juggling act of three jugglers, including one wearing a fur vest. There’s another acrobatic couple who look like they were on the cover of a romance novel. Gracie Abrams wishes she had the woman’s abs. There’s another juggler guy from Germany who has a yo-yo type thing, he messes up but hides it well. Some girls come out dancing like they’re on the Clippers dance team and I’m unimpressed until they strap themselves into the top of these metal poles and then start flying through the air in a spring loaded way. I realize there’s no Black people performing, and then the final act comes on: two tap dancers dancing to an Usher megamix. It feels like a weird way to end things.

9:41 PM The tone of the humor in the show really interests me. It wants to hate on Republicans, but only takes it so far. It wants to be pro-gay, but takes that even less far. The “assistant” comedian, a woman, has this whole bit where she’s horny for another one of the performers who doesn’t pay any attention to her, but it’s all very “Hawk Tuah” to me. She gets really big laughs when she mimes oral sex. For something that calls itself unapologetically raunchy, it all feels very safe - they know just how far to go. There’s a part of the show where two men in the audience are asked to perform lap dances on their wives/girlfriends in the center of the ring. The older guy does really well. I would hate to be forced to do that.

10:12 PM The performers all come out to bow. The juggler in the brown fur vest has changed into a different colored fur vest (black). The ringleader lists out all of the countries that the performers are from. The great American melting pot!

10:28 PM I lose $100 playing blackjack.

10:35 PM We figure out our next moves. Tyler wants to go to the “Fruit Loop,” the gay area of town. We grab a taxi.

10:52 PM There’s a lot of straight people at the gay bar. This is something I have been noticing more and more in LA, too. Maybe straight people feel like they can let loose more at a gay bar.

11:23 PM I’m grooving on the dance floor right between two male dancers on podiums. It makes me feel depressed that these dancers take Viagra before performing for… optics, especially to what feels like a largely straight audience. Like animals in a zoo.

12:32 AM We decide to leave after watching a few drag performances. We can’t seem to find the exit. There are bouncers at every door, but they direct us in the opposite direction. At one point, my friend enters the women’ s restroom thinking it might be the door. The women inside (the bathroom of a gay bar) have fear in their eyes and start screaming.

12:53 AM We’re hungry. Room service has an hour long wait. We share a bag of chips and drink a Liquid IV.

SATURDAY

8:28 AM I slept horribly. Tyler has already been up and found one of the only coffee shops in the hotel with an extraordinarily long line with 50+ people. I decide I need a workout and head down to the gym while the rest of the group gets situated at the pool.

8:52 AM A man that can only be described as looking haunted is in my elevator with 5 different young women. They all seem in good spirits, but it makes me feel weird.

9:00 AM The gym is really nice. There’s lots of women with t-shirts that say things like “SPIRITUAL GANGSTER” and “SWEAT IS SEXY.” The gym is packed, I find a little corner and get to work. I think I’m having a mini Heated Rivalry competitive moment with a guy doing hex bar deadlifts but then he leaves.

10:16 AM I grab a $12 protein coffee from the gym fridge and meet them down at the pool. Tyler ordered a breakfast burrito that he offers to split with me. It comes with the tiniest hashbrown I’ve ever seen, and my half falls on the ground, so I’m unfortunately hashbrown-less. Tyler says the burrito “tastes like nothing” and he’s right. The outdoor casino tables have opened, and our friends head over while I head up to change.

10:42 AM The pool is getting busy. It’s so windy that they can’t put up the umbrellas. I see a lot of belly rings and wonder if they are back. I can hear the booming from LIV Beach Club next door, but it’s honestly not distracting. There is always music playing from multiple sources in Vegas.

11:14 AM Our server, Juliette, is queen. I don’t think she really cares about us but at least she pretends like she does. She’s wearing a flag print bikini but seems to have purposely chosen to let it ride up her butt cheeks. It looks even more bizarre with the chunky No Bull sneakers she’s wearing. I have another $39 margarita.

12:01 PM How great would a Vanderpump Rules style show about this staff be?

12:17 PM I notice Juliette’s “gemini” tattoo and almost ask her if she’s a Gemini but then realize that’s probably obvious.

1:05 PM There are two preteen girls sitting next to us. I’m not sure where their parents are. They get in a fight after eating chicken tenders. When one of them refuses to go into the pool because she’s tanning, her friend says “Aspen, I never want to go on vacation with you because you always do this.”

1:31 PM A couple comes over to us and asks if we want a Coors Light, as they didn’t finish their bucket. We take it.

1:42 PM I see my third shirt that says “I AM A LOSER” on it.

1:49 PM Everyone else heads up to rest, but I’m enjoying my book and want to keep reading it. It’s American Spirits by Anna Dorn, sapphic fan fiction about a Lana Del Rey stand-in and a Reddit stan… I’m crushing through it. There’s a story element about how the pop star protagonist wants to perform for real America (like Lady Gaga’s dive bar tour), and a part of that is set in Nevada, so obviously I’m thinking about the mix of warped glamour and Americana that is Las Vegas.

2:18 PM $14 Diet Coke.

2:58 PM I begin to pack up. Some older men come over and start flirting with me, they’ve been near us the whole time but apparently they wanted me to be alone before trying to scoop me up. They ask me what I’m reading and I chat with them about books for a bit. One guy says he likes classic Arabic literature which is either a massive flex or completely made up.

3:12 PM I grab Tyler and I coffees and a cookie at one of the coffee shops in the hotel, which only has a small line but they take their time with the americanos. I question Fontainebleau’s coffee strategy again. Don’t you want people to stay awake? Put La Colombe cans in the mini bar fridge at least!

3:38 PM I drink the warm Coors Light that Tyler didn’t put in the fridge as I get ready for the concert. Las Vegas luxury!

4:00 PM I lose $100 bucks playing blackjack. I chug a Casamigos soda.

4:09 PM Our friend Ben has surprised us with cross pendant clip-on earrings for the show. I question if this is offensive to anyone not attending the Rosalia show and pocket mine for the time being.

4:21 PM We wait in line for a taxi, but it’s super busy. One of the taxis has to figure out how to fit an extremely overweight woman into the already full taxi, and it’s taking a while for them to figure it out. I tell the story about the time I was at a water park where they weighed groups on a giant scale in front of the line to make sure they fit the weight requirements.

4:41 PM We taxi only to realize that we went to the wrong MGM for dinner. We were supposed to be at the Park MGM. Even though we can see it from our location it’s a 20+ minute walk. Everything in Vegas feels close and far at the same time. We stand in line for another taxi.

4:44 PM As we wait for our taxi, a group of what looks like models peels out of theirs. They’re dressed in a ton of Von Dutch and you can tell they know they’re hot.

5:03 PM We’re at Best Friend, a Roy Choi (from Los Angeles) concept. The acoustics inside are insane. I’m craving vegetables at this point and keep reaching for the kimchi caesar. There’s a table next to us that our friend played blackjack with but they ignore us.

5:42 PM We’re talking about how crazy Vegas is, and my friend brings up the CFDA quilt for America’s 250th, which I hadn’t yet seen. It’s amazing. I ponder if I should learn how to quilt and tell myself I will look into it when I’m back in LA.

6:35 PM We ask for the check, the server immediately brings over a date cake on them, like she knew I had a sweet tooth that needed to be satiated. It’s delicious.

6:48 PM There’s a New Kids On The Block concert happening nearby, and the outfits are… something. So many screen-printed shirts. I really hate how every concert has created a need to order a costume on Shein and Temu. We see a discussion with Emma Straub, the author of American Fantasy, a new book about a 90s boy band touring on a cruise ship. Clever tie-in but you have to wonder who’s attending a book talk inside of a casino.

6:53 PM I use the bathroom before we head over to the show. Howie Day’s Collide is playing super loud while everyone pees in silence. Vegas has the craziest soundtracks.

7:09 PM We arrive at T-Mobile Arena for the Rosalia show. We are VIP, which means we get in early. They give us backpacks with fake VIP lanyards and a Rosalia notebook. No one else is here.

7:28 PM We ask the man patrolling the giant Rosalia LUX photo area to take our picture, and it’s one of the worst pictures I’ve ever seen.

7:50 PM People finally start filing into the arena, but we’re still worried that no one is going to show up. Lots of costumes here too - lots of white, lots of religious garb. Someone is wearing a neck brace like her character in this season of Euphoria.

8:45 PM The show starts, it’s incredible start to finish.

9:34 PM Midway through the show, Rosalia asks if she can switch to speaking Spanish. We all scream yes (I don’t speak Spanish). My edible tells me that I should try to learn Spanish, I really think everyone in Los Angeles should. I tell myself I will learn Spanish when I’m back in LA.

11:14 PM More Von Dutch spotted, but they don’t look half as hot. We gamble a little more.

11:38 PM We head over to the Bellagio to see the fountain (I love Ocean’s Eleven). It’s off for the day. I would have thought it operated 24/7.

11:56 PM We’re back at the hotel and we are tired and hungry. There’s one late night food option, Miami Slice, so we stand in line. It feels like college.

12:48 AM Bedtime. Tyler and I negotiate what time we need to wake up for our flight.

SUNDAY

7:20 AM Alarm goes off. I already packed back up, so I just need to shower quick. I feel like hotel mirrors usually make you look really good, but this one does not.

7:52 AM I need to cash in my chips. It’s one of the saddest things to see how many people are already gambling in the casino with drinks in their hands. I wonder if it’s from the night before or if they are just up early, but it doesn’t really matter. I watch a group of dealers and their managers do a pre-shift meeting.

8:12 AM I see a guy wearing a hat that says SAVD: Faith Fashion Fitness. I’m intrigued, these three things feel like the antithesis of Vegas.

8:21 AM The lounge is busy, we put in our names. I’m over lounges at this point because they’re always packed. There’s two guys wearing a lot of Gucci branded wear: one in slides and a t-shirt. One in sneakers, a hat, and a backpack. They are also carrying a Gucci shopping bag.

8:32 AM We get the notification that we can go into the lounge. It’s packed. The woman who checked us in follows us into the lounge, she motions at us and points at a phone booth room for taking calls and tells us we can sit in there. Tyler and I sit in the phone booth room without airflow while I enjoy a coffee and eat some fruit.

9:30 AM The airport slot machines are busier than they were on Friday. My boarding group is called and I watch a woman hop up from the slot machine to join the line. I guess Vegas will do that to you.

Vegas was fun. I tweeted the below to my 400 followers at 1:16 AM on Saturday morning.

I stand by it.

And after two $39 poolside margaritas on Saturday I sent this to a friend.

I thought about Mutual Interest a surprising amount in between margaritas. Vegas is peak people watching; an illuminating look at how Americans choose to spend their money. It makes you question whether you have more or less money than everyone else around you. I think I want Mutual Interest to grow into a full exploration of consumerism - what are people spending their money on and why - and am going to start with a fun, paid-subscriber-only journal of the trip, to be sent out on Monday.

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In today’s post:

• Cannes we not

• Luxury investors are sweating

• Adrien Brody’s art career

• A clever movie gets a clever partnership strategy

What’s Going On With Cannes Lions?

I got a bat signal text from friend-and-florist-of-the-newsletter Sean “Stronger” Williams last week:

Cannes Lions is, according to them, “The Home of Creativity”. Originally an advertising and media event and award ceremony, the nebulous self-designation of being The Home of Creativity has brought in Big Tech and celebrities and creators over the last few years to turn into more of a popularity contest - “clout computing”, if you will. The celebrity list is more confusing than the cameos in Devil Wears Prada 2: Oprah Winfrey, A-Rod, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Sue Bird, Shaq, Tiësto, Meredith Marks, Diplo, Mel Robbins, Alex Cooper, Colin Jost, John Summit, Maria Sharapova, Lindsey Hubbard from Summer House. In a “creative” world being more and more dominated by AI (an estimated 40% of Cannes Lions submissions used AI in some form) and creator-led initiatives, it feels like much of the focus this year was on appeasing the fears of media creatives through insane activations, celeb distractions and over-the-top parties.

Matt Belloni from The Town said this a little more bluntly:

Instacart’s CMO Laura Jones said that “90% of festival content is typically platitude-laden puff,” so what do attendees leave with beyond swag bags, expense receipts and a hangover? Lucy Werner at Creative Boom said that while AI may have dominated the agenda, “taste, culture and connection quietly became the themes that lingered long after the rosé had been packed away.” The argument that “taste” is our way to AI salvation has grown quite popular this year as a way to appease our worries. While I do think taste is still important, this feels like a gauche message at an opus largely bankrolled by brands like Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft, who have played large parts in the 879 people laid off daily at tech companies in 2026 (up from 674 per day in 2025!).

Every big brand seemed to try to say something without saying anything. The Microsoft Gardens attempted to use nature (through floral arrangements) to explore the “concept of human AI,” including the opportunity to “create AI-generated artwork designed to help discover what being ‘in flow’ means.” In Oprah’s acceptance speech for the LionHeart Award, she focused on the unscalable, singular human connections she built signing autographs after every show. The same woman who just signed a multi-year deal with Amazon, a company built on scale and efficiency.

I’m not saying AI is wrong or that we shouldn’t be using it. I mean, it sucks and the future is scary, but I use it most days (even to help research for this very newsletter…) and it can make our lives easier. I just find it ironic that the overlords profiting the most out of it are the ones telling us that everything is going to be okay.

Partnerships, news and announcements from Cannes Lion that caught my interest:

Google DeepMind x A24 Every film bro with a bisexual girlfriend’s favorite movie studio got a lot of backlash after announcing their partnership with Google DeepMind, their AI research lab. Interesting timing, as they are coming off Backrooms, celebrated for being an original idea from a debut director, becoming their highest grossing film ever. There’s a solid argument that AI can allow indie films the ability to cut costs significantly, but with A24’s recent pushes to move into big-budget films, I’m not sure if that’s their intent.

Walmart x Vibe.co Walmart continues to impress me with their digital strategies. They just acquired adtech company Vibe.co, which sounds like a frat boy’s pitch in MGMT1001 but is actually a self-serve CTV platform that will now make it way easier for small and mid-sized businesses to enter TV programming via Walmart Connect, their retail media network. They bought them for $1.4 billion, a crazy increase from Vibe.co’s $410M valuation last year from their Series B. With Walmart’s prior Vizio acquisition and their recent focus on live shoppable content with celebrities like Tan France and Josh Gad, it feels like they’re finally getting comfortable enough in their ecommerce backbone to go after Amazon’s own playbooks.

Unilever x Netflix Netflix’s head of advertising, Amy Reinhard and Leandro Barreto, the CMO of Unilever, discussed the power of retail partnerships on a panel. The limited edition Bridgerton x Dove products drove a 60% lift (!!!) in new shoppers for Dove. Wild growth, and a great way to show how impactful a thoughtful partnership can be with the right audience, though you do have to wonder if that customer will return to purchase non-licensed Dove products.

Tubi x Creators x Amazon Tubi is Fox’s free streaming service. I just learned it has nothing to do with the free streaming service Mubi. Last year they announced Tubi Creators, a program to help digital creators bring their content to Tubi’s 100 million monthly active viewers. They’re investing even more in creators this year, with the announcement of a few creator-forward deals at Cannes Lions, including a deal with Amazon FireTV to increase access. Tubi already has 20K episodes from more than 300 creators. I liked these fake movie posters they created, even if they probably used AI.

Teletubbies x Canva x Pride Tinky Winky and the Teletubbies dance with the crowd to Britney Spears’ “Toxic” at Canva’s Pride party during Cannes Lions. I repeat, Tinky Winky and the Teletubbies dance with the crowd to Britney Spears’ “Toxic” at Canva’s Pride party during Cannes Lions. The Teletubbies themselves don’t speak but were supposedly promised to have several translator folks from WildBrain Media (celebrating the 30 anniversary of Teletubbies!) to help ‘translate’ answers on why Pride is important to them, but I can’t find any interview anywhere. Teletubbies - were you silent, or were you silenced?

Hyrox x L Catterton

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the normalization of dupe fashion driven by brands like Quince and Shein has expanded into every other category. Everyone has heard the legend of CostCo’s Kirkland Vodka being made in the same distillery as Grey Goose. International beauty brands like MCoBeauty and Cosnova that are built on accessible dupes expanded to the US last year. Why buy another Loewe tomato hand soap when you can just buy the same scent and refill your glass dispenser? Everyone wants to look as rich as possible for as little as possible (same).

The increasing normalization of GLP-1s (1 in 8 American adults have used them) could also be considered a reflection of dupe normalization. For what it’s worth, I don’t care about GLP-1s as long as you don’t actively lie about using them, but 76% of GLP-1 users say they experience stigma, so I also understand why someone would fib.

The thought of GLPs as dupes is why last week’s news that LVMH-owned, luxury brand focused PE firm L. Catterton is looking at purchasing Hyrox for $700M to $1B is so interesting to me. Hyrox, founded in Germany in 2017, calls itself the “World Series of Fitness Racing,” and is a test of both running endurance and functional strength. It propagated through gyms coming out of the pandemic, and now has turned into its own verb and punchline like Crossfit and Tough Mudder before it. 1.3 million people are expected to compete globally this year. The events are notoriously difficult and something you must train for, filled with runs and sled pushes and burpees and lunges and more. A GLP-1 alone cannot get you a Hyrox finish, it’s something you have to work for.

This isn’t L. Catterton’s first fitness venture by any means - they have a majority stake in Solidcore, Xponential and Equinox and have backed at-home connected fitness brands like Peloton and Tonal as well - but it is the first fitness competition. The acquisition makes sense within L Catterton’s existing portfolio logic, but the interesting piece is what it says about where status could be migrating next.

A Hyrox finish gives you bragging rights in the same way a luxury purchase can. While rich people are most definitely spending big on their way to the finish line, an accomplishment still has to be earned.

But is it worth the $700M to $1B that L Catterton is apparently in talks to spend on the acquisition? I did a little digging, and while the Hyrox name is trademarked, there’s no patent on the race format itself. Any gym could host something similar. But if you’re training for months, you probably don’t want to do the generic private label version. And Hyrox has already gotten a massive headstart on their competition: 16K affiliated gyms, events in over 30 cities internationally, discussions of Nike or On taking over from Puma as official brand sponsor, and a community of die-hards.

The community they’ve built isn’t necessarily protection against dupes, but it does make it way harder to replicate. And in a world where perception is everything and everything is fake, accomplishments might be the only dupe-proof flexes left.

Once Upon A Farm x Disneyland

Jennifer Garner always seems excited, but she should be especially excited for the year that her organic baby food brand Once Upon A Farm is having. They went public earlier this year at a $725M valuation, the brand is now sold in over 19K stores. The “tractor wheel” snacks have infiltrated the snacking preferences of my nieces and nephew. And they just unlocked Disneyland, which feels like a huge accomplishment.

What started as a sponsorship at Disney’s Food & Wine Festival has uniquely turned itself into permanent placement at Disney California Adventure. From what I understand, Disney doesn’t do this very often with their food and beverage at the parks. They want their food and beverage to match their Disney branding. But this pop-up turned permanent placement may show Disney capitalizing on something it can’t do as well: healthy snacks that kids want to eat. As parents care more about clean-label, organic, and minimally processed foods, the category is expected to only continue to grow over the next few years (CAGR of 7% for an already developed market), and bringing in a popular brand makes it an easy option for hangry kids.

Maddie’s Secret x Marissa Zappas x Kismet Rotisserie

I saw the very funny (but also tragic!) Maddie’s Secret on Monday. Highly recommend. All of the performances are great. It also felt extremely made for me, someone who felt personally impacted by the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen fallout of 2020. It cleverly explores the areas of consumerism and the creatorverse that I write about weekly and the purported eating disorders of said creators gossiped about constantly on r/FoodieSnark. Don’t get me started on Half Baked Harvest! Or do, the comments are open.

Before the movie played was an ad for Maddie’s Secrets, a perfume that director and star John Early collaborated on with perfumer Marissa Zappas. It’s a bit silly (like the movie!), but also thoughtfully done - it has notes of jasmine (which Maddie smells and gets inspiration from), toasted rice, chocolate milk, saffron, and Sichuan pepper. They’re also doing a July collab with Kismet Rotisserie, the type of vegetarian friendly Los Angeles spot (and a forever favorite of mine) that Maddie would frequent for things like the “seared halloumi with yuzu kosho crisp” she serves in the movie. The pita sandwich itself is “a zingy combination of turmeric-marinated tofu and fried sweet potatoes with shredded red cabbage, greens and herbs, tossed in meyer lemon-labneh dressing and a yuzu-kosho crisp.” Perfection.

Raising Cane’s x Adrien Brody

Two time Oscar winner Adrien Brody is also a visual artist. The art feels very high school boy vision board to me, but he’s found a good deal of success and now sells pieces for upwards of $400K (presumably to rich high school boys).

He just released his new painting in the Raising Cane’s Times Square. I will let Adrien tell you more:

“Cane’s Anthem is a vibrant mixed-media collage that was born from admiration and respect for my friend Todd Graves the Owner and Founder of Raising Cane’s…. Layered with found wheat-paste fragments, torn advertisements, and weathered street ephemera that I have gathered throughout New York City along with the playbill from my Broadway debut in The Fear of 13 - the work echoes the grit, perseverance, and entrepreneurial spirit that defines Graves’s journey, the spirit of NYC and an urban aesthetic that has always spoken to me growing up here. At its center, the iconic Raising Cane’s Global Flagship in Times Square emerges as a beacon of ambition and community, illuminated amidst the visual energy of the city.”

And somehow it is not the tackiest thing entering New York this week…

Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week

Trader Joe’s mini bags freak me out. The $2.99 mini canvas totes seem to serve no purpose but people still line up for them - 30% of buyers own more than 5 bags - and they also sell well on resale. Trader Joe’s, notoriously against marketing or partnerships or ecommerce of any kind, has somehow figured out a reliable drop business by having a product built on scarcity and social buzz. It’s almost precious how Trader Joe’s chooses not to capitalize further, keeping the bags at $2.99.

While I know Trader Joe’s shies away from any brand or retail partnerships, there’s a million different good ideas on who they could partner with. Fashion brands, sure. Imagine an Hermes Birkin version. Simon Jacquemus did the mini bag thing in 2019 - a Jacquemus x Trader Joe’s mini bag could help bring Jacquemus the Gen-Z demo that every fashion brand is trying for. Rhode could make a lip gloss holder version like their phone case, or Glossier could even beat them to it (they really need a win).

Or Trader Joe’s could partner with establishments that further their brand loyalty and clout as accessories to the bags. Imagine if kids could get Mini Brands collectibles versions of their favorite Trader Joe’s snacks. Or they could create charms, similar to Crocs (who bought Jibbitz for $10M in 2006 and has grown that business to almost $300M in revenue) to allow customers to add their own personality to the bags.

But first they should get on delivery so I never have to return to a Trader Joe’s parking lot.

Next week: Minions and Big Milk.

Thank you for reading. I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I’m always open to interesting conversations with people in the retail industry and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

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It feels good to be back in the groove in LA, at least for a bit. I leave for Vegas tomorrow (my first time…) to see Rosaliá and then we head to Michigan for a Midwestern 4th of July. Send Vegas recs… I’m a bit scared of what to expect, plus it’s going to be 100+ degrees… kinda my version of Men’s Paris Fashion Week <3

Speaking of scared, I’ve been Sara Bareilles levels of brave this week: saw a friend’s awesome horror short premiere and have been crushing through the very good Widow’s Bay! Maybe I am ready for Obsession or Backrooms.

The only thing that scares me more than the supernatural is teen girls. In today’s post:

• I figured out how to embed Tiktoks into Substack (it’s called copy & paste)

• I found the ugliest pillow of all time

• King Kylie!!!

• Vogue should take away phones at their summer camp

• I think we all need a break from Taylor Swift

Target x Hollister

Story time! I can think of three extremely emotionally charged shopping breakdowns my older sister had growing up:

1. Abercrombie & Fitch. She really wanted a pair of camo green cargo pants. My mom questioned her decision and called them “Kim Possible pants.” Crying ensued.

2. Urban Outfitters. She couldn’t find anything that fit her style amid the graphic tees and American Apparel dupes and started crying that she would never be “cool enough.” Crying ensued, stormed out of the store.

3. Ikea. Shopping for her new apartment. Crying ensued, multiple aisles, multiple times. Technically she was not a teen here but old habits die hard.

So I think it’s extremely brave of Target to bring two teen girl emotionally manipulative torture chamber categories (TGEMTCs) - clothing and dorm rooms - together with their new Hollister partnership. Target, as we’ve discussed, has been leaning hard on exclusive collaborations to get them out of their rut, but this one feels even more important knowing just how big the dorm/back to college market is for Target.

Some insights on the Back To College industry. Last year, consumers spent almost $89B on back to college needs, which makes up two thirds of total back to school spending. That’s $1325 per person! That number includes electronics, but $12.8B is still spent on dorm and apartment furnishings. Globally, the majority (54%) of it is purchased in brick & mortar still - kids prefer tactile shopping experiences for the stuff that is going to define their freshman year.

@ava.talks.too.muchafter the 2 days of decorating.. she is done!! I could not be happier!💝 #uva #dormtour #uvadorm #pinkdorm #dorminspo

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I feel bad for parents of college kids these days because everything online is pressuring them to spend. There’s also been an abundance of dorm room upgrades since I was in school. TikTok and RushTok have normalized dorm rooms like these (an orchid?!). “Your towels are so aesthetic.” There are now moms creating entire businesses out of designing dorms, which I think is an industry gay guys could and should disrupt. And don’t get me started on what’s happened with grad parties.

@tillyylynngrad party tour #bamarush #universityofalabama #bama #gradpartyideas #classof2026

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Hollister, surprisingly, has been crushing it. Everyone talks about Abercrombie’s growth and success, but Hollister was the one who delivered record 2025 sales (+15%) last year while Abercrombie saw a -1% decline. Despite ten consecutive quarters of growth, it seems like Hollister’s time in the sun (pun intended) might be ending, as Q1 2026 saw sales flattening. Which is why this Target collaboration comes at the perfect time - it’s a way for parent company Abercrombie & Fitch to expand into a new category for the first time and for Hollister to be top of mind to a key demo. Target handled the manufacturing and sourcing while the Hollister team handled the design, which includes bedding and loungewear.

Obviously I’m not the demographic they are going for, which is good, because it’s disarmingly ugly to me. I wouldn’t have wanted bedding branded with the logo of any brand as an incoming freshman, but in an era where teens seem to especially love branded things (Parke, White Fox and Fear of God sweatshirts come to mind) it probably makes sense. I think the loungewear will do better than the bedding. These “hooded throw blankets” look perfect for Hogwarts students if there was a COVID outbreak and they had to e-learn from their common rooms. This pillow is so confusing to me.

The collection will not only be sold at Target but also in select Hollister stores, which I do think is a cool way to do a collaboration like this, although you do have to wonder who bears the write-off risk.

Kylie Jenner x Meta

Announced this past Tuesday and already making a huge buzz, Kylie Jenner is teaming up with Meta on a line of new AI smart glasses.

Smart glasses weird me out. I cringe every time I see someone post on Instagram Stories that it was taken with Ray-Ban Meta. But the numbers don’t lie. The smart glasses consumer market was valued at $9.2B in 2025 and is expected to reach $62.8B by 2034 - that’s a compound annual growth rate of 24.5%. I saw that and was like okay, but not in the United States, right? Wrong! The US makes up 38% of the volume. This is extremely rough math but assuming an average price of $500 (Meta’s versions run for $299), that means 7 million Americans (2% of the US population) have a pair. Name ‘em! The introduction of AI technology into wearables is causing them to grow even quicker, allowing users to analyze surroundings, answer questions in real time, and manage your tasks. And now Kylie Jenner can do that for you!

The partnership announcement is perfectly timed. AI smart glasses are extremely topical right now. Smart glasses dominated CES 2026 this year as supply chain abilities have matured to allow for more companies to enter at lower costs (and utilizing existing models to design off of). Google is launching Android XR glasses in partnership with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker this fall. Apple’s long-rumored smart glasses will probably launch soon after. Snap just launched a $2195 pair to middling results last week (and a drop in stock by 20%), plus a bunch of memes about how silly CEO Evan Spiegel looks.

But I think the Kylie partnership actually signals a bigger change in market perception and strategy. Meta has already been dominating the space; they control 80% of the AI smart glasses market with their main partner, EssilorLuxottica (Ray Ban). Plus Kylie’s design actually looks cool. They’re sleek and simple, they’re the style I call Princess Diaries glasses (for actual sunglasses, I have these in 2 colors and would recommend, especially at that super nice price point).

The Kylie partnership is actually a part of a larger strategic shift of Meta becoming a larger marketplace of stylish designs. With a $299 price point, the hardest sell remaining is if they look good. But signaling this start to “normalcy” with Kylie, one of the most followed people in the world, feels impactful especially since this is the first celebrity to actually design a smart glasses product and fully put their name behind it. And the Kardashians and Jenners are way more than just celebrities at this point, they’re almost a network of brand deals and businesses across segments (and massive customer followings). Meta is buying more than just Kylie’s designs, they’re integrating into the Kardashiverse.

Side note: I’m considering listening to Dekonstructing The Kardashians for my next audiobook. Mutual Interest Book Club?

But you still have to ask why we need these glasses. In the same world where we are always talking about trying to get away from our phones, do we really need another device? Mark Zuckerberg, via Emily Sundberg’s FeedMe guest lecture this week, has a response for that:

Imagine the freedom of leaving your phone at home. So while I still want to say I’m still super opposed to smart glasses (and in the world of wearables, I am still vehemently opposed to Apple Watches), I have to say I’m a little intrigued. Luckily, I look bad in most glasses shapes according to the color analysis person I saw in Koreatown a few months ago, so I will most likely have to wait a bit anyways.

Vogue x Summer School

My TikTok page was bombarded over the last few weeks with girls (and a few boys!) who were at the Vogue Summer School camp, which is run by the Vogue College of Fashion. I didn’t realize Conde Nast even had their own school system, and I still can’t figure out how accredited it is.

The Vogue Summer School is a two week program in New York City that allows high schoolers the chance to explore majoring and/or working in the fashion industry through tours, panels, and more. Reviews are mixed on if it’s actually legit, but it seems pretty easy to get into if your parents are willing to pay $9K for a 2 week program (which isn’t as insane as I thought considering parents now spend anywhere from $2400 to $6000 per kid on summer activities!). That $9K does not include their shopping budget, though…

@brooklyngracessyay been waiting for this #newyork #haul #vogue #voguesummerschool

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If I was Anna Wintour, I would fully retire take away the phones of their summer school, because all they seem to be posting is their daily looks and NY shopping hauls. And based on what they’re wearing and how much they’re buying, Vogue Summer School just seems like a money dump for Conde Nast to bring super rich kids to the city to shop. From one video alone (also above): Golden Goose shoes, Roller Rabbit pajamas, Stoney Clover Lane x Parke crew neck, Anine Bing hoodie, Daily Drills sweatshirts, Marc x Sofia book, CO Bigelow headband, Brandy Melville shirts, flea market vintage bags and art, Princess Polly dress and shorts, Zara set and tube top, a Gap “Nap” hoodie, Aviator Nation hoodie and crewneck, Subdued bag and shirt, Sephora lip balm and treatment, Dior bag, Dior scarf, 2 Chanel bags, Chanel wallet, Miu Miu sunglasses, Sonny Angels figurines.

I asked Claude to sum up how much that might all cost: estimated $20-$25K. I’m not even knocking their style - you don’t have to be cool to love fashion - I just think it’s a bad look for the Vogue brand to associate itself with blatant overconsumption at these levels. Maybe I’m just jealous because I’m still on my clothing spending freeze.

Girls x Spending

Speaking of Roller Rabbit… how much are they paying their summer temp workers?

@jujuvibezMind you summer hasn’t even fully started yet. Clearly we love a good shop #retail #guessspend #shopacholic @karism @Quinn @Augusta Brown @Livy

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Lululemon x The Great Wall

Lululemon hosted a yoga festival on the Great Wall of China and put out all the stops - 2000 attendees doing yoga together with Chinese actor Zhu Yilong. China is a huge market for them, like many brands - their highest growth market, according to Bloomberg.

Someone didn’t do their homework though! The drums featured in the event turned out to be Japanese Taiko drums, not the traditional Chinese drums they should have had. On a location with such reverence and historical importance as the Great Wall, this enraged customers, leading to over 50 million views on the topic on Chinese social media site Weibo. And Lululemon, who has seen declining North American revenue (but a 22% increase in China last year), really needs this market to win - their stock is down 46% YTD based on many other factors, and competitors like Vuori and Alo are aggressively expanding into China and Hong Kong.

It’s a good reminder of how important it is to bring in local expertise for your brand’s international expansion.

Taylor Swift x Land Fills

I haven’t loved a Taylor Swift song since Maroon but I do have to commend her on really never slapping her name on a brand partnership, which surprises me. She could sell anything to her Swiftie army - just look what she did with the Chiefs (merchandise sales jumped 400% after the first game she attended). But she doesn’t do traditional brand deals. Maybe as the most famous person in the world she’s above it.

Even without an album cycle or tour, she’s still producing obscene amounts of merchandise, which is maybe worse. The Summer Collection merchandise dropped last week and includes merch with references I don’t really get (other than Cruel Summer references and the August shorts, which I’ll let pass). It’s crazy to me that she is able to sell a branded spray bottle and have it sell out within days. You have to wonder what chemicals compounds the bottle is made out of for it to have a disclaimer that it should only be used with water.

That is the power of Taylor.

Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week

More of a signal I guess, but Olivia Rodrigo announced her Daisy Chain Fields music festival this week. The one day festival in August has a fully female line-up (including acts like Bikini Kill, Karen O and Stevie Nicks!) and all net proceeds go to women-focused charities. Awesome. We haven’t seen levels of unapologetic feminist energy in mainstream pop culture like this since the pink pussy hats, and I say that with love.

If I was any brand centered around women, I would be doing anything possible to get an activation ready in Irvine. I feel like the demographic is going to expand beyond teen girls, too. Excited to see who gets in there..

Next week: let’s talk about sex, baby!

Thank you for reading. I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I'm always open to interesting conversations with people in the retail and adjacent industries and also consult on strategy and partnerships across categories. You can get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com!

I’m back in LA and feeling ready to lean into summer (which some of you know I lovingly refer to as SUMMAH!) after experiencing Minneapolis in it’s peak summah glory. Went on two glorious runs to the glorious Olivia Rodrigo album, saw many of my favorite Midwesterners and spent lots of time at the park with my cute nieces. I need some new swimsuits, linen pants that don’t make me look like I’m in 98 Degrees and summer summah reading recommendations, drop any leads in the comments, please!

In today’s delicious post:

• Pop up growth

• Bagels in Japan

• Chicken tender hive

• KNICKS IN FIVE?

The Pop-Up Bubble Cannot Be Popped

I can’t go more than a few scrolls through Instagram without seeing a restaurant post about an upcoming pop-up with another restaurant. Maybe another sign that I really need to get back on Bricking my phone. This week alone I looked at the Max & Helen’s x Palace Diner pop up in LA, the Les Enfants du Marche x Jean’s pop-up in New York, and next week’s Dunsmoor x Vern’s dinner. It almost feels like a Stefan SNL sketch if he came of age during the peak Bon Appetit phase.

Some restaurants, like Paris’ Early June, LA’s recently closed Melody Wine Bar, Coach House in Chicago, and Marseille’s Trattoria Jogging even adopted the model further by always featuring a guest chef. But with so many restaurants doing pop-ups these days, it can feel less special. It’s like the long tail of dining. We can’t even be regulars anywhere when there’s always somewhere new to go to.

And I’ll be honest (while not naming names!): some of the pop-ups I’ve been to have been major misses. The food can feel out of place, staff may not be trained or familiar with the dishes, and oftentimes the cuisines don’t even pair well since both establishments are filling a menu with their big hits while collaborating on very few (if any) dishes, due to small kitchen sizes not equipped to double a menu and list of ingredients for a few nights. They’re also usually quite expensive too - these special, can’t miss dinners easily go upwards of $150.

Regardless of price or customer satisfaction, pop-ups are more pop-ular (had to…) than ever. The global pop-up value market is valued at $1.8B, and is expected to double within 10 years. 62% of millennial and Gen Z customers are looking for pop-up dining experiences at least once per quarter, due to “exclusivity, novelty, and social media shareability as primary motivators”.

But beyond the consumer, does it actually make sense for the restaurants? Jamie Feldmar did a great piece for the The Angel, Have We Reached Peak Pop-Up?, including interviews with some well known chefs and owners from some of my favorite restaurants: Brooks Headley of NY’s iconic-at-this-point Superiority Burger, Nancy Silverton, the queen of LA’s dining scene, and Andy Schwartz, the co-owner of one of my favorite new LA spots in recent years, Baby Bistro (which started as a pop-up!) among others. They dived into a slate of reasons:

• Marketing Restaurants get to get in front of new customers and markets.

• Testing Pop-ups can even serve as a way to tease and test geographic locations or even new concepts!

• Education Chefs and teams can learn from one another and return home better than at their home establishments.

• Employee retention/sense of community Chefs and their teams love getting to showcase their hard work and what they’ve built to the hospitality community, And when profit is low, retention is even more important to save on training- the restaurant industry has a 35-40% annual turnover rate.

• Fun and camaraderie Of course, it’s fun to cook with like minded people and celebrate what both teams have built!

• Financial Reservation apps like Resy and premium credit card services often will cover chef fees as part of their pitch to get these hot restaurants under their platform. American Express is buying another reservations platform, Europe’s TheFork, to join Resy, so we can only expect more of these this year.

• Lower Risk A hot new food concept (like LA’s delicious new and super popular Dover Sole Market - their parking lot poke sells out within minutes via Instagram DMs… would recommend though) without a dedicated space can enter a restaurant for a few days much easier than the work of acquiring permits and licenses (and investment!) for their own space.

The marketing and financial pieces are what I find interesting. My parents have owned and operated restaurants since I was a child, and I grew up seeing the hard work it takes to stay afloat. I spent time during the pandemic working for a company supporting small restaurant businesses as they had to switch to delivery to survive. The restaurant industry is notoriously tough, and is only getting tougher with the rise of food costs, tariffs, commission rates on delivery, reservation system expenses, and more.

42% of restaurant operators reported that they lost money in 2025. Food costs are 38% higher than pre-pandemic (higher than the 30% total inflation rate, which is crazy in itself). Casual and fine dining restaurants are on the lower end of the total restaurant industry’s average profit margins - from 3 to 8%. Did you know restaurants have to pay per person, usually around $1.50, for every person reserved for? The technology that is helping restaurants boost business also compounds their margins. Restaurants are now expected to offer delivery services, POS systems, scheduling systems, and more. Seriously - next time you complain about the price of a menu item, consider how many local restaurants seem to still go out of business every month post-pandemic.

The reason pop-ups are growing and will continue to grow is that they are an offshoot symptom for restaurants looking for less expensive ways to drive awareness and traffic. While I wish it was fully a function of creativity and fun, it feels tough for a restaurant to truly have fun when they’re operating on such slim margins. The unfortunate part is that what used to feel fun and exciting now feels bloated, meaning restaurants will continue to have to figure out ways to grab our increasingly limited attention.

The rest of this post focuses on restaurant pop-ups and related news that have managed to get my attention over the last few weeks.

Apollo Bagels x Dean & DeLuca

How the mighty have fallen. Dean & DeLuca, the blueprint for brands like Eataly and other upscale American food markets, launched in SoHo (when it was “edgy”) in 1977, importing international delicacies like balsamic vinegar and specialty cheeses for their high-end customers. They expanded with their sophisticated palates to new markets, eventually expanding internationally - but at that point, the imitators and competition had caught up, and their specialty products felt less special. They were acquired in 2014 by Thailand based Pace Development, who expanded it quickly into Asia, but when the US business continued to suffer, the company ended up filing for bankruptcy in 2020 with over $500 million in liabilities and just $50 million in assets.

I always like when a brand doesn’t shut down their Instagram. I’m listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s cigarette smoke and getting a little emotional paging through extremely 2019 looking product images of fruitcakes and gluten free snack bites.

All of the American stores shuttered with the bankruptcy filing, but globally, the brand continued to expand with over 50 locations in Japan alone and a total of 78 stores operating under international licensing and franchise agreements. They seem to be doing really well under a slightly different model than their American older brother - a focus on quality remains, but with real estate focused in luxury malls and over-the-top airports instead of local neighborhoods. We walked past a packed Dean & Deluca store in Ebisu towards the end of November merchandised with Christmas goodies (despite Christianity not being common, Japan celebrates Christmas in a secular, consumer driven way - and by eating KFC for dinner).

Apollo Bagels is a bagel brand started by the owners of Leo, a pizzeria in Brooklyn. It actually started as a pop-up in the pandemic to help recover losses from the lack of in-person dining. As popularity continued to grow with lines down the block, the team took the brand into an international pop-up model before opening their own brick & mortar location in 2024, scaling to 5 locations within two years. A bit of a pop-up wunderkind.

Now they have partnered with Dean & Deluca to expand once again to Japan. One of the owners of Apollo Bagels, Joey Scalabrino, calls himself a huge fan of the brand (even collecting merchandise since childhood), so getting the opportunity to expand to Tokyo for Dean & Deluca’s first collaboration in two decades feels special. The pop-up was only for a few days, but I’ll be really interested to see where things go from here. There’s massive potential for Apollo to use Dean & Deluca’s existing infrastructure to expand to a key market like Japan with a demographic that also has a massive focus on quality. All of this is happening while there feels to be a burgeoning movement of interest in bagels (and investors: Pop-Up Bagels just got valued at $300M despite only having 30 open locations).

On a larger scale, Dean & Deluca should look at expanding this model to other viral food trends. Think NYC’s french dip sandwich from Salt Hank or the sprinkled cakes of Dot Cakes, matcha and breakfast sliders from LA’s Community Goods or the pancake from Cafe Telegrama. If I had millions of dollars in investment, I’d figure this model out myself. While we eat so much more globally than we did 20 years ago (I still remember the first time I ate hummus and it felt exotic!), it’s still very hard to experience restaurants from around the world. While the food halls of the mid 2010s got a bit tired and led to the growth of ghost kitchens in the pandemic, imagine what a quality-forward pop-up IRL marketplace could actually look like. Why not bring all of the long lines together? Your friend can wait in the Dubai chocolate bar line while you wait in the Gelateria Vivoli affogato line. Efficiency!

Popeyes x Surf Lodge

I love a high low moment, even if the amount we are seeing in recent years (McDonald’s x Paramount Caviar over Valentine’s Day or Taco Bell’s Choco Taco for Salt & Straw come to mind) is probably a recession indicator.

This summer, Popeyes is launching a partnership with Montauk’s The Surf Lodge to be the supplier of their “Chicken Tender Tower.” The Chicken Tender Tower is a long-running yet off-menu viral dish at the East Hampton club known for hosting celebrities and influencers. It’s $150 for around 35 tenders and fries. One influencer claimed it’s “worth every penny!” The kids are not all right, this is a cafeteria meal. As of Memorial Day, the platter now has Popeyes tenders, still priced at $150. It’s about a 65% markup from purchasing tenders at the closest local Popeyes an hour and a half away, which is a steal if you consider the price of a rideshare.

However stupid this is, I love it. For Popeyes, it speaks to the quality of the tenders and for The Surf Lodge, the frivolity of being rich enough to even be there.

Noma Breaks Their Model (Again)

Noma was the blueprint. The Copenhagen restaurant’s hyper seasonal ingredient focus, gastronomical techniques, and commitment to their craft garnered them three Michelin stars and the number one spot on 50 Best’s list five times. Rene Redzepi, their head chef, was treated like an idol.

A few years ago, Redzepi announced that the future of Noma was fully in residencies. They were closing down their gorgeous restaurant and kitchen located on the banks of Refshalevej, instead opting to travel for extended pop-ups, citing the impossible margins of running a fine dining establishment. They had tested this before through the pandemic in places like Tulum and Kyoto, finding inspiration in local ingredients.

The first official stop was Los Angeles this year - the $1500 per person (10 Chicken Tender Towers) tickets sold out instantly.

Then the New York Times put out a piece with dozens of allegations against Redzepi. A weird, expensive looking video response from Noma followed, and a bunch of partnerships backed out, but the LA residency team kept trucking. I expected to know everything about the meal via my algorithm but it felt like no one who had gotten tickets was really posting (here’s one lackluster review that includes the words “reindeer penis”). The Noma name and status, it seems, are tarnished.

Last week, Noma announced that they are changing their model again - back to Copenhagen to open a restaurant that is somehow going to be more complex and seasonal, with a unique menu each month. Redzipi will step away from day to day operations but stay on as creative director, clearly inspired by LA’s Silver Lake coffeeshop vampire fuckboy population’s favorite job title. Olivia Rodrigo said it best on the new album: I won’t settle for a guy with a fake job!

You must question how this is better financially than the original restaurant they closed down. To be blunt, this pisses me off. Noma’s big transition into a traveling gastronomic circus was announced, with a lot of fanfare, as a way to alleviate some of the financial pressures of running a fine dining restaurant. Redzepi let himself become a stalwart and beacon for independent restaurateurs; acknowledging the massive struggles for one of the greatest restaurants in the world made it seem like he was their mockingjay. By walking back from the residency pop-up solution, it feels like Noma is demonstrating that they are, and always have been, above it all.

It’s a golden parachute in a sky dazzled with Michelin stars, when the many restaurants and chefs that once looked up to Redzepi don’t have that same privilege.

Noma did some cool collaborations ahead of the Los Angeles launch with local restaurants like Courage Bagels and Holbox. This is the kind of thing they should be continuing instead - making their food more accessible and sharing the knowledge and work they built their brand upon.

Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week

Jellycat is huge. The London based brand, operating for 25+ years, is now available in 77 countries. They were on TIME100’s Most Influential Companies this year. They’ve grown exponentially the last few years, with an estimated $500M+ in revenue and over 20 million Tiktok haul posts. Qualitatively, I think every baby and toddler I saw over my two weeks in Minnesota had a Jellycat. It’s also not only for young kids: Tyler’s high-school aged niece was itching to go to a store in town that she knew had Jellycats at Christmas. The Guinness Book of World Records awarded a teenager an award for having more than 1000 Jellycat plush toys.

Jellycat does these really unique pop-up shop experiences related around their food-related plush toys. In London, they had a fish & chips shop. There was a patisserie in Paris. In New York, they opened a diner with FAO Schwarz. I feel like they employ from the same pool as Disney workers (compliment). Adults and kids alike lined up for hours to be entertained before the purchase of exclusive SKUs like Steepy Tea Bag and May Macaron. One of the past shop workers, Miriam Marwood, has turned into a TikTok persona with over 200K followers now.

Jellycat is missing out on fully partnering with the food and restaurant world that it already has mimicked. It feels like an easy win to partner with trending, hyped up restaurants. Think about how beautiful it would be for foodie parents and their kids to finally enjoy standing in lines together. Maybe they could keep it local to London with a Dishoom pop-up at first - think about how cute a little smiley biryani plush toy would look. I’d travel in for a River Cafe or St. John Jellycat pop-up… INNIT?

Next week: sex sells!

Thank you for reading. I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I’m always open to interesting conversations with people and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can always get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

I’m at the tail end of my annual Midwest summer homecoming. Lots of family time, lots of boat time, lots of reading, lots of cheese curds. I will take ten thousand steps on the stairmaster in honor of Minnesota’s lakes when I return back to LA next week.

In today’s post - a special issue focused on the 2026 World Cup jersey collaborations (and probably one of my favorite newsletters yet).

The Official Mutual Interest 2026 World Cup Jersey Collaboration Bracket

Soccer (er… FOOTBALL) is bigger than ever, and with the 2026 World Cup starting today, it’s only expected to grow bigger. Soccer is already the world’s most popular sport - 51% of people say they are fans. 1.5 billion people are expected to watch the final match (18% of the world population!), and 6 billion people are expected to watch at least one World Cup match (72%!). That is insane to me - 5 billion people watched a segment from the Olympics (despite having 204 nations competing compared to the 48 nations in the World Cup).

The US has been slower to adopt the sport, but as of this year, soccer is now the third most popular sport in the US, overtaking baseball. And it’s especially popular with younger demographics, too: 18-34 year old fans were 70% more likely to have watched.

In North America alone, licensed sports merchandise is a $20B business - of course the brands are out in full force for the World Cup! And with soccer’s natural fusion with fashion (see: Adidas Sambas, blokecore, players like Kylian Mbappe serving as ambassadors for brands like Louis Vuitton), it feels like the big brands are going fashion forward in a compelling way with their kits.

At first glance, I’m most impressed with Nike. Their X2 collection represents seven different countries (they are the official outfitters for 12 World Cup teams) tied to collaborations - beyond jerseys, it includes shoes, pre-game and lifestyle attire for the fans at home:

• United States x Virgil Abloh Archive Interprets the late Virgil Abloh’s design language while referencing 1994 (the last year the US hosted the World Cup!) with oversized rugbys and more. 1994 is also peak JFK Jr/Carolyn Besette Kennedy timeline. Timely.

• France x Jacquemus Builds off their multi-year partnership into performance wear. Plus, Simon loves football. I remember him posting drunkenly celebrating France’s 2018 win on the streets but can’t seem to find the posts.

• England x Palace Skateboards Blokes! Palace is quickly becoming a mainstream brand but somehow seems to keep most of its street cred. The campaign with Wayne Rooney reciting Shakespeare is pretty great too.

• Canada x NOCTA I feel like I’m the only person that really likes the new Drake album(s), so it’s interesting that they chose his streetwear brand, especially since I feel like Aubrey really connects to being a basketball fan.

• Netherlands x Patta I had never heard of Patta, but find this extremely cool: a Black-owned, Amsterdam streetwear brand given an opportunity to build their name on a global scale.

• Nigeria x Slawn Slawn is a Nigerian designer and artist with an anti-establishment approach. Guess what? I love this one too.

• South Korea x PEACEMINUSONE Similar to Drake, they partnered with Korean rapper G-Dragon’s brand. I love the aesthetics here.

Adidas, officially supporting 14 teams in the World Cup, has also entered the chat with three developed collaborations:

• Mexico x Willy Chavarria Willy Chavarria, coming off his Zara collab and a year working with Adidas, feels perfect for a national collaboration - his whole brand is built around his Mexican heritage. And the design intent is amazing, which was previewed at his AW26 runway show in Q1.

• Argentina x Kith x Messi Yeah, sure. Who hasn’t Kith collaborated with? I’m sure it will sell, especially with the most famous athlete in the world, but a New York brand obsessed with being a New York brand but representing an Argentinian team feels… strange? Not to get UX tech stack about it, but it baffles me that Kith doesn’t have an Argentinian site ready (and no IRL store locations or pop-ups in Argentina either).

• Japan x Y3 There are a bunch of Japanese designers I would have opted for but that’s because I’m an annoying menswear boy Auralee x Adidas or A. Presse x Nike would end me. Yohji Yamamoto’s long-running Adidas collaboration makes sense for the global customer, if not a little stale (it originally launched in 2002 and has had its ups and downs).

So which collaboration is best? To have fun with this, I decided to make a bracket to get to the bottom of it. Since we have 10 different collaborations, I am ranking the teams by their actual FIFA rankings for initial placement. There are 3 rounds, focused on three different aspects:

1. Is it wearable?

2. Is it lucrative?

3. Is it smart?

ROUND 1: Is It Wearable?

Some of you may be aware that one of Mutual Interest’s earliest followers (and my very own brother), Eric Miller, plays professional soccer in the MLS. Having an expert on the pitch meant I needed his input. Eric provided a score from 1-10 on whether or not he would wear each collaboration. I then averaged it out with my own normie thoughts on the same scale. I put wearability first because taste seems to be the anti-AI buzzword of the year.

In the prelims, Nigeria’s Slawn artist collaboration scored 8 versus Korea’s 5.5. Eric gave Nigeria a 10/10 score - he said he would wear it but is “not cool enough,” including the iconic School of Rock line meme. Eric, I think you’re the cat’s pajamas. Japan’s longstanding Y3 partnership easily bested Canada’s Drake collab. Both musician branded partnerships, from Korea and Canada, clearly do not show much for wearability. In the same lens, I need to point out that the Olivia Rodrigo x FC Barcelona merch I highlighted a few weeks ago is also still very much available… bad idea, right?

In the first official round of wearability, it felt like we both leaned towards the brands that were doing something that felt both interesting and authentic. Ninth seeded Nigeria apparently has a penchant for doing cool collaborations with Nike - their 2018 kit received 3 million preorders - it was designed by designer (and Minnesotan!) Matthew Wolff, who has also done work for the Twins, LAFC, and many other sports teams. This older Nike campaign just FEELS like soccer to me. . My brother described England’s Palace jersey as “kinda freaky” but that’s why I think I would wear it. The USA’s Virgil Abloh rugby, while thoughtfully done, just ends up looking like something that would be easily duplicated and sold on TikTok Shop (derogatory). France and Japan actually tied with an average score of 8, but I’m allowing the newness and scope of their collection to be the buzzer beater - Japan x Y3 has been done before, and they only produced jerseys compared to the full Nike x Jacquemus collection. Lastly, Netherlands’ niche Patta collab, despite looking very cool, was no match for the very authentic and in-tune Willy Chavarria jerseys and merch, which scream natural wine bar to me. Authenticity is in the eye of the beholder.

ROUND 2: Is It Going To Make Money?

Here’s where things get tougher, because there’s a lot to think about beyond vibes (truly my daily struggle). Some of the worst looking jerseys are going to do extremely well here (Kith x Messi, thankfully out of the bracket) based on fandom, distribution, and ultimately, team performance.

First up, we have underdog Nigeria x Slawn vs. powerhouse England x Palace. This is maybe the most important match-up of the season. England has a 12 year kit deal with Nike worth almost $500M dollars -the largest national team kit deal in the world. Those numbers don’t come from nowhere - England has the fandom with money to spend - Premier League clubs sold 15.5M units of merch in 2024 alone - that’s about 1 unit for every 4 English citizen. But as previously mentioned, Nigeria has a precedent with its big 2018 jersey, one that made over $255M in revenue worldwide, sells on resale for more than twice the initial $88 retail, and even sits in the Victoria & Albert museum collection. The Slawn collaboration actually feels authentic and interesting and represents Nigeria’s culture. It’s the wildcard, and while I’m rooting for it (WE WERE ROOTING FOR YOU, WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!), unfortunately I have to give this one to England’s market depth, powerhouse spot and predicted success in the tournament. Even if it is a little freaky.

Then we have France x Jacquemus versus Mexico x Willy Chavarria - pitting Nike versus Adidas in the two collaborations most likely to be seen in Vogue or GQ. Shoutout to the gay guys! But here’s where demographic really matters. Nike’s Jacquemus x France makes more sense on paper: a $500M+ brand valuation, an extremely compelling marketing campaign, designs that feel wearable to the average consumer. But I think Mexico’s fandom will likely do bigger numbers. The Mexico licensed soccer merchandise market alone was $302M in 2024 and is growing at a 5% CAGR. The country’s soccer stars already have avid fans across North America - Liga MX, Mexico’s top domestic league, gets almost double the viewership of an MLS game, and the 38 million Mexican-Americans (11% of the US population!) are a big part of what’s fueling the growth of the game in the United States. The designs, as well, while a bit louder, also feel like a true and interesting reflection of what makes soccer culture so fun.

FINAL ROUND: Is It Smart?

Beyond 2026 revenue, let’s think about the longevity and lasting impact of these partnerships. At a global event like the World Cup, a partnership should mutually benefit both sides while building into the future.

Palace is bigger than you might expect for a skate brand. Rooted in London counterculture, they’re the smarter Supreme, eschewing major investments to stay true to their brand integrity. They are known for their collaborations - from brands like Calvin Klein to Elton John to Stella Artois to Ralph Lauren - they seem to bring edge to more established (read: sterile) brands. To make things even more interesting and add a little bit of gossip, Palace also had a long-standing relationship with Adidas, including special kits for teams like Juventus FC.

Nike’s England x Palace kits brings global visibility to the Palace brand and gives Nike streetwear credibility. It is a prime representation of the London blokecore trend that’s still moving years later. Nike Skateboarding is having a small renaissance, partially driven by their collaboration strategy (the CostCo x Nike SB Dunk Lows are a real thing), but I question if this partnership benefits either side long term.

Adidas’ Mexico x Willy Chavarria collaboration feels like the global start of something bigger. No public figures, but the size gap between Adidas and Willy Chavarria feels significantly larger than Palace and Nike. Chavarria, born into a working-class Mexican-American family before working his way up in the apparel industry from the Joe Boxer shipping department, still feels like he is just getting started - CFDA back to back wins, no brick and mortar stores yet, and finally getting investments to help his grand ambitions to grow into a billion dollar brand. It feels like perfect timing - Chavarria gets to ride the coattails of Adidas’ recent successes, and Adidas gets to gain extremely important credibility with the growing Mexican-American population. I couldn’t say it better than Chavarria himself:

“It’s an amazing platform. It’s been an incredible collaboration with a brand that’s really open to everything we stand for — Chicano culture, immigrant labor, and dignity.”

While Nike’s England x Palace collaboration feels like it’s ready to print pounds, Adidas’ Mexico x Willy Chavarria collaboration feels based in something bigger - values. And when countries are on a global stage, culture becomes rooted in those values.

Below are the official full scores, ranked:

1. Adidas x Mexico x Willy Chavarria - 8.5

2. Nike x Nigeria x Slawn - 8.3

3. Nike x England x Palace - 7.8

4. Adidas x Japan x Y3 - 7.3

5. Nike x France x Jacquemus - 6.7

6. Nike x Netherlands x Patta - 6.0

7. Nike x Korea x PEACEMINUSONE - 5.5

8. Adidas x Argentina x Kith x Messi - 5.5

9. Nike x USA x Virgil Abloh Archive - 5.2

10. Nike x Canada x Nocta - 4.0

Apologies to Drake. Stream Little Birdie!

If you’re wondering about the full breakdown and scoring or want to check my homework, I’ve linked it here.

Next week: down with the pop-ups?

Thank you for reading. I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests and love hearing your feedback. I'm always open to interesting conversations with people and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories.

You can always get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

I’m writing this letter looking out on the lake at my parents’ cottage in small town Wisconsin. Midwest summah forever. I will be eating as much rhubarb and Culver’s as possible for the next week.

In today’s post:

• Fellas… is it gay to do gay stuff

• Fellas… is it gay to travel

• Fellas… is it gay to wear sneakers

• Fellas… is it gay to watch movies in independent theaters

• Fellas… is it gay to wear Coach

PRIDE MONTH SPECIAL: Pattie Gonia Vs Patagonia Vs. Grindr x Spencer’s

Happy Pride Month! Like most queer people it has taken me time to realize this and despite the hardships and current state of the world, I love being gay in 2026. I come from a place of extreme privilege - a loving partner, a supportive family, a wonderful community of friends, and living in a place where I feel accepted and able to be my true self, something many others don’t get. This is what Pride represents to me: a way to help anyone feel comfortable being proud of who they are.

The way companies approach Pride, also known as rainbow capitalism, directly mirrors the political climate. Corporations getting involved in Pride Month felt like an expectation in the Obama era. Now it has become an annual running joke - Meg Stalter’s video from a few years ago being the perfect critique of how brands use Pride to check off their inclusivity boxes. Love when a company changes their logo to a rainbow flag on LinkedIn only to change it back July 1st. There’s been a lot of notoriously bad Pride retail collaborations too: Skittles removed the colors from their candy in 2020, Marks & Spencer added guacamole to a BLT for their LGBT sandwich, and Postmates even released a “bottom friendly” menu a few years ago.

As a business boy, it can be hard to separate my thoughts on business strategy versus the amplification of the message, but ultimately it comes down to one thing: beyond any revenue or clout generated, it should benefit the LGBTQ community. That’s where my perspective has surprised me this week.

Pattie Gonia is a drag queen and environmental activist with a very large following: 1.8M followers on IG when writing this. I love what she’s doing - drag with an impact. She has raised over $3.7M for non profits since she began in 2018. She hiked 100 miles last year in full drag, raising more than $1M dollars. Her focus is on bringing LGBTQ+ rights to climate and environmental issues and celebrating the joy of nature at the same time. It’s a fresh take, the opposite of the fear-based messaging coming from a lot of other climate non-profits: from her TedTalk, “joy is a serious way to take action.”

Pattie Gonia is a clever name too. And as she has built up that name, she has partnered with tons of retailers and brands - Microsoft, Burton, Sundance Film Festival, REI, North Face, HOKA.

Interesting that she hasn’t done something with Patagonia though, right? Well, in 2022, after Pattie did a Hydroflask partnership with a logo that looked super similar to the Patagonia logo, the two parties started discussing their trademark concerns, and it seems like Pattie and Patagonia reached an agreement: Pattie could continue to use the name to continue her advocacy efforts. In 2024, she began selling clothes and merchandise with the similar logo again, and in 2025 she filed trademark applications. In January this year, Patagonia filed a $1 trademark infringement lawsuit with the request for the trademark applications to be removed. This past week, leading up to Pride, Pattie went public on Instagram about the lawsuit.

The whole thing feels petty from both sides. Here’s where things get dicey:

• The delay in timing - Pattie went public on the debacle right before Pride Month, 5 months later. Interesting timing, but it also does probably get her (and her mission) extra coverage, and aligns with the public pressure we should be giving corporations during Pride Month. I will point out that there are much more evil corporations than Patagonia that we should be going after.

• Pattie knowingly broke the rules. Sorry, I’m a rule follower. It was a formal written agreement, and years later, Pattie started to break those rules.

• The Pattie Gonia brand has grown significantly since 2022. A lot of those partnerships happened after the agreement was signed, and according to Pattie, that’s what drives the donations and advocacy. It seems like the level she was at when the agreement was signed is much different than her level of fame and advocacy now.

• When a brand grows, it needs to protect itself. Pattie Gonia’s trademark application, according to her, is about protecting herself from potential bad actors, not Patagonia. However, she filed it across five commercial classes: recorded music, stickers and posters, clothing, marketing services, and entertainment. Patagonia’s position is that this goes beyond protecting her name.

• Patagonia’s IP is at severe risk if they allow this to go on: “We cannot selectively choose to enforce our rights based on whether we agree with a particular point of view. Inconsistent enforcement might prevent us from stopping entities like the oil and gas lobby, counterfeiters, hate groups, or other bad actors from using the Patagonia name and logo. These are not hypothetical examples; they are real instances of past trademark infringements we successfully stopped only because we have been consistent in defending our rights,” Patagonia said.

• Pattie’s framing of the story feels unfair. I’d love to know details on where her estimate of $1M in legal fees is based off of. She also seems to be convoluting the request to her followers - Patagonia is asking for no more sales of merch with variations on their name and logo. She is still allowed to keep the name, do partnerships, and continue her advocacy work, but she wants it to seem like Patagonia is against her entire mission.

• Where the profits from the sales of said merch is going is a bit unclear. I did a little digging, and while Pattie Gonia has a non-profit and has raised lots of money, she herself is not a non-profit. It seems that she is directly profiting off of the sales of her merch.

• It’s Pride Month, and we are focused on one single person’s legal struggle. This is the crux of my issue. The now very public press is a distraction to the actual problems facing queer people today. 2025 was one of the most dangerous years on record for LGBTQ+ in America (with over half of the incidents documented being against transgender and non-binary individuals), a 5% increase from 2024 alone. The Trump administration has signed executive orders to cancel LGBTQ+ discrimination policies, and there were over 600 laws tracked last year that, according to the ACLU, make it harder to be LGBTQ+ in the United States. But we’re being asked to defend a drag queen’s merch sales.

This should have never been publicized. The best way to continue Pattie’s mission would be for her to collaborate with Patagonia on the best way to continue with her advocacy. Probably easier said than done, but turning Pride Month into an orchestrated takedown of a corporation that is doing better than most to benefit one individual is… not the vibe.

It also surprised me to say that the Pride month partnership I actually do support is something from Spencer’s. The privately owned mall brand has over 670 locations, almost entirely within malls. Side note: did you know malls are actually super popular with Gen-Z? It’s attributed to their longing for IRL experiences. Despite being at the malls, Spencer’s is struggling - they’ve consistently been focused on gaining back profitability by closing down stores and downsizing their SKU counts and inventory ownership. The numbers aren’t public, but it seems well known that the massive successes of Spirit Halloween (under their holding group) is actively funding the efforts to bring Spencer’s back to profitability.

Enter Grindr. The gay dating and social networking app launched their first official merchandise collaboration with Spencer’s Gifts this year at all locations. It includes things like graphic t-shirts that say “Daddy of the Year,” “Throat Goat” and the very blunt “Hole.” You can probably guess that these shirts are not for me. But I still fully approve of it, because Spencer’s backs this all up. They have one of the most sustained LGBTQ+ commitment records in retail (especially considering their size) with over $1M raised for the ACLU since 2020, with local charity events hosted at stores throughout Pride Month. And for a business (that’s not doing so hot) to launch this in 49 states targeted to their younger demographic (18-24, largely suburban and countercultural) feels impactful.

As I said earlier, I’m in small town Wisconsin right now - there’s a Spencer’s 40 minutes away. And I have to consider where the messaging is more impactful- a drag queen amplifying their brand’s legal battles with a corporation online, or a store whose commitment to the cause and their customers may help make it easier for young kids to feel comfortable with who they are.

Dua Lipa x Google Maps

Now let’s talk gay icons. Dua Lipa really is that girl (slay the boots down… mama…).

Her 2024 album, Radical Optimism, failed to make the impact that Future Nostalgia ( one of the most iconic albums of the last 10 years!!!) did, but she’s still been living her best life and has defined herself as the ultimate cool girl. She’s been busy growing her Service95 newsletter and book club, remains super vocal on human rights ranging from feminism to LGBTQ+ to Palestine, and just got married to Callum Turner this past week in an iconic look.

Dua also loves to travel. It’s a long-running internet joke that she is always somewhere new (and at the coolest restaurants and bars with actually cool people like Ochin Clovis, Action Bronson, and Simon Jacquemus). It feels only fitting that international cool girl Dua would pair up with Google Maps on creating 12 shared lists with over 100+ of her favorite spots, with notes and her own photos accompanying each selection.

This is smart for Google. There are more and more travel recommendation apps coming out these days - Amigo, Postcard, etc., but the OG (and my favorite) is Google Maps. A simple interface, easy to access. It’s not a vacation without a Google Map made before, and I share mine out (and trade) with other like-minded friends and travelers. Google’s Chief Technologist Prabhakar Raghavan stated that nearly 40% of young people prefer TikTok or Instagram over Google Search or Maps for local recommendations. But this partnership lets Google show off what makes it better compared to the more social apps - ease of use and accessibility. It also gives them access to data for advertising and more, of course, but I really do think this is Google adding the authenticity and excitement that social networking apps give to travel under their own easy to use platform.

On x Erewhon

Sometimes partnerships make a ton of sense with their shared demographics but just don’t need to exist. That’s how I feel about the On x Erewhon partnership.

The fast growing Swiss company has seen massive growth in revenue (a 38% increase from $2.6B in 2024 to $3.6B in 2025), profitability ($720M EBITDA) and geographic expansion (almost doubling in APAC last year!). They’re a big success story and continue to post strong projections and forecasts. If anything, there is still massive amounts of upside when it comes to how much they can grow: global brand awareness of On was estimated in their earnings report at just 30%.

The multi-year partnership, launched last week, includes sneakers and matching apparel in neutrals inspired by the interiors of Erewhon stores, plus a recovery juice and (of course) a community running initiative in Los Angeles.

It feels weird to me. Yes, Erewhon is a well-known health and wellness name, and the brand signifies taste and wellness. But for a brand that seems so thoughtful about its product from a technical side, it feels weird for On to just emblazon an Erewhon logo on some merch and call it a day. Maybe it’s their attempt to move further into the athleisure space (the uniform of Erewhon customers), but Lululemon already did a partnership late last year with Erewhon (and it still hasn’t sold out). A big part of the IRL Erewhon experience is about being seen - a sense of status. So why would an Erewhon customer want to dress in a uniform?

The strategy probably isn’t for the actual Erewhon customers, though. The exclusive-to-LA grocery chain is a globally recognized name, grown from social media and celebrity plugs. Trader Joes bags are a status symbol outside of the US because it allows people to cosplay as an American. Having access to Erewhon-branded On gear, especially outside of the US (I checked, they’re selling it internationally) is an easy way for consumers to feel clout without having to buy a plane ticket to LA.

MoviePass x ICA

Remember MoviePass? The movie ticket subscription service felt too good to be true when it launched, because it was. In 2017, the service allowed one movie per day at a monthly fee of $9.99. With no negotiated deals, they were buying tickets at normal retail for customers, claiming that they were focused on acquiring customers (3 million subscribers by 2018!) and selling data.

The extremely bold acquisition strategy didn’t last. As a one time member, I left the service when things started getting weird: surge pricing, new limitations and changes in offers every week, and even one point when the only movie accessible through the service was the John Travolta mafia movie Gotti (1.8 star average on Letterboxd!). At one point in 2018 they completely ran out of money and had to take a $5M loan to process the ticket purchases that day, which is small in comparison to the estimated $400M in total losses accrued before they filed for bankruptcy in January 2020.

In classic Hollywood fashion, they recycled material and rebooted. In 2022, they introduced a new model with a credits based system (like ClassPass). It seemed that they were actually thinking about profitability this time, but it didn’t really take off, and big cinema chains like AMC and Regal have introduced subscription services as well.

So when the famously unsavvy and seemingly still struggling MoviePass announced their new partnership with the Independent Cinema Alliance (ICA) last week, I was impressed. MoviePass’ subscription now allows access to the ICA’s network of 5000 independently operated screens - representing more than $1B in box office revenue, 15% of the North American market. Independent theaters have the ability to opt in as a strategy to help grow attendance, a huge concern for the movie industry as customers continue to rely on streaming: movie theater visits fell 10% nationally in 2025. Independent theaters are down a little less at 8.6%, but they’re also, of course, much more at risk of having to close down than a large network of franchises. Independent theaters may be surviving on creating consumer-first experiences and programming that can’t be duplicated by a chain (the lines I see out the door of movie bros at Quentin Tarantino’s Vista Theater all the time are a clear sign of this), and I love that MoviePass is partnering with community-minded smaller businesses. A very cool pivot for them.

Coach x Brain Dead

Another head (brain?) scratcher.

Brain Dead is an LA-based brand (or… “art collective”) known for louder graphics and a focus on alt subcultures like skateboarding. Coach is an American leather goods brand that can’t seem to figure out how to compete against European luxury brands or American DTC brands after it fell out of fashion post the 2000s logomania era it succeeded in.

The new capsule collection is all about trinkets and collectibles; playful charms and patches on Coach’s iconic bags (including their Tabby core SKU) are meant to give personality to the wearer. Labubu but with an edge. The two brands say their collaboration was built on self expression.

Despite some recent failures, Coach has big goals - they want to be a $10B brand. They’re playing the long game here - by 2030, it’s expected that 70% of luxury purchases will be made by millennials and Gen-Z. I’ve noticed that Coach, under creative director Stuart Vevers, has really been trying to go after two demographics: men and Gen-Z. They did a partnership with The Sims, they’re opening cafes across malls (where Gen-Z loves to be!), and their pricing reflects entry-point luxury (the Tabby starts at $475). The self-expression focus also makes sense - Gen-Z’s focus on thrifting and circular fashion is equally about sustainability and originality. The little trinkets are a smart way at getting customers hooked with easier to access price points. While I was not sure on the Brain Dead choice, 45 of the 101 products launched last week are already sold out, so I think it’s getting the traction they hoped for.

Celebrity Check In

• Lizzo x Chili’s Lizzo says yes to anything and everything. Old Navy, Postmates, Fabletics, and more. She just did the Chili’s jingle - I’m not a Lizzo fan, but it’s self-aware in a way that works. PETA is now after her, because she used to be a vegan?

• Madelyn Cline x DoorDash Hot girl Madelyn Cline was photographed carrying what appeared to be a chic DoorDash delivery bag. Someone on r/handbags thought it was The Row. I’m not sure what it means, and the Internet seems equally confused.

• Dorit Kemsley x Wonderful Seedless Lemons Sorry but this worked on me. Dorit Kemsley is my favorite Housewife of all time and the only celebrity I would ever ask for a photo with, because I think she would get more out of it than me. Her drink of choice is a Belvedere soda, three lemons, carcass out. She did an ad for Wonderful Seedless Lemons, an actually innovative product I didn’t know existed and will now actually consider buying.

Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week

My missed partnership opportunity is all of the Pride partnerships that corporations are no longer doing. Donate to an organization that matters! I like to use Charity Navigator to find organizations in communities whose rights are most at risk.

Thank you for reading! I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I’m always open to interesting conversations with people in the retail industry and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can always get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

My favorite review of the newsletter from last week: “making me fall in love with retail again.” This was also awesome to see:

Followed by a very kind plug a few days later from one of my favorite Substacks, The Eastside Rag, which I’d highly recommend to Angelenos and non-Angelenos alike. It just got a very well-deserved write up in The New Yorker!

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend. I had the perfect summer kick off: a frivolously decadent birthday dinner at Spago, miraculously easy traffic on the way to Joshua Tree, a late lunch at La Copine, Kevin Morby’s perfect sunset show at Pappy & Harriets, and catching up on The Real Housewives of Rhode Island back in LA. The new Kevin Morby album is my favorite album of the year so far and Liz is my favorite Housewife of the year so far.

In today’s post:

• Nike vs. Adidas’ desert rumble

• Me and my friends, we invest

• Guy stuff

• Caviar bumps

Sports x Sand

Athletic brands are in a strange place. The market is increasingly becoming fragmented and filled with niche challengers. Brands like Hoka (Deckers Brands), ALO, Vuori and ASICS are showing strong growth while the behemoths of our youth (Nike, Adidas, Puma, and UnderArmour) now make up less than 50% of the industry’s profits. The newer brands are eating away at both ends of the market - more premium brands as well as ultra-cheap dupes like Shein and Temu. Add in growing concerns for microplastics and ethical supply chain practices and rising tariff costs and you make it even harder for brands like Nike and Adidas that can’t pivot as quickly as their new, more nimble competitors.

Nike has especially struggled. 2025 showed revenue down 10 percent from 2024, with an especially tough Q4 (revenue down 12 percent). They remain hopeful - they’ve been switching their strategies from DTC back to wholesale, which shows promise, and they’re still the largest athletic brand, with $46.3B in 2025 revenue.

Adidas, on the other hand, is having a bit of a renaissance. They reported their best year of revenue ever last year - $28.9B in revenue and growth across all regions (the highest in Latin America).

Both brands have recently launched very different partnership strategies with one marketing through-line: the desert.

Nike x SKIMS NikeSKIMS launched last September, focused on bringing Nike’s technical innovations with SKIMS’ “obsession for the female form and pioneering pursuit of solutions for every body.” This is bigger than you realize. NikeSKIMS is the first brand that Nike has co-created since Jordan Brand was formally spun out as its own brand 28 years ago. It feels like Nike’s direct response to more female-forward brands like ALO and Lululemon using one of the biggest celebrities and her fast-growing brand. How fast? SKIMS is now valued at $5B, more than Under Armour and Victoria’s Secret combined, after Series D funding led by Goldman Sachs (which signals to me that an IPO is probably coming quite soon) last year.

The partnership seems to be working: the Rift Mesh shoe sold out so quickly in January that they launched a new satin version only a few weeks later with Blackpink’s Lisa as the star of the campaign, expanding internationally as a fast follow. I think the shoes are cool?

Their most recent launch is centered around Studio Stretch, which, as one might guess, is made for the studio. They released it May 14th with a series of very cool advertisements and visuals set in the desert. I like that the most liked comment on Kim’s post is that it is “so Yeezy coded,” because it is, as is a lot of fitness and athleisure wear from the last 5+ years.

Adidas x SATISFY Last week, Adidas announced their collaboration with Paris based SATISFY. SATISFY is a smaller company with lots of cool guy cred. Numbers are harder to find, but they reached over $11M in revenue in 2024 and want to 10x that by 2030.

SATISFY is a harder brand to explain. Extremely fashionable technical wear, they’ve also found themselves a go-to brand for the often-memed run club set. They’re known for making technical apparel, including their MothTech™ shirts, which literally have holes in them. My mom used to not allow us to buy jeans with holes in them when back to school shopping; imagine trying to get her to let me wear MothTech™. Beyond the hole shirts, they also have camouflage, motorcycle poser wear, and extreme crop tops. I should be opposed but I’m still kinda into it. I laughed at this from Cole Townsend’s Running Supply.

The Adidas x SATISFY collaboration is different from NikeSKIMS. First of all, there’s a much larger size gap between the partners: SATISFY does less than .04% of the revenue of Adidas. Adidas is gaining cool guy cred here, not revenue. They’re releasing three SATISFY approved color ways of the Adizero Adios Pro 4 racing shoe. The shoes are cool, I love the brown ones. The partnership is expected to go for multiple seasons and is a part of their effort that exists at the “intersection of authentic performance and cultural relevance,” a nice way of saying that running is growing, especially among the youth, and Adidas, never much of a running brand prior, wants to capitalize. We’ve talked about this before, but I love stats:

• The 20-24 year old demographic now accounts for 8% of marathon finishers, up 3% since pre-pandemic. I ran a marathon when I was 20 and the hardest part was not going to college parties for two weekends.

• 50 million Americans now run or jog - almost 15% of the US population!

• The boost in running and run clubs directly reflects the loneliness epidemic. It gives runners community, gets them outside, and helps them make friends. 58% of Strava users said they made new friends through a run club.

It’s interesting timing for the collaboration, too- earlier this year, SATISFY called out Nike for creating a product that seemed very similar to MothTech™. Hmm.

SATISFY and Adidas launched the partnership with a race event set in the desert: The Circle Pit. They invited a bunch of influencers to run around a track that looked ready to injure someone’s ACL while hardcore bands played for each “team”. The teams were assigned by the colors of shoes they gave out. It looks like if Mad Max: Fury Road combined with the S Club Party music video, which remains a massive banger.

At first I was okay with it. Then I read this write-up from a runner and hardcore fan calling out the appropriation of straight edge culture, which has always fascinated me from afar. He calls this “brand theatre,” a term I will be using moving forward:

A brand can touch a subculture with care. Or it can walk in, steal the symbols, book the bands, pay the influencers, film the pogo dancing (cringe alarm), sell the shoe, and call the whole thing underground culture.

Got em. And I think he’s right. When a brand is mainly known for being cool, it’s hard to not question them profiting off additional subcultures that they enter.

To finish this comparison up, we need to think about why they’re both promoting these things in the desert. I have a few thoughts:

• Climate Change As the world gets hotter, the clothes only get more breathable. Lace and mesh shirts seem to still be infiltrating menswear. It only makes sense to show your product in a hot locale where fabric technologies like MothTech™ are justified.

• Technical Prowess The microplastic conversation continues, but natural fibers will never wick sweat the way Nike Dri-FIT does.

• Loneliness Epidemic Is there anything as lonely as a desert? What if you filled the desert with a bunch of people - would that make you feel the community we all seem to long in the digital age?

If I had to declare a winner in this race, I’d give it to Nike. It’s elevating both brands and growing new segments.

Charli XCX x Nothing

Charli XCX is at an apex (xcapex?). Brat catapulted her to a stardom that makes me feel sad for someone who at least seems like they enjoyed the pursuit of creativity and being “counterculture.” But that’s why Brat worked, and while she’s now a household name, it seems she is still figuring out what that means.

Her new album rollout isn’t getting the same traction that Brat did. People are saying that she’s fallen off, or whatever the kids are saying these days. The songs are okay to me, they’re just not hitting the zeitgeist the same way. It might not be fair to compare, but as of writing this, 27 of the 43 Drake songs he dropped last week have more Spotify listens than Charli’s 9M plays for the Rock Music single, released a week earlier.

Even if the music is “flopping,” Charli XCX’s biggest asset has always been her brand. This year alone she infiltrated Hollywood with multiple projects (Wuthering Heights, The Moment) and became the face of YSL Beauty. I’m most interested in her investing in and becoming the celebrity global ambassador for the horribly named but genuinely cool electronics company Nothing. The financial details are not public, but it seems like she’s very involved, and the brand looks to be on a high growth trajectory as it takes on Apple and Samsung with a focus on the Gen-Z consumer.

I love when celebrity ambassadors take on equity with their deals, because it makes it feel more like something they actually believe in. A wise woman once said “pay me in equity, watch me reverse out the debt.” Tom Brady did this with Ugg, 50 Cent did this with Vitaminwater (and made over $100M doing so). I gotta give it to Charli’s team for figuring this out- the Nothing brand has the same cool, counterculture vibe that Charli herself used to have, with an exec team filled with leadership from Apple and fashion brands like Loewe. It feels like they either know exactly what they’re doing or at least trying very hard to look like they do.

Stay tuned, but it looks like Charli is betting that the Apple actually could fall farther from the tree than we expected. Sorry, I had to.

The Ordinary x Brooklyn Transit

There are so many iconic buses. The Magic School Bus. The Knight Bus. The bus from Speed. The Next Bus.

New York just got its own iconic bus before Zohran Mamdani could even get to improving public transit himself: The Ordinary Bus. Skincare brand The Ordinary is launching a bus that goes directly from Williamsburg’s Domino Park to Prospect Park, solving one of Brooklyn’s biggest transit pain points, which would otherwise mean going into Manhattan.

The capitalist in me assumed they would have a storefront or pop-up at both stops, but there isn’t even a store in Brooklyn. The initiative is instead tied to the brand’s promise for accessible quality. I think this is so smart, especially as skincare grows quickly, especially with men. It’s becoming increasingly harder to understand what actually works and there are more and more miracles being promised from new products and Tiktok UGC creators, but the Ordinary bus spells out the value proposition more clearly: simplification in our busy lives.

The Boys x Creatine

Creatine is everywhere. What used to be a bodybuilder punchline is now a $1.4B business, with expectations to be $8.7B (CAGR 26.2%!!!) by 2033. We’re all looksmaxxing. I take it daily. Creatine’s high growth rate based on the ever-growing focus on health and wellness is being compounded by two things: an expansion into new demographics (seniors, women) and the introduction of new formats.

The Boys is a show that I allow to just exist outside of my scope of knowledge. I hadn’t really heard anyone talk about it besides an NSFW clip that always shows up on my Twitter until last week’s finale, but it turns out it’s super popular, bringing in 57 million viewers per episode in the final season, the top 99th percentile of viewership. I can’t find true demographic data from Amazon, but it does seem to skew heavily male, which makes sense for a superhero show that prides itself on being violent.

With the last season, the Sony Pictures Consumer Products team partnered with brands across apparel and CPG for a full-fledged merchandising push. I’m most intrigued by what they did with Dr. Squatch and Four Sigmatic to introduce creatine into products - a play on super strength. Four Sigmatic’s creatine coffee has 5000 mg of lion’s mane mushrooms and 5 grams of creatine per serving. Dr. Squatch is going for more of the gimmick, as the soap is not going to grow muscles. But this pop culture phenomenon strategy is something the brand has done many times before: Sydney Sweeney’s bathwater, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Stranger Things, etc. It kinda reminds me of how kids’ toothbrushes will have Disney characters on them but for straight men, but the strategy must be working: Dr. Squatch was acquired a year ago by Unilever for $1.5B.

Meredith Marks Caviar x Go Greek

Liz McGraw may be my favorite housewife of the year, but RHOSLC’s Meredith Marks is a forever favorite. Consistently out of touch and always on something. But she’s also onto something… some smart CPG collaborations.

Housewives always have their own little side businesses, but Meredith has been pushing her caviar brand, Meredith Marks Caviar, heavily the last few seasons. Caviar is growing - expected to double in size within the next 10 years in the United States, which is especially crazy for a very expensive product based on an endangered species. It is increasingly becoming democratized though. Quince launched a $125 caviar last year that sold out within a day. Pizza Hut and McDonald’s have also launched caviar collaborations within the last year.

Meredith Marks launched her brand 3 years ago, and has slowly been growing the brand with food collaborations, centered around accessibility. Last year she launched a caviar shortbread with the cookie chain Schmackary’s. Now she’s launching a frozen yogurt dessert with Go Greek Yogurt (greek yogurt - also having a comeback!), which is plain Greek frozen yogurt topped with honey, a blini, and 10 grams of her caviar for $31.99. I wonder if Angie K is going to claim she is stealing from her Greek culture. If someone Venmos me $30 I will go try it and report back.

I do think this is smart though - Meredith is using these food collaborations as a way to sample the product at a lower price. It’s also very Tiktok-able. And just like Bravo, it’s providing accessibility to a life of luxury.

Gwyneth Paltrow x Alex Mill

Is Gwyneth Paltrow in trouble? I love Gwyneth, but I’m getting a bit worried she might be hard pressed for money. She’s acting again (Marty Supreme last year, will also be starring in the adaptation of Belle Burden’s Strangers) and Goop just did another round of layoffs due to profitability concerns. And then I saw this on Alex Mill’s IG.

You cannot fool me into thinking this is a paparazzi shot. Who enters a car this way? This is a brand deal! The famously out of touch Gwyneth is selling vintage Hermes Kelly bags on Goop, you’re expecting me to believe she’s using a $200 tote?

Fashion Collab Grab Bag

• GANNI x Melissa The two countries with the sexiest populations, Brazil and Denmark, have collaborated on jelly shoes for hot girls. They have ruffles. Street style photographs will never be the same. I have been buying jelly shoes from Sun Jellies for a fraction of the cost after seeing a chic old man in Marseille wearing them a few years ago - big recommend.

• Diadora x JW Anderson The two countries with the most Catholic guilt, Ireland and Italy, have collaborated on sneakers. Maybe it’s the low-sole sneaker trend getting to me, but they remind me of something a cartoon character would wear.

• Nick Fouquet x Jacques Marie Mage Fancy boy LA brands Jacques Marie Mage and Nick Fouquet have collaborated on a line of hats and sunglasses. Only a certain type of person could pull off these hats. I like the sunglasses!

Missed Partnership Opportunity of the Week

The new horror movie Obsession, about a guy that buys a way to get a girl to fall in love with him, is having a moment. It’s second week in theaters grossed higher numbers ($24M) than the first ($17M), which hardly ever happens (the last time was in 2023).

Enter dating app Bumble. Their Q1 2026 numbers showed that they were showing massive declines in revenue (down 14.1% YoY) and even larger declines in paying users (down 21% YoY). They’re not the only one- dating apps are declining as Gen-Z tries to figure out how to meet people outside of the internet (wearing Satisfy to hardcore-appropriating run clubs).

Bumble specifically prides itself on being female first. Obsession’s premise is the opposite of Bumble. There’s obviously concerns with messaging around consent and abusive relationships, but I think Bumble could do something interesting here with it’s way of letting women lead and to “create a world where all relationships are healthy and equitable.” A free movie ticket offer for a date?

Next week: the Pride month collaborations have started…

Thank you for reading! I love meeting new people who share my (mutual) interests. I’m always open to interesting conversations with people in the retail industry and also consult on retail strategy and partnerships across categories. You can get in touch at matt.miller520@gmail.com.

I’m blaming the mistakes on being very busy planning the launch party for a limoncello brand my friend Grace and I have set forth on. As someone who vowed that they didn’t want to work in alcohol anymore, it’s funny that things have led me here, but I am coming out of the weekend feeling very excited. More on Goose Juice and our approach to the alcohol industry later.

You’re reading this a day after my birthday, and that means that not only is this the 10TH ISSUE, but this means I have officially set up payments. Posts are still going to be accessible always and to all (for now) but I truly appreciate your support (and your shares last week!). Upgrade your membership below if you feel so inclined:

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In today’s post:

• Farm to table partnerships

• The millennial brand mausoleum

• rosebud; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

• Non mi piace

Local x Local

We launched a limoncello company this past weekend. How the story goes: my friend Grace reached out with an idea to make small batch limoncello utilizing overabundant citrus that people are trying to get rid of: farmers, neighbors, etc. Once we started planning, we realized that not only is the alcohol brand market congested, but it’s all the same. Everything is more about vibes than enjoyment. Upstart Instagram brands litter alcohol shelves like most other CPG categories, designed under what I call the Molly Baz quirk brand style guide.

Much has been said about Americans drinking less: in 2025, only 54% of Americans drink, the lowest number yet. There are many different factors to this decline: health and wellness, the rise of GLP-1s, Gen-Z losing interest, an increasing reliance on digital, an increase in feeling lonely (50% of American adults say they feel lonely!), and rising costs from tariffs and inflation. You’re probably questioning why another brand needs to exist.

Goose Juice is community first. An anti-brand in the day of AI. A beverage that can bring people together, especially those in Los Angeles and greater California, where more than 90% of the country’s lemons are sourced from. Grace grew up in Chicago and I grew up in St. Paul, bordering Wisconsin - in our planning, we have been referencing brands like Malort and Spotted Cow that have a regional identity.

We’ve been having a lot of fun and learning a lot as we test and iterate on formulas and next steps, and getting to finally serve the product to so many of our friends and family felt electric. I think we knew the product was good (we tested it against a bunch of store-bought brands and found ours way fresher, the right blend of tart and sweet) but seeing everyone else’s excitement is what we needed to keep pushing as we start to speak to designers and distillers and go fully official this summer.

The community aspect we want was fully felt at the launch party, especially from people wanting to help grow the brand with like-minded people. So many people had ideas and connections - entrepreneurs who have started tea or THC companies, bakers who are using bruised fruit, chefs, Bravo celebrities, restaurants and bars across the city where friends have an in, party planners, and people just down to chat. “Organic” is such a buzzword and in a fruit-forward business feels like a pun, but the ability to build something locally by partnering with our neighbors is a key part in how we plan to stay true to the brand - by being organic.

A few other recent local partnerships to provide some inspiration:

• Beverly Hills Cheese Store x Bad Roman I’ve actually never been to The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, which apparently has amazing sandwiches and also has a very popular TikTok account that feels like the coziest ASMR-adjacent blanket of listening to someone talk about cheese. They’re launching their first collaboration ever, a steak and cacio e pepe sandwich with the NY-based restaurant Bad Roman, which is expanding to a Beverly Hills location. A lot of NY hotspots expanding to LA have struggled to find the success they saw in New York (Dante, Prince St. Pizza, Cipriani…) so I do think it’s noble for Bad Roman to try and build their brand with someone based in town with high brand loyalty.

• Courage x Sqirl Extremely local to me gossip, but when Courage Bagels came to Silver Lake in late 2020 it was on the tail end of Sqirl’s cancellation tour for the moldy jam debacle. Courage quickly became an LA staple, and the breakfast crowds from Sqirl made a mass migration down the block to Courage. I had the very real sense that they (and a few other Virgil Village establishments) hated one another. Sqirl is back and better than ever, and now it seems that they have buddied up, launching an exclusive jam - Strawberry Rose Geranium. I gasped seeing this at Courage the other day…

  

• Ggiata x Echo Park Trash Club Ggiata, the fast growing Los Angeles sandwich shop, opened their sixth location last weekend in Echo Park. All proceeds went to the volunteers at Echo Park Trash Club, plus they had commemorative mugs and some very cool ceramic lamp shades from local potter Danny D’s Mud Shop. Very local already, but I think they should have partnered with other “confusing to pronounce G brands based in Los Angeles that have an Italian flair to them”: Ggiata x Ghiaia Cashmere x Ghia Soda x Gjusta!

• Shinola x Red Wings I am team Minneapolis forever, but dating a Michigan boy has brought me to Detroit often - a city I end up loving more and more each time I am there. The team at Detroit-based Shinola partnered with the Red Wings to design a “Hockeytown” watch to celebrate the team’s 100 year anniversary. I am not the demographic for this but it looks like it sold out quickly and is reselling for more than 3x the original $750 price tag. SPORTS!

  

• Portland Timbers x Portland Art Museum To celebrate the 100th year anniversary of Providence Park, my favorite MLS team, the Portland Timbers, launched a commemorative jersey kit with a design centered on the architecture. What makes this cooler is how they released it - with a teaser displayed at the Portland Art Museum. I love the idea that “EVERYBODY IS AN ART PERSON,” and this is an amazing way to celebrate everything that makes up a city.

  

And two that need some work:

• Laurel Supply x LA I can’t keep up. Laurel Supply is the new venture from Laurel Hardware (West Hollywood first date location to many) and Laurel Grill (the dupiest Hillstone dupe you can imagine). When I was a kid, my mom used to always tell us that “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery,” and Erewhon should be flattered by Laurel Supply, which is boldly stealing the Erewhon concept. Laurel Supply did very little marketing or press, but I think they missed out on an opportunity for them to take the ownership group’s original status as a local LA establishment and play into that. Collaborate with local LA restaurants for sauces, prepared foods, and more. Make it feel more rooted to the community than Erewhon, which feels more rooted to celebrity. Big miss.

  

• Aime Leon Dore’s new store opening I am still a believer in Aime Leon Dore despite its recent downturns, and while I haven’t checked out the LA store yet, I need to call out a strange decoration choice. Aime Leon Dore prides itself on its New York heritage (founder Teddy Santis is a first-generation Greek American that grew up in Queens), but for an LA store, you want to pay respect to the neighborhood. Partnering with artist Kimou Meyer on a NY painting behind the register feels strange. How are you going to sell ALD-branded Dodgers hats with a NY Yankees logo painted behind you?

  

Do you have any ideas for Goose Juice collaborations? Let me know in the comments.

Shein x Everlane

Shein is buying Everlane for $100M. Yes, Everlane, the brand built on transparent sourcing, is selling to the China-based behemoth known for cutting ethical corners. Everlane’s highest valuation was $550M in 2020. The Shein sale is for $100M, with $90M of that being to cover debts Everlane owed. That means that just $10M is getting distributed to shareholders, which, based on corporate capital stacks, is most likely going to go to preferred venture investors ahead of any common stockholders or employees with stock options.

There’s a larger trend happening here. Beyond feeling like a business headline in The Onion, it also feels like another end of the millennial brands that boomed through the 2010s. The millennial woke bae brands of the Obama era that ~cut out the middleman~ are failing in today’s economy. The ethical idealism and bright, simple branding no longer matter.

Some more examples:

• Allbirds Valued at an insane $4.1B in their 2021 IPO with the ugliest shoes of all time, sold for $39M (1% of their IPO!) two months ago. Never turned a profit. Somehow is pivoting into an AI computing company… I wish I was making this up.

• Outdoor Voices A rollercoaster of athleisure. Peak valuation at $110M in 2018, founder Ty Haney was pushed out in 2020 and reacquired for $40M, then bought out by Consortium Brand Partners for an undisclosed, most likely much smaller sum (but brought Ty Haney back on, despite her Elon connections). I can’t explain what went wrong, but why are these pants so short? I can’t get over this review from Sam, who has a “large tight ass bigger than most” and apparently also likes to cook.

  

• Glossier Valued at $1.8B in 2021, currently seeking to raise capital on a valuation less than half of their peak. They need to make big changes under new CEO Colin Walsh - they’re closing stores, laid off a third of their employees, and are dialing back their product release strategy. The customer forward brand is also discontinuing a bunch of core products, sending out an email to customers weeks ago.

• Away I remember asking for an Away suitcase for Christmas in 2015, thinking I would have it forever (they had a lifetime guarantee). Not the case (PUN!). The brand stayed private despite a few attempts at an IPO, and the founders both left after very bad press. The minimalist suitcase brand grew too quick and is no longer a status symbol, instead actually just making baggage claim even more stressful now.

There are a few millennial brands still “winning” - Warby Parker continues to grow their revenue, Hims & Hers posted 59% growth last year while remaining profitable, and Chewy had its largest year yet with $12.6B last year (and $562M in free cash flow). The brands that are working have much higher switching costs - Warby Parker has my prescription (and optometrists), subscription services at Hims and Chewy (83% of total revenue!) create much longer customer LTV and recurring revenue to cover acquisition costs. The failing millennial brands are consumer products that can easily be replicated (dupe culture!).

New York vs. Los Angeles

People like to compare New York and Los Angeles all the time. The official Mutual Interest statement is that New Yorkers seem to care way more about this conversation than Angelenos.

This past week, a little flame was added to the pointless fire, when two luxury fashion brands released their first resort/cruise shows under new designer direction, to middling results.

Jonathan Anderson, who is now leading Dior, brought his show to Los Angeles, showing at the new Geffen Galleries at LACMA. Cruise shows are usually in different locales, so it’s not surprising to me that Anderson, who is known for bringing on-the-radar celebs into his brands (Greta Lee, Ayo Edibiri, Josh O’Connor…), chose the city of celebrity for his first. I’m not a fashion critic, but everything looks fine to me - but the references feel surface level to Los Angeles without a real perspective (this coming from a huge Ed Ruscha fan) or anything interesting to say. Yes, we are aware that movies are filmed in LA (although less and less are). I like that there were branded Christian Dior branded black cars to take guests home, which does feel like an LA pastime. I just wish things felt more purposeful to the decision, rather than just stacking the front row with celebrities.