This week my guest is Henry Porpora, founder of SULT – the disruptor hydration brand that’s taking the internet by storm.

In just over a year, SULT has gone from a bootstrapped idea that started on Hinge to one of the UK’s fastest-rising wellness brands. Today, it has built a community of more than 50,000 followers, is stocked by major retailers, has fuelled Harry Styles’ record-breaking tour, and has caught the attention of everyone from The North Face to LVMH.

Henry and I talk about building in public, why authenticity still beats incumbents, and why storytelling is becoming every brand’s greatest competitive advantage.

Harry: For anyone discovering you and the brand through this interview, how did you get here? Was founding a brand always on the cards for you?

Henry: Mine is a bit of a classic entrepreneur story. At school I was always selling something. It started with Match Attax cards. I used to get in trouble because I’d make a ridiculous amount of money from them. Parents would get called in and have to give the money back because I’d sold loads of cards to other kids.

Then it was sweets. I got in trouble for that too. I even created my own tuck shop and somehow managed to get a physical room in school for it before that got shut down as well.

I’ve always been obsessed with business. I just loved the idea of it.

Before SULT I’d started a couple of businesses that, if I’m honest, weren’t successful. Then I was working at Pure Sport and I pretty quickly realised I needed to build something for myself.

I’ve always backed myself quite heavily. One thing I learned at Pure Sport was that when you actually meet the founders of brands you admire, they’re just people. I met founders from brands like Satisfy, Represent and Vuori, and while they’re incredibly talented and work unbelievably hard, they’re no different to you or me.

We tend to put people on a pedestal when we shouldn’t. That was probably the biggest shift for me. I thought, “Why not just do it myself?”

Harry: Was there a particular moment that made you feel ready to take the jump?

Henry: I’d already started building the idea while I was still at Pure Sport. It got to the point where I was more interested in building that than doing my actual job.

The meeting that led to me leaving was probably the best conversation I’ve ever had. I remember leaving the office, calling my girlfriend at the time and saying, “It’s go time.”

Harry: SULT seemed to arrive at exactly the moment wellness culture started becoming popular culture. How do you see that shift, and how has it shaped the brand?

Henry: Without blowing our own trumpet, I do think we predicted where things were going.

A couple of years ago wellness became really polarising. It felt like if you weren’t running a sub-three-hour marathon you somehow weren’t taking your health seriously. That’s ridiculous, because running a marathon at all is impressive.

We decided to build the brand around a more balanced way of living, and the timing was fortunate because it turned out that duality — eating well, staying fit and looking after yourself, but also going to the pub with your mates — was what a lot of people were looking for.

Social media has made people more isolated. People forget human connection is a huge part of wellbeing. Sometimes you just need to go and have a pint with your friends instead.

Harry: It feels like you’ve built the brand for yourselves first and foremost. Do you feel like that’s been a competitive advantage?

Henry: It has, and honestly it’s also the easiest way to build a brand.

People spend thousands on market research, but unless you’re solving some highly technical problem, you’re usually building for people a lot like yourself.

We’re not that unique. Go into London and loads of people live the same sort of lifestyle we do. So we just build products and a brand around what we genuinely think is right.

Harry: Since you started, the wellness and consumer brand landscape has changed so quickly. What’s changed most since you started?

Henry: Social-first marketing has just become incredibly saturated. Building in public isn’t new, but when we started we approached it a little differently.

Today it’s harder than ever to differentiate yourself. From a product perspective, everyone says exactly the same things. Every electrolyte brand claims to have the best ingredients or the best flavour. So we just decided not to play that game. Instead we ask, “What can we do that nobody else can?” The answer is tell stories.

The market is crowded, but it’s also crowded with a lot of brands that don’t really stand for anything. They launch a product and hope for the best. There’s no meaning behind it, no founder story, no deeper reason to exist.

Harry: I wrote an article a while ago about premium goods replacing traditional status symbols as they become less attainable to young people. Do you see SULT as a brand that is part of that conversation?

Henry: Completely. We’re living in an era where everybody is effectively building a personal brand, whether they realise it or not. LinkedIn, Instagram, everything contributes to your identity. The things you buy become reflections of that identity.

That was one of the original ideas behind SULT. How do we make an aspirational hydration brand?

I genuinely think in another five years everyone’s Instagram will look like a brand account.

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Harry: Nothing feels immune from becoming a cultural signal anymore. But ultimately the product still has to work. How do you balance building cultural relevance with building a genuinely good product?

Henry: People ask me all the time why they can’t just copy SULT. I tell them, “Go ahead. Here’s my manufacturer’s details.”

You can build the best electrolyte in the world, but if nobody knows it exists, it doesn’t matter.

There are people who buy purely for utility and people who buy partly because of identity, but increasingly, product and brand are inseparable.

Electrolytes themselves are actually quite simple. You can improve flavours, tweak formulations and source better ingredients, but anyone could create one relatively quickly today.

That’s why brand matters so much.

AI makes this even more obvious. I can ask Claude to analyse hundreds of competitors, recommend a differentiated formulation and have a manufacturer producing samples within weeks.

It’s never been easier to build a product. It’s also never been harder to build a meaningful brand.

Harry: How do you think that changes SULT’s competitive advantage compared to huge companies like Procter & Gamble?

Henry: Take Wild that got acquired by Unilever. Unilever can launch refillable deodorant, but they can’t recreate what Wild built.

Wild wasn’t just selling deodorant. It had personality, founders people cared about, agility and culture.

Big companies can replicate products, but they can’t easily replicate authenticity. That’s what people connect with.

Harry: Founding the company with Milly — a creator with her own in-built audience — feels like a huge advantage for that reason. How intentional was that from the beginning?

Henry: Very intentional. What Milly has, and what I don’t, is world-class storytelling.

Even a couple of years ago I felt brands were moving away from polished product photography and towards genuine stories.

Her audience obviously brings reach and credibility, but more importantly she’s part of the company.

Traditional influencer marketing says, “Post this on your stories,” but I think that’s completely outdated.

Consumers want creators to genuinely build brands. When people think about SULT, Milly and SULT should feel inseparable.

When we started, other creators were telling her not to get too involved. I completely disagreed. I wanted her fully embedded in the business because that’s where I thought the world was heading.

Harry: You’ve just hired for a social role that generated a huge response. Tell us about that, and what are you looking for when you hire?

Henry: It started when Sophie left. People began messaging asking if they could work with us. Then someone posted a photo holding a sign saying “Hire me.”

I realised there was an opportunity to turn recruitment into content, so we made a video expecting a handful of responses. Instead it exploded.

The brilliant thing was that it eliminated most of the hiring process. Within the first few seconds of someone’s video you could see whether they could edit, whether they understood storytelling and what their energy was like. What normally takes months took weeks, and there was one applicant where we immediately thought, “That’s the person.”

When we hired Sophie she became part of the story, and that worked incredibly well.

Whenever we hire someone now, I ask whether they can contribute beyond their functional role. Every department has stories worth telling. I say this when I speak on panels — finance, operations, marketing, everyone has an audience.

Most companies just tell those stories in a boring way.

Harry: Zooming out from SULT, what are you paying attention to in brand building right now?

Henry: Honestly, I’m jealous of companies with bigger teams and more capital.

We’ve bootstrapped everything. People love that story, but it also means you’re starting ten metres behind everyone else.

Launching products takes longer. Minimum order quantities are higher. Everything is more expensive.

Meanwhile other brands raise £10 million, grow incredibly quickly and keep raising despite losing money.

We’re profitable, while some of those businesses lose money every time they sell something. But consumers don’t see any of that, they just see products on a shelf.

Harry: Finally, without giving too much away, what’s next for SULT?

Henry: We’re launching new products. There’ll be new flavours, but we’re also entering an entirely new category.

The original vision for SULT was always much broader than electrolytes. It’s taken months of development, but we’re hoping to launch two new SKUs before November.

Professionally Curious is a reader–supported project by Strategist Harry Salmons. If you enjoyed reading this letter, subscribe for more thoughts on brand and culture.

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To read

The new premium product: books written by people (The FT)

"Last week, Anthropic agreed a $1.5bn settlement with authors and publishers after using over 480,000 published works to train its large language models without payment or permission.”

Why does everything feel so joyless? Welcome to the age of decadence without pleasure (The Guardian)

Interesting article on the empty hedonism of optimisation culture.

Gen Z Is Losing Confidence in the UK Economy (Bloomberg)

Can you blame them?

The Cursed Quest To Make Meta Glasses Cool (The Cut)

It’s insane to me how many influencers are putting their whole reputation on the line to get a quick bag from Meta.

It's Emily Dawn Long's World After All (Highsnobiety)

“I don’t pay for PR or whatever,” Dawn Long says. “It’s all organic.” Great feature on one of the designers of the moment. I love Emily’s DIY approach to process. I love Highsnobiety’s new editorial approach to interviews. Fun!

To listen

Summer has gently ushered me into a heavy yacht-rock phase. I start most days with NTS Radio’s breakfast show hosted by Flo Dill who also shares a love for Daryl Hall & John Oates’ 1975 self–titled album.

To notice

Travis Scott gifted the cast of The Odyssey exclusive Cactus Jack Nikes

Do we think Matt Damon is rocking his Cactus Jack x The Odyssey Nike ACG Mocs right now?

Granola – the AI meeting transcriber – launched on Apple Watch

Granola is doing a brilliant job at cultural marketing and positioning themselves as a cool tool. For this announcement they worked with London-based weaver Nowshin Prenon to make a limited-edition handmade Apple Watch strap. What’s more interesting is how AI companies are finding new form factors for their innovation. The idea of being able to just tap your wrist and have your entire conversation summarised on your phone or laptop is so much better than an entirely new product. I’m yet to see a compelling case for AI hardware.

The car manufacturer Alpine launched an ‘exclusive’ customisation showroom experience in London

This caught my eye as I was cycling by Hyde Park last week and I mistook it for a luxury clothing brand’s showroom. I don’t care about Alpine. But it’s interesting to see automotive companies continue to market themselves like a lifestyle brand through fashion adjacent pop–ups and exclusive customisation experiences. The word ‘Atelier’ feels very deliberate here.

Dua Lipa’s Service95 is curating London’s Southbank Literature Festival

In an earlier letter I flagged a brilliant essay on SSENSE about the rise of intellectual clout. This feels like the cool-girl literary crowd event of the year. Kaia Gerber, your play.

To watch

CHANEL Connects, Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter on Life After the Helmet

At some point luxury fashion houses saw Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast and thought: ‘I’d love a piece of that’. But when it’s a rare appearance from Thomas Bangalter (one half of Daft Punk), you tune in.

Recorded live at Fondation Beyeler during Art Basel, Thomas discusses the origins of Daft Punk, performance art, and his Art Basel piece ‘Warehouse Artifacts’. There are currently 54 episodes in CHANEL’s Connect podcast series. It’s cool to see luxury houses acting as curators and platforming genuinely insightful conversation with brilliant creative minds.

Some snippets:

• “Any creative act I feel is a response to the environment around you at a certain time”

• On comparing the process of Random Access Memories to a film – “It really felt like we were directing this album, almost like a director.” Over 150 people worked on the 2013 album.

• “Daft Punk and the robots it was really performance art. I’ve always thought that this [Daft Punk] was just like a very elaborate 20 years long Maria Abramovic act […] and at that point you don’t want to spoil this game between fiction and reality.”

Summer book list

Three summers too late, I’m finally reading Emma Cline’s ‘The Guest’ which has to have one of the best covers in my bookcase.

Other novels I’ve read this summer include Trust by Hernan Diaz and Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. Next in line on my bedside table include Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence and London Falling.

Professionally Curious is a reader–supported project by Strategist Harry Salmons. If you enjoyed reading this letter, subscribe for more thoughts on brand and culture.

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To read

The Fan Report (WHOOP)

Ever wondered which country drank the most during the World Cup? WHOOP knows. For the duration of the tournament, the fitness wearable brand tracked metrics like stress and sleep across different fan groups.

Eurocoded (A Color Bright)

‘For a new generation of tech companies, Europe is no longer just a headquarter location but an identity marker.’

The ‘unquantified self’ movement is rejecting wellness optimisation (Dazed)

On the flip side, Dazed writer Rachael Akhidenor identified the rising trend of anti–surveillance culture when it comes to wearable devices. I stand by the fact there’s nothing cooler than a runner who doesn’t use a watch or Strava. One day.

To listen

New Avatar, Kelela

To notice

Chelsea FC became the first football club to officially partner with Strava

A Chelsea Strava run club might be my worst nightmare.

Could skipping be the next big sports trend?

London it–girl Miquita Oliver launched ROPES — a high–end skipping rope brand. This feels like the alignment of several trends, like the premium-isation of household items and the rise of sports like yoga and pilates that offer a softer mode of exercise compared to the optimised running and HYROX bros.

I think we’re about to see a lot more brands lean into marketing and strategy content

Victoria Secret just partnered with – a trend reporter based on Instagram and Substack.

A lot of you agreed with this

It turns out girls are still looking for a guy in finance

Olivia Rodrigo’s rumoured new lover works in AI investment, and had previous roles at JP Morgan. *We don’t cover celebrity gossip on PC, but this news has me waiting for a ‘Is it embarrassing to have a boyfriend now’–like Vogue article.

Aimé Leon Dore competed in a sailing competition

Very Loro. Very Prada.

Nothing – the London-based tech brand – have a dedicated page for community

Last month they announced a competition for club night ideas with a prize of $10,000. As spotted, it looks like brands are finally putting their money where their mouth is. Palace opened Manor Place with Nike. Morning FYI and Zora annonced a £10k ‘Hardware Fund’. And A-Cold-Wall* announced a competition for creatives with London-based day festival RALLY.

Is ice the next brand trend?

‘Custom ice’ company The Nice Company Paris have worked with GANNI, Hugo Boss and Louis Vuitton.

To watch

Cole Buxton turned their recent sneaker drop into a film inspired by The Office

Humour is still such an underused device in marketing. Few brands get it right. Most take themselves too seriously.

I’m excited for this new Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe film

From writer Samy Burch and director Kent Jones. In cinemas August 7.

Professionally Curious is a reader–supported project by Strategist Harry Salmons. If you enjoyed reading this letter, subscribe for more thoughts on brand and culture.

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To read

The rise of “surveillance chic” (Embedded)

Alexa Chung has been posting outfit photos from her Ring door bell. Kate Lindsey explores why CCTV and Meta glasses are emerging as creative instruments during a time of privacy concern.

Americans are already seeing AI’s downsides (Americans on AI)

Americans on AI is a ‘biweekly survey tracking how Americans feel about artificial intelligence (AI)’ that launched two days ago on Substack. Crazy stat here: 82% of Americans say people are struggling to tell what’s real from what’s fake.

How Bending Spoons built a $23bn tech empire from struggling brands (The FT)

“This week, the business, which has morphed into a sprawling technology conglomerate through some 50 acquisitions, including AOL, Eventbrite and Vimeo, went public, raising $1.68bn from investors.”

The End of Reading Is Here (The Atlantic)

Fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Rose Horowitch explores how a literacy divide is affecting society.

Forget logos, young people in China want ‘spiritual’ luxury (CNN)
“Young city-dwellers are spending more on “lucky” accessories, crystals and Zen-inspired fashion and fragrances in an apparent bid for emotional release, however temporary.”

The Rise of Intellectual Clout (SSENSE)

In the age of doomscrolling and brainrot, J’Nae Phillips explores why deep focus and intellectualism has become aspirational.

To listen

Nirosta Steel, MY SKYSCRAPER (ULYSSA)

A new release representing 40 years or so of demos from Arthur Russell collaborator Steven Hall, a.k.a Nirosta Steel. It’s funky, weird, and super fun.

To watch

The Invite (A24)

What’s your relationship like with your neighbours? I watched this at the cinema last week and laughed a lot. Rogan, Wilde, Norton, and Cruz, all brilliant.

The Shards (Hulu)

Ryan Murphy — director of Glee and American Horror Story — is back with a limited series based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel.

Martin Weigel’s new book on lessons from the front line (YouTube)

Martin’s writing was my introduction to Strategy. His book ‘Strategy Is a Verb’ came out earlier this year. It’s a must read.

To attend

CASSIUS is returning to London

The legendary French touch DJ is playing Outernet, London, on October 31st.

Professionally Curious is a reader–supported project by Strategist Harry Salmons. If you enjoyed reading this letter, subscribe for more thoughts on brand and culture.

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Inside today’s letter, we’re discussing: Solange for Jacquemus, two note worthy raises and some quick thoughts on our yearning for collective catharsis.

Has clubbing reached peak pop culture?

Harry Styles’ Netflix special aired last night. The hour long show featured a live show recording of his new album ‘Kiss All the Time, Disco Occasionally’ that was secretly filmed in Manchester last week.

Styles has talked publicly about the dancier influences behind the new record – clubbing in Berghain during his time off, listening to Floating Points interviews and re–discovering LCD Soundsystem.

He’s not the first mainstream artist that has cited club music as being an influence recently. In fact, there’s almost a pipeline now emerging – from Beyonce’s Renaissance, to Charli XCX’s Brat, to FKA Twigs’ Eusexua, to this.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to argue that the last five years have been dominated sonically by club music.

What interested me watching, though, was just how fantastical this obsession has become. Stickers on phone cameras, throbbing synths, and strobe lights are all visual queues for the utopian vision ‘Kiss All the Time, Disco Occasionally’ represents – a version of now that’s free of surveillance, negativity and overload.

It’s a beautiful fantasy because it’s not true.

We’re not kissing all the time. Gen Z are less intimate than ever. Those that had sex in the last week has fallen from 55% in 1990 to around 37% in 2024.

We’re not even disco–ing occasionally. Financial pressure and wellness culture means we’re drinking and going out less. In the US, drinking rates hit a three-decade low at 54% in 2025 (Gallup). In major cities, nightlife is dying – London’s pubs and clubs declined at 18% from 2022-2025, says Mixmag.

KATTDO is the album of ‘soft clubbing’. A mainstream translation of subculture. A socially acceptable version of ‘letting go’.

The album will have its critics. And yet, despite all this, I still can’t help but feel it’s arrived at a time when the world needs it most.

Club culture might’ve become a caricature of itself, but the core is still in tact – a sense of collective catharsis and a chance to escape from overload.

Who cares if it’s make believe. Let the people dance.

Quick Bites

• Two note worthy raises went public today. UK sportswear startup Manors Golf raised £3M in a round led by Redrice Ventures that included tennis icon Andy Murray, and Nucleus Ventures invested in LA-based pickle brand Hot Girl Pickles.

• It hasn’t been a good week for Noma.

• The hottest seat in fashion is now the seat. Last week I wrote about why your kitchen says more about your taste than your closet. Even the designers know it.

• The ever iconic Solange fronted the latest Nike x Jacquemus ‘Moon shoe’ campaign. The low-profile sneaker trend rolls on.

• We’re all still obsessed with finance merch. In what can only be described as a who’s who of next-gen agency names, The Office of Applied Strategy (OAS), PORTO ROCHA and LA-based creative agency Mouthwash have all teamed up to rehaul Robinhood’s approach to physical product. This ‘Market Cap’ caught my eye.

But beyond the cool graphics, listen up brands – I wouldn’t be surprised if OAS’ ‘three tiered structure’ gets quickly adopted as a new best-in-class approach for how to launch merch. The following is from founder Tony Wang’s LinkedIn:

1. “A permanent collection of core products would anchor the offering.”

2. “Collaborations with brands like Waka Waka and Golden Bear that build lifestyle equity.”

3. “Marketing moment drops that tie limited releases to product launches (like creating shorts to promote the launch of short selling on the platform).”

Props to Robinhood for taking merch this seriously.

Professionally Curious is a reader–supported project by London–based Strategist Harry Salmons. If you enjoyed reading this letter, subscribe for more daily brand and culture news. Alternatively, consider upgrading your subscription for the good stuff.

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A shift has been happening in fashion. The allure of exclusivity, high prices and cultural association has cooled. Premium brands with utility have started winning.

It’s part of a wider shift. We’re valuing experiences over things and expect more from what we buy.

What that means for how we show taste is interesting. From bathroom to the kitchen, everyday spaces have entered the cultural conversation. This article explores why that matters and why it’s happening.

Fashion’s Middle Tier

In fashion, premium brands have been eating luxury’s lunch for some time.

Data from Lyst shows that customer engagement with premium brands has quadrupled between 2022 and today, and has been overtaking luxury since 2024.

Why? Middle tier brands borrowed luxury brand codes and leant on the narrative of craft but at a comparative bargain. What might’ve felt like a splurge was now a smart decision, value for money even.

The poster child of this space, Our Legacy, has seen 500% growth over the last three years.

Then other brands clocked on. Coined by BoF in their 2026 State of Fashion report, the “Elevation Game” describes the movement of brands upmarket to separate themselves from fast fashion and capture new customers from luxury.

The Taste Universe

The same thing has been happening outside of fashion.

Upgrade World describes a new brand ecosystem – one where customers have an abundance of options across multiple tiers.

Fashion used to be the primary expression of taste, but now it’s all encompassing – where you eat, how you sleep and where you go are all cultural signals.

On TikTok, ‘Spend a day with me’ and ‘What I eat in a day’ are the new ‘Outfit of the day’ videos. Your Google Maps says more about you than your wardrobe.

When everything shows taste, ‘luxury’ moves into new areas.

Today premium brands in new categories are thriving as consumers look to signal taste and status in new areas of their lives.

Aesop, the Australian luxury skincare brand known for its ritualistic products is growing its store presence at a rapid rate from 100 stores in 2016 to around 400 in 2025.

TEKLA, the Copenhagen based sleepwear brand known for its colourful stripy sheets and robes has turned rest into an aspirational lifestyle. An article in the FT earlier this year revealed the company plans to double the size of the business to €50mn by 2028. A pyjama set will set you back over £300.

Sabre, the French luxury cutlery brand has doubled its production from 2,500 to over 7,000 pieces per day. Pick your 24 piece set in pink, green or ivory colours – it’s only £234.

Then there’s food.

Whether it’s where you eat your lunch, or what’s in your fridge, it feels like people are more willing than ever to spend more to find quality.

With it’s £7 cups, distinctive colour and questionable health benefits, matcha – a primary culprit for the coining of ‘Little treat culture’ – has become a signal of discerning contemporary taste.

Even your cupboard isn’t safe from Upgrade World.

“A stacked shelf of niche, IYKYK groceries is already signalling more cultural capital than the latest It-bag,” said Harry Bainbridge, Chief Strategy Officer of Highnsobiety, in a recent newsletter.

Shoppers buying premium private-label food products increased 19% in the UK in 2025, according to Nielsen.

Why this, why now?

I think there’s a few reasons for this shift.

1. Wealthy, not rich

First, pessimism for the future has changed how we spend money, and what on.

The common path of growing up and saving for a home has been torn up. Americans now need to earn six figures to afford a median-priced house, and homeownership for 25–34 year olds in the UK has fallen to 42%. (IFS)

Young people are admitting financial defeat, taking the pipe dream of a home off the table. Economic commentator Demetri Kofinas calls this “financial nihilism” – why strive and save when it won’t be enough to make it anyway?

When people give up on homes, they have more disposable income. Those who feel “financially secure or thriving” has risen from 27% in 2024 to 31% in 2025, according to Euromonitor.

The result is a generation that lacks the life affirming assets, but is able to buy smaller, fun ones.

Instead of storing money away, Gen Z are “Life-maxxing” - prioritising quality experiences over making responsible financial decisions.

Suddenly, that Aime Leon Dore La Mazzaroco coffee machine seems to justify itself.

2. Luxury priced us out

Traditional luxury is now too expensive for the customers that once defined it.

Higher prices caused by tariff uncertainty and global logistics meant that goods that were aspirational are now fully unrealistic – between 2019 and 2025, luxury prices rose by an average of 61%, says BoF.

That’s alright for your most loyal clientele, but prices most average customers out entirely.

Combine that with the fact customers have got savvier, and it’s a recipe for reset.

When you’ve got the world’s review section in your pocket (Reddit, TikTok), you question the real value of what you’re spending on, and whether there’s a better alternative. (Cue dupe culture and a thriving second hand market.)

High prices used to signal wealth and access by filtering for a certain customer. Now luxury’s value is being questioned. The same State of Fashion report reveals 35% of aspirational luxury customers have delayed or pulled back on spending.

3. Status shift

Platforms like Instagram democratized knowledge – what to buy, where to go, what’s hot.

But when anyone can buy their way to status, it disintegrates. As David Marx explains in his book ‘Status and Culture’, “If everyone can go to the VIP room, it’s not a VIP room.”

In 2016, having taste was as simple as buying Supreme. In 2026 it’s a collage – your gym subscription, the music you listen to, and your neighborhood are all signals.

The future of taste

The rise of premium brands in every corner of our lives suggests that both the definition of luxury and how we display taste has changed.

Luxury shifted from something consumed to something felt. It’s more than what we buy – it’s how we feel, what we consume, and how we spend free time.

But also our multifaceted lives became a canvas for cultural taste. Status signals leaked into our hobbies and our spare time.

A candle. An ingredient. A pillow case.

Luxury used to be fueled by the irrational desire created by brand image. Now it comes from superior experience.

It’s now goodbye to ROI, and hello ROJ (“Return on Joy”).

The new luxury customer isn’t after a Birkin bag that triples in value – they want a luxurious life made by lots of nice things.

Professionally Curious is a sporadic letter covering the crossroads of brand, culture, and beyond from the desk of London based Strategist Harry Salmons.

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Included on the menu today: Trackstar’s podcast debut, CAVA’s dating show, and Dua Lipa’s new side hustle.

The viral Instagram music show Trackstar is launching its first podcast

• Trackstar, the viral music show that asks your favourite artists whether they can name this song for ten bucks, is expanding their channel strategy through weekly long-form audio podcasts.

• In what will surely become a repeatable content format, the show’s first episode dives into ‘A History of Punk Rock in 10 Songs’ through a conversation with New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh.

• Electric car company Rivian have joined the show as title sponsor.

• Trackstar is part of Public Opinion, a New York based media company from ex-Casey Neistat studio manager Jack Coyne. To date, the show has interviewed celebrities like Kamala Harris, Olivia Rodrigo and Ed Sheeran.

• This is symptomatic of a wider media shift, with creators like Coyne attracting the attention, and subsequent revenues, to build fully-fledged media companies.

CAVA, the company behind America’s favourite Mediterranean ‘slop bowl’, announced its own dating show

• The ‘Bowlmates Dating Show’ is a short-form content series ‘where two singles come to CAVA and build eachother a bowl based on dating questions’. New episodes will drop every Thursday.

• The show will be hosted by comedian Daniela Mora, who has a following of 311K on Instagram.

• This is a smart move: together, Gen Z and millenials make up 58% of Cava’s customer base, while approximately 76% of Gen Z consume reality TV.

• Clearly inspired by formats like Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Dates, it’s part of a wider shift of brand pivoting from advertising to entertainment – ICYMI this week, Gucci announced their latest collection through a film directed by Spike Jonze.

In other news

• Dua Lipa joined at-home fitness company Frame as a Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer. Following the likes of Peloton, Frame is described as ‘the first at-home, digitally–connected Pilates Reformer’ – for only $4,999 plus shipping and a monthly subscription of $39.99, you can do your pilates work out at home through digitally streamed classes.

  

  Having raised $5 million in seed funding in 2021 through investors like Mark Mastrov (24 Hour Fitness) and Jim Rowley (Crunch Fitness), the company is now looking to Dua as part of a wider push to launch standalone studios and grow its presence in leading hotels, according to Athletech News. The news was revealed in a Vogue article titled ‘Dua Lipa on Her Abs and Living Life as Vacation’.

• London fashion brand KNWLS unveiled a Nike collaboration as part of its SS26 “Synergy” collection that debuted as Milan Fashion Week. The highlight is the ‘Razr’ bag that references Nike’s original waffle sole (below).

• Remember that music device the controversy shrouded Ye made? It was called Stem Player, and now the team is back making noise again. Last week, as part of London Design Festival, they took over Galleria Objets in East London to share “Stem2” – a Bluetooth speaker that allows you to remix music as it’s playing out loud, launching in October.

• The publication i-D is now on Substack. The Editor in Chief Thom Bettridge has been pretty bullish on the publication. In the post announcing their arrival to the platform, he explained that “if Terry and Tricia Jones were starting i-D in 2025 (rather than 1980), it probably would have been a Substack.”

• OpenAI wants to become your personal asistant. Today the company rolled out a preview of ChatGPT Pulse for its Pro users – ‘a new experience where ChatGPT proactively does research to deliver personalised updates based on your chats, feedback, and connected apps.’

Harry Salmons is a Strategist based in London. If you enjoyed this letter, subscribe for more daily brand and culture news or considering sharing this letter with a friend.

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All across London this morning, people were thinking to themselves ‘I should really buy that new winter coat’. After a warm summer, the city hit a brisk 10 degrees during the early hours. I think it might be time to pick up that Mfpen Installation Coat that managed to escape me last year.

In today’s letter, we cover: OpenAI and Nvidia teaming up, that NikeSKIMS drop and a potential hot IPO.

Nvidia announces investment of ‘up to $100 billion’ in OpenAI

• The deal will allow OpenAI to “build and deploy at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers with NVIDIA systems representing millions of GPUs,” representing a potentially massive leap in AI compute capacity.

• A significant rise in compute power aims to bring OpenAI closer to their goal of superintelligence and scaling “the benefits of this technology to everyone,” says Co-founder Greg Brockman.

• This is one of the largest strategic partnerships in the artificial intelligence industry to date. The first phase will “come online in the second half of 2026.”

• Nvidia’s market cap is currently around 8.7x bigger than OpenAI’s ($4.37 trillion, compared to $500 billion).

• In other AI news, creative agency Mother are getting great reviews for this recent ad for Claude by Anthropic.

It’s been a popcorn-worthy few days in fashion. Here’s what’s happened:

• Nike and SKIMS revealed the first NikeSKIMS collection. First announced in February (Nike shares rose 6.2% as a result), the collection was originally expected to launch in spring 2025 before being postponed to later in the year. When the news broke I wondered why Nike couldn’t have done something similar on their own, but the signature colours, styling and quality look like they’ve come together well here. To see how it performs we’ll have to wait until September 26.

  

• Today, we got the first signs of what a post-Anderson Loewe will look like under new Creative Directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez (founders of Proenza Schouler). “Ahead of our first LOEWE collection, this teaser stands as an opening gesture, the outset of a new dialogue,” they told the media.

• Demna got things moving at Gucci. The ex-Balenciaga Creative Director unveiled his first collection for the Italian house. Dubbed "La Famiglia", it features a quirky cast of archetypal Italian characters surrounded by whimsy decorative frames. This was quickly followed up by the announcement of ‘The Tiger’ — a short-film directed by Spike Jonze featuring stars Demi Moore, Edward Norton, Kendall Jenner, and Alex Consani. At the moment, we don’t know much other than it streams live tonight from Gucci’s channels at 12 a.m. CEST, and it will presumably feature the new collection. The first reception of Demna’s Gucci feels positive and I’m looking forward to his runway debut early next year.

Quick Hits

• The athlete-tracking app Strava is reportedly investigating an IPO.

• Super wide videos are going viral on Instagram. Poppi, HBO and TBPN have all posted in the last 24 hours with posts that are in a 5120 x 1080 format.

• On teamed up with Beams and REI Co-op, the American outdoor and athletic gear retailer.

• Brockhampton’s album ‘Iridescence’ dropped 7 years ago.

• Daft Punk are re-uniting… for an in-game concert in Fortnite. (Seriously, if this isn’t rage bait I don’t know what is).

Harry Salmons is a Strategist based in London. If you got this far, consider upgrading your subscription. It costs the same as a coffee and you’ll receive exclusive posts going forward.

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Today we’re talking about: brands leaning into public model castings, the media expansion of one of Substack’s favourite pages, and Conde Nast’s entrance into tech.

Substack royalty Emily Sundberg is launching a podcast

• Sundberg announced the news at Axios Media Trends Live on Thursday.

• A teaser episode for “Expense Account”, a food podcast hosted by contributing Feed Me writer J Lee, aired yesterday.

• The news is further proof of a changing media landscape where individuals are evolving into media companies.

• As a paid subscriber to Feed Me (which now has over 150,000 subscribers), I’m excited to see what verticals are next for the company, which is increasingly acting like a disruptive independent studio.

Condé Nast are becoming a tech company

• This week the media company announced ‘Vette’, a creator-led shopping platform launching early 2026.

• The platform will allow influencers, editors and tastemakers to manage storefronts without holding inventory, with brands handling fulfilment and Vette managing checkout and logistics.

• The news signals a strategic pivot for Condé as both the media and retail landscapes face continued disruption from creators. Elsewhere, Phia, a price comparison platform co-founded by Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe, has secured $8 Million dollars of funding through an investment round that featured Hailey Bieber.

Oakley introduce “Athlete Intellegence”

• The eyewear brand unveiled the new AI powered platform alongside their Meta Vanguard glasses at Meta Connect 2025 this week as part of their ongoing partnership.

• “Athlete Intellegence” is marketed as a world first in performance tech, featuring real-time health tracking, personalised coaching, and Strava integration.

• The Vanguard shades also include a 12MP ultra-wide camera, and open-ear speakers, and retail for $499.

• With the RayBan Meta glasses remaining somewhat of a damp cultural hit amongst select influencers, I’m skeptical about these.

I’m noticing a lot of brands doing public castings

• Today at Slam Jam’s Milan art space Spazio Maiocchi, Nike and the Italian retailer are presenting “the second chapter of their exploration into football fandom culture”, through a showcase of the T90 apparel they’ve been teasing.

• Part of the event includes “a public casting call open to the Milanese community”, which will offer attendees a chance to be cast in the campaign, directed by the legendary Dutch artist duo Exactitudes.

• Across the pond, Fugazi, the New York based brand founded by Trevor Gorji, announced an open casting call for models to walk in their “Workhouse” runway show happening tomorrow in Greenpoint.

• Public castings provide an authentic, low friction way for these brands to involve their respective communities in real life, removing the barrier between company and consumer.

Quick Hits

• H&M have the most followed organic branded playlist on Spotify globally, Music Director Bianca Franklin revealed on LinkedIn. As part of London Fashion Week the brand hosted the latest edition of their global music series, ‘H&M&180’ last night in London at 180 Studios, featuring performances from Lola Young.

• British singer Olivia Dean is the new face of Burberry Her parfum.

• JW Anderson collaborated with Google Pixel on an AI generated ad deploying ‘Nano Banana’, their “Revolutionary AI Image Generator.” This feels very Jacquemus to me. It’s a big win for Google’s marketing team who will be desperately trying to show that AI can be cool.

• Lululemon’s sales are continuing to fall.

• Big news for performative men: Clairo has a new record label. The artist announced her deal with Atlantic Records yesterday, where she joins artists like Charli XCX and FKA twigs.

• Is culture cooked? I think a lot of people will resonate with this from Heron Preston.

• Today I discovered Apple have a profile on Figma. It’s an interesting move for the tech company who continue to embrace new media.

Shoe News

• Remember those 3D printed flip-flops from Zellerfeld and Havianas? They’re dropping at Dover Street Market Paris on September 25 for $89 USD.

• Ex-Dior and current Louis Vuitton footwear designer Thibo Dennis is teaming up with Birkenstock to remix their lesser-known 1774 model

Harry Salmons is a Strategist based in London. If you got this far, consider upgrading your subscription. It costs the same as a coffee and you’ll receive exclusive posts going forward.

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In Today’s Newsletter

• Sportswear brands are fighting it out with films.

• 2026’s most anticipated new album.

• A must-see exhibition in Paris.

The long-form content battle is heating up amongst sportswear brands.

In June, Nike made headlines for ‘Breaking 4’, a live-streamed world-record attempt featuring world champion runner Faith Kipyegon as she aimed to become the first female to break the four minute mile.

Forbes dubbed it a ‘branding moonshot’ — the term used when a company “invests in an audacious, high-risk campaign designed to redefine cultural narratives, not just market share.”

Through ‘Breaking 4’, Nike not only re-asserted their position at the peak of human technical performance, but also proved that through long-form content and live-streamed events, global sportswear brands could compete with the likes of Netflix for entertainment value.

Brands have realised the value in YouTube and are leaning in. The platform had 2.7 billion monthly users as of 2025, and in the UK is now only second to the BBC as the nation’s most-watched media service, according to Ofcom's Media Nations 2025 report.

Beyond the chance to reach millions of people, YouTube allows brands to connect with audiences on a deeper level through premium content that feels less like a throwaway Instagram Reel and more like cinema.

Nike’s interest in that clear. While ads like ‘Why Do It’ show-off the ability for the brand to inspire in under a minute, new formats and series look to entertain in a deeper sense. Two months ago, the Swoosh posted a seventeen-minute documentary tracing the history of their collaboration with artist Tom Sachs. Then there’s ‘SWOOSH TC’ — a new vlog-like series with that follows elite female athletes like Keely Hodgkinson during their training block.

Just when it looked like Nike were running ahead, though, Adidas responded.

Today the Three Stripes posted their own mini film documenting an equally awesome feat. “Chasing 100” (which, coincidentally, sounds a lot like “Breaking 4”), documents five world-class ultra athletes as they attempt to break the 100km (62.1 miles) barrier in under six hours.

The film concludes with Sibusiso Kubheka completing the race in 5:59:20, making him the first person in history to achieve a sub-6-hour 100km (and shattering the previous record by over six minutes). It’s an epic story of innovation, human determination, and sporting triumph.

So, what can we make of this?

I ran a quick GPT analysis and found that 41% of Nike’s and 79% of Adidas’s YouTube videos in the last 6 months were over 3 minutes long.

As brands continue to lean into the value long-form content provides, we’ll see them up the budget, the duration and the scale of the spectacle. If ‘Breaking 4’ and ‘Chasing 100’ were challenges with content attached, it doesn’t feel long until we’ll see sportswear brands follow the lead of LVMH and Saint Laurent in creating their own production studios in order to support their production of cinema-worthy entertainment.

Giorgio Armani’s will includes partial sale or IPO of fashion empire

Following the designer’s death on September 4, Italian media revealed directions to heirs of the company to sell a 15% stake of the fashion empire within 18 months, preferably to major players like LVMH, Essilor-Luxottica, or L'Oréal.

It goes on to mention that an additional 30% to 54.9% stake should be sold to the same buyer within three to five years after his passing, and that if such a sale cannot be accomplished, the company should seek an IPO in Italy or on a comparable stock market as an alternative.

With Armani turning over a reported €2.3 billion in 2024 and luxury fashion houses often trading at 2–4× revenue for private acquisitions, we can assume that a 15% stake would fetch in the region of €1B.

What the future of the business will look like without the iconic founder at the helm, though, is still unclear. As Mr Armani reflected in 10 Magazine:

“I’m a control freak. I would like to give everyone I see a makeover, and I have the last word on everything […] you can rest assured that I will be here monitoring everything, directing everything, getting angry if something is done poorly and rejoicing over success until I can no longer.”

Other News

• Gorillaz announced their new album ‘The Mountain’. The band’s ninth studio album comes with a stacked features list that includes Asha Puthli, Bobby Womack, and Johnny Marr. The catch? It won’t be out until March 20, 2026. A UK tour starts the day after.

• The first major retrospective of Virgil Abloh’s archive comes to Paris later this month. The exhibition “Virgil Abloh: The Codes” will showcase hundreds of objects, prototypes and and personal artefacts from the late designer’s archives which spans nearly two decades of output. The show is curated by long-time Virgil collaborator Mahfuz Sultan, who is now co-director of the archive, which I noticed now has it’s own Instagram page. GQ’s Sam Hine already did an amazing story on this. Details: Grand Palais, Rotonde Clemenceau, 1 Place Clemenceau, 75008 Paris. 30th September - 10th October.

• I can’t stop listening to Nourished By Time’s new record. “The Passionate Ones” is the second studio album from the Baltimore native, and his first with XL Recordings. “When The War Is Over”, “Tossed Away” and “It’s Time” are personal favourites.

Harry Salmons is a Strategist based in London. If you got this far, consider upgrading your subscription. It costs the same as a coffee and you’ll receive exclusive posts going forward.

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In Today’s Newsletter

• The next big band from London.

• It’s time to dig out your old Vans.

• The Apple product people missed this week.

Mr Porter are now exclusively stocking Aimé Leon Dore

Fans of the brand on Reddit broke the news around what potentially spells a big change in direction for the New York based brand. ALD had brief stints with wholesale doors like KITH before closing them down around 2021 to focus on DTC instead. The fact it’s running back to the same stores it walked away from usually spells financial difficulty, except, fresh off the back of LVMH investment, this seems unlikely.

Fan reaction has been surprisingly positive — some are excited about the prospect of the brand being part of Mr Porter's sales events, receiving superior customer service and free shipping or having the chance to buy the brand from Europe. I’ll be interested to see whether ALD expands out its wholesale network as time goes on.

No one’s talking about Apple leaning into fashion

Alongside the release of its iPhone 17, Air and 17 Pro models earlier this week, the tech giant quietly dropped the ‘Crossbody Strap’. The attachment made from recycled PET yarns and sliding steel magnets costs £59 and is available in 10 different colours.

With iPhone sales slowing, this fits into Apple’s larger strategy to flex their position in culture. In the last year alone, we’ve seen them release a film with rapper Stormzy, receive EMMY Awards for their Apple TV programmes, expand their Arcade gaming service, and put pop-culture figures like Dua Lipa centre stage of their product releases via Instagram.

Alongside music, gaming and film, fashion feels like a logical category to expand into. First came the merch collections, now they’re leaning into trends — searches for ‘mobile phone charm’ up 21% the past year according to Glimpse.

Other News

• You should listen to Dove Ellis before everybody else does. The Irish band based in London just released their first single “To The Sandals” on Spotify, and will support Geese on their upcoming US Tour. You’ll find them on the cover of Spotify’s Indie Fresh Finds playlist today.

  

• Paris retailer The Broken Arm just released the hiking boot of the year. The ‘X Pastoral’ boot with Salomon is the latest iteration of their collaboration and marks 10 years of working with the French brand. The fact a tier 0 fashion retailer can get away with releasing a hiking boot and no one bats an eye lid is testament to how hot hiking is right now. The mix of time spent offline, styling possibilites, travel appeal and health benefits have meant that I’ve seen far more of the running crowd switching their marathons for holidays in the Dolomites this summer.

• The Or, a branch of creative agency Mother, did the viral Lime OOH ad I predicted in my last newsletter. Since TFL strikes hit London, use of the electric bike service has risen by 50%.

  

• The humble Vans Authentic is back. Mac Demarco’s cooked pair took centre stage in a feature on , meanswear bloggers like Jake Woolf are wearing them again, and Japanese tennis brand Setinn recently teamed up on one of the shoes of the summer. This feeds nicely into an article I read on Dazed about basic being the new punk. As we reach trend saturation, people want products that feel like good value for money, look good and last.

Harry Salmons is a Strategist based in London. Professionally Curious is free for now, but won’t be forever. If you got this far, consider upgrading your subscription. It costs the same as a coffee and you’ll receive exclusive posts going forward.

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Today is officially the best week in London to own a bike. With TFL strikes in full swing and chaos ensuing over the city, this feels like the perfect time for Uncommon Creative Studio to create a generational campaign for Lime Bike. You heard it here first.

In Today’s Newsletter

• Drake’s latest sport fixation.

• A VC firm moved to Substack.

• Jacquemus’ new shoe.

• A young director to watch.

Drake Wants To Make Cricket Cool

Drake’s Nike sub-brand NOCTA announced their Fall 2025 collection earlier today with a campaign shot in Antigua featuring cricket pads, helmets and whites. The reception was, expectedly, mixed:

Drake’s long been an advocate of niche sports. Last year, the rapper appeared on the cover of fly fishing magazine ‘The Drake’, and recent NOCTA campaigns have revolved around activities like sky diving, boxing, motor sports and basketball.

It feels like Nike are using the brand as somewhat of a litmus test for the cultural-heat surrounding these sports. Whether it works is another conversation — with its identity changing so often, I’m still not really sure what NOCTA is.

Gen-Z Favourite Laufey Is the New Face Of Everlane

The American brand is betting on the Icelandic Gen-Z star as part of its effort to “shed its previous identity as a nondescript basics maker”, according to a BoF report this morning.

Crucially for Everlane, they managed to avoid an On Running Zendaya situation, with Laufey announcing the news to her 7 million followers on Instagram.

American Playwright and Actor Jeremy O’Harris Launches Production Company

BB2 Media will aim “to platform new voices and talents” across a variety of formats and genres. Amongst the company’s first projects will be Erupcja — an indie drama set in Warsaw starring CharliXCX — and The Wives, described as “a cinematic take on the Real Housewives multiverse” starring Jennifer Lawrence. Not a bad start.

Other Links

• Everyone is going to be buying this new Jacquemus x Nike shoe, which looks like a combination of Prada’s Collapse sneaker and a Nike Waffle racer. Is this the final boss moment for the flat sneaker trend?

• What are you doing on the 24th September? I’ll be tuning into a livestream with Jony Ive talking about drawing with the Royal Drawing School.

• Tom Emmerson might be the hottest director on the planet right now. Fresh off a music video gig with Bakar, he’s now behind Depop’s recent ad.

• Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) quietly moved to Substack recently. The venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, California have kicked off with a series of videos, like “The Little Tech Agenda for AI” and “Is Non-Consensus Investing Overrated?”

• The latest Paul Smith collection was shot in a fish shop in Notting Hill. The brand will take over the space for a month long campaign. No further details are available right now, but I’m curious about the smells going on here.

Harry Salmons is a Strategist based in London. Professionally Curious is free for now, but won’t be forever. If you got this far, consider upgrading your subscription — it costs the same as a coffee and you’ll receive exclusive posts going forward.

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After a brief hiatus, Professionally Curious is back for real this time, along with a fresh new look. I hope you enjoy this round-up of news items and things I found interesting recently. Do stick around.

In Today’s Newsletter

• Your favourite magazine just put a baby on the cover.

• The next big running accessory.

• Are tennis clothes fun again?

• The London based pie company is going global.

UNNA are bringing shoe charms to running

Founded in Sweden by John-Ruben Holtback during the pandemic, the playful running brand has become a firm favourite of the fashion x running crowd over the years. Now it’s teaming up with HOKA on a Speedgoat 2 trail shoe, (Holtback’s ‘favorite and go-to trail shoe for the last six years’).

More interesting, though, are the caterpillar shoe charms that come with it. Described by both brands a “a symbol of beauty in the process,” the bugs attach to the laces to bring a fun pop of colour to the shoe. This feels like a smart move that combines the softer, more fun side of performance that On Running have been pushing with the trend for customisation shown by the obsession with Labubus, bag charms and customisation recently.

As fashion x running reaches saturation point, I think we’ll see the rise of smaller, more unique products like this, as well as brands pushing customisation.

London pie shop Willy’s Pies is raising investment

Founded by Will Lewis (ex-chef at BRAT, St. John, and Rochelle Canteen) in 2020, the company is now looking to raise money to support a move to a 10,000 Sq. Ft factory that will increase their production by 10x.

Willy’s are currently sold by football clubs like Arsenal and Norwich (Ian Wright is a stakeholder), are stocked by delivery service Ocado and have appeared in Wagamamas through special menu collaborations. I’m yet to try one.

Nike are having fun on the court (again)

I had two main thoughts during Sunday’s US Open final: 1) This is a Nike marketing dream, 2) They’re actually making the most of it.

In a recent article I wrote with edition+partners I complained about the lack of creative risks the major sportswear brands are taking on the court. Recent looks have felt copy paste, boring, and safe. Meanwhile, the tennis fan and casual player has evolved, taking cues from subcultures like fashion and music or sports like running and football. The result? A disconnect between the brands representing the sport and the people playing it.

Over the course of the US Open though, brands woke up. Sunday’s match was as much of a final as it was a branding exercise, with Sinner and Alcaraz taking on distinct personas through Nike’s bold-kits and styling. For Sinner, a preppy collar. For Alcaraz, a bright pink tank top reminiscent of sporting rebels like Agassi or Beckham. Fire and ice. Nadal v Federer.

Tennis, it feels, is fun again. From Venus Williams’ custom ERL racquet bag to Musetti’s Bottega Veneta jacket, the US Open felt the most ‘fashion’ it’s ever been. As the pro game attracts more eyes, I’m betting big on brands and players teaming up to create these moments.

Manors are serving up a masterclass for how to roll out a collection

The London-based sportswear brand are investing heavily in longer form, cinematic content and it’s paying off: fresh off the back of a standout collaboration with Reebok, the company’s Instagram page is almost at 100k followers.

Other links

• Dior and Alaïa are teaming up for a joint exhibition. Hosted at La Galerie Dior, it will featured 100 pieces from Alaïa's secret 600-piece vintage Dior collection, and will run from November 20 to May 3, 2026.

• i-D’s newest cover star is an eight month old baby. The issue focuses on the ‘Beta’ generation — “the name for people born in 2025 or later.”

• Our Legacy are teaming up with Converse again.

• Turnstile are the cover stars of Highsnobiety’s revamped magazine.

• One of London’s hottest bands, Bar Italia, went on the podcast How Long Gone. Their lead singer, Nina, is very funny. I’m excited for their album coming out next month.

Harry Salmons is a Strategist based in London. Professionally Curious is free for now, but won’t be forever. If you got this far, consider upgrading your subscription — it costs the same as a coffee and you’ll receive exclusive posts going forward.

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Munich’s pop up ‘Adele Arena’ set to be bigger than Glastonbury

Rob Abelow shared some crazy details on X this week about Adele’s upcoming concert series in Munich later this month. The singer will play ten shows over 30 days in the ‘Adele Arena' - a pop-up stadium with a capacity of over 80,000 and costing over $130m, becoming the biggest concert event of all time. Beyond the stadium, an “Adele World” themed outdoor environment will feature a pub, wine bars and even a second stage.

If there’s one thing Taylor Swift’s Eras tour has shown it’s that our demand for spectacle has perfectly coincided with both a post-COVID appreciation of real life experience and the peak stardom of some of the biggest artists of all time. And that means big money. “Adele world” is expected to fetch an eye watering $230m, almost 6x more than the world’s biggest arts and culture festival, Glastonbury, turns over in a year.

Crucially, for artists this provides the chance to have control over a whole experience rather than just live shows. It’s no longer a concert, it’s a day spent in an artist’s world from home to the event and back again. Rob predicts we’ll see much more of this as massive global artists leverage their IP into ambitious world-building experiences that go beyond just a live show. I agree.

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Why your favourite skate brand wasn’t at the Olympics, BoF

Was I the only one wondering where Palace, Dime or Supreme were at the Olympics skateboarding this week? Cool read here from BoF’s Lei Takahashi breaking down why skateboarding is fundamentally at odds with the world’s biggest stage. Strict kit sponsorship guidelines and the lack of interest from die-hard skating audiences who are more focused on local scenes are just two reasons why many cult skate brands have been alienated from sponsoring teams during the event. Hoping this changes at LA 2028.

It’s not just you. Nobody is being invited to house parties anymore, FT

What happened to house parties? The opening of ‘House Party’, a club based on a real house in Soho, London backed by Stormzy, might tell a wider story about the death of the house party as a cultural phenomena. 

Today the majority of young people are unable to afford to move out due to extortionate prices and the minority who can are terrified of being spat out back onto the housing ladder. Combine that with the fact that Gen Z are far less interested in partying (44% of 18-24 year olds drink alcohol alternatives and 41% of American high schoolers say they have never attended a house party), and the house party has become a dying art. 

‘Soho’s House Party is the swan song, or perhaps the dying whale noise, for real house party culture, whose demise has long been prophesied’ writes Róisín Lanigan.

The next big item for luxury brands? Ties, WSJ

Interesting article from Jessica Salter this week about the increase in popularity of luxury ties. The rise of tie wearing amongst the creative class of late is a classic story of subverting traditional norms and recontextualising it - something we’ve seen with relaxed suiting, loafers and boat shoes this year. The result? Mr Porter reports that tie sales are up by 26% so far in 2024 year-over-year. Off to raid my Dad’s closet. 

Gen Z are changing gym culture, Business Insider

The massive role exercise plays in Gen Z’s lives is putting pressure on gyms to reconsider their business models, according to Business Insider. Gen Z are more gym obsessed than any other generation, with more than 50% saying fitness is a very high priority for them compared to 23% of adults, according to McKinsey. 

Weightlifting has become especially popular as ‘gymfluencers’ and ‘grindset’ gurus project their lifestyle online, leading to a lack of equipment and wait times for weight zones. Combine this with the fact more people are using exercise facilities as social spaces to remedy a decline in third spaces and it’s putting real strain on gyms to keep up with the demands of their younger members, says Eve Upton-Clark.

Turns out your AI ‘Friend’ isn’t an actual friend, Embdedded

You might’ve seen ‘Friend’, the AI powered companion that looks a lot like if Apple did a necklace, announced via a viral video last week. The company, founded by Web developer Avi Schiffmann, used the rumoured purchase of the custom domain friend.com for $1.3M as part of an insane marketing push for the dystopian invention. Embedded on Substack managed to put into words exactly my thoughts on this: in a world where there’s an app for everything, despite the promise of companionship, it ‘does nothing for our relationships with other people, besides isolating us further.’

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Malls are dead but mall brands are thriving, Highsnobiety

With shopping centres disappearing all over the world over the last decade due to the rise of E-Commerce, it appears that heritage brands have finally adapted to where their customer is: online. A series of creative rehauls and strategic collaborations, from Brendon Babenzien’s appointment at J Crew to GAP’s collaborations with Sean Wotherspoon and Mad Happy, paired with the likes of Abercrombie’s ability to harness TikTok and UGC has meant that boring, heritage mall brands are hotter than ever, writes Jake Silbert. Despite the recent market shock, Abercrombie’s share price is still up a staggering 244% year to date.

Quick Links

• Sporty and Rich founder Emily Oberg is launching a sexual wellness brand

• Teenage engineering release ‘The world’s first medieval electronic instrument’

• Drake drops 100GB of archive material

• Asics take over Kismet for Copenhagen FW

• The World’s Fastest Man Wants His Own Signature Adidas Shoe

• Is resale cooked?

Listening Room

• Nala Sinephro, ‘Continuum 1’

• Beabadobee, ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’

See you again next week.

H

Today’s post will be a new format I’m trying. I’ll share what I’ve been reading, watching and generally observing from the week, straight to your inbox every (other?) Friday afternoon. Let me know if you enjoy.

Brat has become a Warholian experiment

It feels like practically every marketer has written about CharliXCX’s ‘Brat’ at some point in the last few months. Here are my thoughts on where we are now.

It’s closer an art project than music. Everyone, from Vice President Kamala Harris to your friend’s sister, has become a contributor to it; ‘Brat’, a word that now means everything and nothing at the same time.

Last week, in a crowd of just 100 people, I saw Toro Y Moi DJ at Cafe 1001 in London. Before ending with tracks from his anticipated new album ‘Hole Erth’ (it’s sounding really good), Toro played through a track-list not even his biggest fans could’ve predicted, from Alice Deejay ‘Better Off Alone’ to Kanye’s ‘Slow Jamz’.

But by far the best moment was when he spinned ‘365’. People screamed as it was mixed in. A guy jumped on a table in the back. People generally went crazy. For some of us, it was the first time hearing the music in the environment Charli had intended for - not on TikTok, not in AirPods, but in the club. It really worked. In part because the track’s great, but also because everyone there unanimously realised that they were witnessing and contributing to a cultural moment, in real time. And Charli wasn’t even there.

I’ve arrived at the word ‘Warholian’ to describe that feeling - a word that typically refers to something ‘pertaining to Andy Warhol, or his style or works’, but feels equally apt to describe the era of celebrity he came to represent, and one where culture seemed to be at it’s most ‘performed’. It was a time of heady stardom, from Mick Jagger and Cher to David Bowie, and one where culture was being shaped in front of everyone’s eyes. Simply put, if you weren’t at the parties, if you weren’t being photographed, then you weren’t part of it.

This reminds me a lot of the phase of social media we’re living through now. We all want to participate in culture, and we want to be seen to be doing so. Young people are experiencing a real post COVID urge to be part of something real, matched by the frustration that the pace of life doesn’t match the algorithms on their screens. It also explains why events and physical activations feel like they’re approaching peak again, from run clubs to denim exchanges.

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Charli understands this. If her New York Boiler Room was the defining Studio 54 moment (not least because it was attended by a proto-Warholian clique of Julia Fox and Addison Rae and fictionalised through rumours of excessive drug use), then ‘Brat’ is Blondie’s ‘Parallel Lines’ or Donna Summer’s ‘Bad Girls’ — a soundtrack to a cultural moment that (unlike an exclusive club) has no barrier to entry.

But as it happens, neither does a colour (#8ace00), a dance, a digitally native lifestyle (‘Brat girl’), or your ability to follow an ever evolving cast, from George to AG Cook. The last few months have shown anyone (literally, anyone - Kamala) can participate in ‘Brat’. It’s up to you to decide to what degree.

I’ve been thinking about music projects on a scale of dimensionality, with Brat breaking into the ‘4D’ bucket:

1. 2D: Music played to an audience. Pretty transactional. Exists as a listening experience, bound to real time.

2. 3D: TikTok and digital channels allow music to be re-contextualised through remixes and user generated video. Ie. TikTok dances. Exists as music with added layer of performance. No longer bound to real time.

3. 4D: The creation of an artistic world where the music is not as important as the idea it communicates. It exists as several things at once across both real and recorded time.

Brat’s longevity is down to its ‘4D’ approach that contrasts ‘2D’ streaming. By co-creating the initial release with her fans through IRL events, Charli engineered momentum around the invention and distribution of cultural codes, from the expert (knowing who The Dare is and using a Bic lighter) to the amateur (the word ‘Brat’ and shade of green). And unlike the former that require a level of intel, the latter are easier to grasp, taking on new meaning as they expand into the corners of popular culture.

This idea of letting go of the outcome is more common in art than music, and something Charli deliberately looked to explore with this project. Consider Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Creative Act’ speech from 1961:

“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

Very Brat.

So here we are. By creating a project that absorbs its own reception into its final form, Charli has created a Warholian cultural moment that feeds off contributions to keep it burning.

Toro playing ‘365’ was just another match on the fire.

The confusing popularity of brands with no ‘brand’

I’ve noticed a real rise of companies with great product but no obvious ‘brand’ recently. For someone who’s always been interested in the power brands have in our lives, I’ve honestly confused myself by being drawn in by some of these.

I have two in mind that won’t be named. Both have nailed their proposition - minimalist clothing, cropped silhouettes, pleated trousers, clean E-com imagery. It’s hard to disagree with. It’s timely, looks like good quality, and one even offers speedy 48 hour delivery. But you’d find it difficult to find a clear origin story to get excited about, content worth following for, or even find a community of fans online. They kind of just, sell?

I think this comes down to a general shift we’re seeing in product being the new black again, something we wrote about at SOTA recently. If your product is superior (whether that be in quality, trend timing or shipping speed), then it’s got a pretty good chance against an inferior one in a nice brand wrapper. This feeds into a wider tangent about consumers being smarter than they’ve ever been. Recent studies show 74% of Gen Z internet users use TikTok for search, including for reviews that inform a purchase decision.

What’s maybe more interesting is what this means for the state of ‘brand’ today. Nike’s recent downturn has been fascinating and provides good evidence that today having the strongest brand in the world can only get you so far. With so many other factors in the equation for success (On’s technological developments have been matched by their clever approach to wholesale accounts), does it really matter like it used to?

Of course it does. But in a year of tight budgets, more brands will be looking to put their marketing spend towards product innovation, supply chain etc. before taking big swings.

Side note: I’ve enjoyed watching Nike and Adidas battle it out with their Olympics campaigns on the billboards here in London. Excellent analysis of Nike’s new global effort here.

The curse of the mainstream death cycle

I’ve tactically put this point last to avoid Brat burn-out. But I am curious about the recent declaration of Brat summer dying an early death (the irony here is that speculation around its ending has prolonged its cultural lifespan?). This debate might’ve temporarily been put on hold with Billie Eilish’s ‘Guess’ remix, but there’s a wider conversation here around the loss in meaning that occurs when ideas go from niche to mainstream, something that’s happening repeatedly, and at record pace nowadays.

The predicted death of Brat summer is classic gate-keeping, a snobbery about its cultural IP getting in the hands of people fans don’t want involved. But when everyone from your mum to BBC News is discussing something that was born out of an 'IYKYK’ sensibility and inspired by niche hyper-online subcultures in Dalston and Bushwick, do we really expect it to keep its authenticity?

This X user commenting on Spotify’s ‘brat summer’ playlist put it perfectly:

*Insert wider conversation about the death of niches here.*

The speed at which the internet can take ideas from being small to mass has become pretty insane. It’s maybe unsurprising that 91% of Gen Z believe that mainstream culture no longer exists. Adidas Sambas, Salomon and Brat are all niche products that have expanded out of their original pockets of culture to become something new.

What’s the problem here? As I wrote for SOTA a few weeks ago, it’s becoming increasingly harder for smaller brands to know when and who to open their doors to. The difference between leaning into commercial success or not can be a matter of life or death for a brand, but so can the strain it puts on their cultural clout when it goes wrong.

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Stussy, a brand founded in 1984 for hardcore surfers and skaters, now has a queue around the block of teenage girls who’ve found the brand through TikTok. My cousin, aged 12, knows what Corteiz is. That’s pretty unimaginable compared to even the peak of Supreme in London in, say 2015, when if you were outside of the culture, no one really cared.

Whether you’re CharliXCX or Supreme, I think it comes down to being intentional with your goal, knowing your core customer inside out and being open to pivot only when it makes sense. For now at least, Brat summer rolls on.

Some other findings

• Can memes really win elections?

• The fascinating rise of Matcha

• Your DJ’s favourite DJ Jobs Jobse released the mix of the summer

• Rimowa with my favourite Olympics ad —

• Amine crushed the remix of Charli’s 360 (‘360.5’), with a full remix album rumoured for this week

Until next time,

H

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As I write this it’s been around 12 hours since American space exploration company Intuitive Machines landed their craft ‘Odysseus’ on the moon.

In a massive moment for human innovation, it became the first commercial machine to do so since Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface 52 years ago.

As the lunar craft, roughly the size of a London telephone box, landed, it donned the signature USA flag. But there was another detail this time: the logo of a mountaineering company founded in 1938.

Columbia Sportswear, an apparel brand better known for its hiking gear than space innovation, had collaborated with the machinery firm on a version of its Omni-Heat Infinity heat-reflective technology (as found in its jackets) to insulate the propulsion tank during its descent.

With the success of the landing confirmed, back on earth they did what any sensible company would do today: show off the achievement by taking over the Las Vegas Sphere.

It was the last jigsaw piece in an extraordinary marketing effort - one that positioned Columbia, now valued at almost $5 billion, as the most ambitious of explorer brands and the latest in a long list of companies that have looked to outer space for inspiration and exposure.

Back in the 1990’s, astronauts wore Adidas ‘sports boots’ on the Mir space station. Fast forward 25 years later, in 2015 fashion and space exploration came together when designer Raf Simons worked with Adidas and NASA to create a version of the Ozweego sneaker using space suit materials and retailing at $730 a pair.

Heron Preston took fashion into space when he also collaborated with NASA on a limited apparel collection for its 60th anniversary in 2018. To celebrate the launch (literally) the cap and jacket from the drop were sent 32 miles above Earth on a weather balloon. The same year, New York based artist Tom Sachs who has “pondered the homespun technical ingenuity and romance with the unknown that brought America the Apollo program” for “more than a decade” collaborated with Nike on the ‘Mars Yard Over-Shoe.’

Adidas would send their iconic Boost technology up to astronauts at the International Space Station in 2019 with the aim of uncovering “the secrets of pellet movement during midsole mold filling thanks to microgravity conditions.” In doing so, they hoped to optimise the performance and comfort of their footwear. And to tell a great story.

In 2022 Barbie set off to space as Mattel sent up their dolls to the ISS while Tyler, The Creator’s brand Golf Wang collaborated with Nasa and Oxcart Collective on clothing worn by commentators of the Artemis I launch. The collection featured an exclusive not-for-sale pair of ‘horizon dyed’ Converse Chuck 70 sneakers and a range of sought-after PVC patches.

But by far the biggest merger of space exploration and culture is scheduled for September 2026 when astronauts on Nasa’s Artemis III mission, the first crewed Moon landing mission since the success of 1972, will be wearing Prada. Last year the Italian luxury house announced that it would be designing the spacesuits for the mission, forever associating them with an unprecedented moment in human history and paying dividend through what will surely be an incredible level of brand exposure.

With Columbia’s recent landing front of mind, it’s clear that there’s something ‘out there’ brands want.

To explain, consider the aptly titled term ‘Brand Universe.’ Coined by writers at SOTA, it refers to the shift cutting-edge brands are making to their strategic marketing efforts to create additional avenues of customer engagement. Think Skims collaborating with the NBA, LVMH launching a film studio or YSL opening a book store. Each of these efforts achieves success by remaining true to a unique brand narrative.

When exploring new ways to amplify it’s narrative (one of adventure and exploration), Columbia’s collaboration with Intuitive Machine is a magical mix of logical and surprising. The same goes for Prada, a company renown for its technical fabrics and cutting edge design, now strategically positioned as the choice of astronauts travelling to the moon in 2026.

While on earth brands fight for attention in a battlefield of rising advertising costs and failing social media algorithms, a mixture of sense and surprise allows brands to cut through the noise. Moreover, campaigns like Prada and Columbia’s are a refreshing reminder that despite an inevitability digital future, there are also blockbuster moments in real life for brands to participate in, or better, create themselves as entertainment for their audience.

Innovations from the likes of SpaceX and Intuitive Machines continue to prove that the future is coming quickly closer, bringing with it new opportunities for brands to push the limits of their marketing. Now, with September 2026 now just around the corner, brands taking part in space exploration promises to be big business.

In closing, if great brands tell great stories, there’s not many greater than the ancient mystery of what’s ‘out there.’

(Especially if it aligns with your brand.)

We’re in for an exciting next chapter.

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Two weeks ago I decided to close my clothing brand DISC Projects.

Having ran the brand for five years as a side hustle through school and university, I thought I’d take the chance to write a bit about what I learnt during the journey. In doing so I hope this might be useful for anyone out there thinking of starting their own creative project, or those who currently have one and are looking for some tips along the way.

First, some context

I started DISC Projects in 2018. Originally ‘DISC London’, like so many brands it really started as a mood board, a place to explore what I was interested in and a creative outlet to share ideas. It was my own digital space.

My ambitions for starting the page at the time were so much larger than selling clothes. I wanted to connect with likeminded people, make interesting things and contribute to a wider culture.

I was really drawn to what was happening in fashion at the time. It was high tide for Samuel Ross’ A-Cold-Wall and Virgil Abloh’s label Off White. Streetwear was booming and it felt like a time of limitless creative opportunity online. From a school desk in Somerset, I wanted to find a way of getting one step closer to that scene. I wanted to get in the room.

Fashion meant logomania back then and there was a new emphasis on graphic design. At the time I had taught myself Photoshop and was designing posters for events at school as well as album covers for Soundcloud artists and clothing graphics for clothing brands outside of it.

I realised if I could design graphics, I could make my own clothes.

But I quickly realised that in a sea of upstart streetwear projects, I needed something to differentiate from the rest; a message or a through line that gave the brand a consistency and emotional resonance. It became obvious that the brand was really just a personal expression of what it meant to be part of the first digital generation. I felt an immense sense of luck to be born at a time of global connectivity where creativity and communication had no bounds. DISC as a name alluded to this: both an abbreviation of ‘Do It Solo Company’ (acknowleding that the internet had unlocked the ability for us to learn anything), and a nod to the Compact Disc - a technology format I grew up with.

Now convinced that this thing had a reason to exist, I designed a logo and got some sweatshirts embroidered at my local shop before putting them online.

Moodboard no more.

Over the next five years I started a radio show, released 5 big collections, found mentors, had the brand stocked in a store in Belgium, made new friends, got into a legal battle with a high-street store, released knitwear, changed name, rebranded, made my first hire and shipped clothes to 519 customers in 25 countries.

What I Learnt

First a disclaimer. I’m definitely no business guru and made a lot of mistakes along the way. The learning curve of running any brand is steep, and it’s definitely harder today to cut through the noise with an original idea, let alone succeed. That said, I have some main takeaways that I’d definitely come back to if I was to start again.

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1. Get a plot (of digital land)

DISC existed as an Instagram page before I had any intention of selling something to an audience. We live in a golden digital age where it’s free to reserve a little plot of digital space.

Let that sink in, and when you realise how exciting that is, go do it.

Making the first steps of setting up a free page, website, etc. removes feelings of severity and gives you license to play around. You can change the name, logo, visuals or whole reason you started later.

2. Find your POV, and don’t shut up about it

People see thousands of brands daily. What makes yours different? What sets yours apart? Like any good business, this is what you need to obsess over. Find it and bring it home for your customer again, again and again.

For DISC it was celebrating the digital age. We raised money for digital poverty charities, wrote blog posts on the history of the internet and recorded radio shows with people on the other side of the world.

Find your story, and then find a million ways to tell it.

3. Be a consumer first

I made clothes with DISC that I wanted to see in the world. At the time I was reading about art history and technology, but couldn’t find a brand connected to culture that made cool product about them.

I was a consumer first, designer second.

Starting as a consumer and working backwards to fill your own problems makes things a lot easier. As a consumer, think: What do you like and what would you like to see more of? What are you frustrated doesn’t exist? Even - how would you want a checkout experience to feel? What shipping courier do you prefer? Be honest with yourself and block out the noise. The point at which you start making decisions that go against your own position as a consumer, you’re sacrificing your unique POV.

If you like things a specific way, the chances are so do other people. Shop other brands and get nerdy about why you like what you like.

4. Be your own biggest critic

The biggest compliment I ever received was that DISC looked way bigger than it actually was. Set out to compete with the big dogs and don’t stop until you do. Otherwise what’s the point?

Go above and beyond to compete and be part of a wider conversation. Comparison may be the thief of joy, but not comparing yourself to the best is the thief of success.

Steve Jobs obsessed over the internals of the candy coloured 1999 iMac, even though no one would see it unless taken apart. To him, it mattered.

5. It’s about what you don’t do as much as what you do

It’s easy to think you need to do everything. Send product to every influencer, release a product in every colour, be on every social media channel.

Saying yes to everything is a sure fire way to dilute your brand. What about creating mystery and a sense of discovery for the customer? What about a secret backstory that is reserved for only the biggest fans?

Palace founder Lev Tanju rarely accepts interviews.

Teddy Santis only posts about Aime Leon Dore in yearly story dumps.

Jai Paul is one of the most hyped artists in music but disappeared for five years.

Patagonia don’t advertise.

I could go on.

When you have business demands it’s too easy to be a sell out. You can’t, and shouldn’t aim to be everything for everyone. You must develop an internal filter when you look at new opportunities and put everything through it. Doing so will ensure you maintain a clear voice and feel.

6. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is

I was approached by several bigger stockists and turned them down. What initially looked like a life changing order was equalled by incredible tight margins and unrealistic turnaround demands.

If you’re being approached by bigger companies, the chances are you have something someone else wants. Get good at separating genuine opportunity from potential exploitation.

7. Diversify

Make your brand as easy to buy from as possible. Diversify shipping options, payment options and product offering. Do you have a low ticket item? Do you have any ways that a customer can buy into your brand without paying anything?

Your brand is a house. Diversify your entry points to welcome new people through the door.

8. A brand is a content machine

Now more than ever, your brand is your imagery and how you appear.

TikTok and Instagram are all one big competition for who can show up the best. One of DISC’s shortcomings was I didn’t prioritise this enough. When we shot stuff it looked great, but we could’ve done with ten times more of it. Do regular shoots, encourage UGC and share it often to keep your brand in peoples minds.

9. Customer is everything

Your dedicated core group of customers, those who spend the most with you and comment on every post, are priceless. Realise the brand is only as big as them and let them feel it through exclusive benefits and extra communication.

10. A brand is a boat

So sail to different places. Find new islands. Connect with new people. By far the biggest joy of running DISC was the people it connected me to. Use your brand to your advantage and make that intro.

11. Become a student

You have to fall in love with the craft.

Be constantly learning and always curious. Make a list of your heroes and learn every ounce you can from them online. I think I’ve watched every Virgil Abloh lecture at least three times. Find your mentors and don’t be afraid to reach out to them for advice.

Resources

Following the last point, I thought I’d finish this article by sharing some resources that I found useful over the last five years.

Books:

• Shoe Dog, Phil Knight

• Shoe Maker, Joe Foster

• Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon Chouinard

• Start With Why, Simon Sinek

• Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson

• Damn Good Advice, George Lois

Podcasts:

• Omondi - Mickey Drexler

• How I built this - Tom’s

• Corporate Lunch - Online Ceramics

• Blamo! - Noah’s Brendan Babenzien

• StartUp Podcast - LA Apparel’s Dov Charney

• Diary of A Ceo - Nike’s Greg Hoffman

• SPI Podcast - Donald Miller

• Indie Hackers - Seth Godin

Blogs:

• State of the Art

• Sociology of Business

• Virgil Abloh Free Game

Videos and lectures:

Playlist linked here

I hope you took something away from this article. If you think this would be useful to a friend, please share it with them. And if you have a project of your own or are starting one and want to get in touch, let’s chat.

You can email me at salmonsharry@gmail.com, follow me on Instagram or connect with me on LinkedIn.

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Nike In Trouble

Earlier this week BoF’s Daniel-Yaw Miller wrote an article outlining Nike’s recent setbacks. The American sportswear giant is expected fetch only 1% growth this year, the lowest since the late 1990’s.

Recent chaotic restructures, a lack of inspiring marketing and over reliance on wholesale accounts are all cited as factors that have meant the swoosh has struggled to keep up with competitors Adidas and Hoka who are dialling in on performance.

The former has even stolen some of Nike’s own swag with the launch of Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves signature basketball shoe. As one commenter said:

Ouch.

With Nike’s new signature Air Max shoe the ‘DN’ launching March 26 it’ll be hoping to bounce back from these setbacks which now include the recent departure of golfing legend Tiger Woods.

There’s much more in Daniel’s full article, linked here.

Prep Here To Stay

Miu Miu, the golden child of Mrs Prada, announced its SS24 collection earlier this week. Photographed by Zoe Ghertner, the lookbook sees models clutch onto tan leather mini bags overflowing with possessions with a preppy uncut flare.

But what everyone’s talking about are the boat shoes.

In a natural evolution from fashion’s recent fixation with prep - from oxfords to loafers and Mary-Janes - it seemed only a matter of time before we came face to face with the final frontier of unapologetic #menswear.

And in classic Miu Miu fashion, they somehow feel more Elordi than WASP.

It comes after Miu Miu announced an equally preppy collaboration with British heritage shoemaker Church’s.

Feeding into the SS24 is a new shoe dubbed the ‘Shanghai’. Described as ‘the encounter between respect for tradition and contemporary ease’ it looks like a brogue, mary jane and tassel loafer were put in a blender.

30 Seconds Of Fame

Internet Strategy guru Mark Pollard recently drew my attention to an article by Mani Schlisser, Director of Connections Planning at Ogilvy, that gave some damning insight into the effectiveness of Superbowl commercials.

With Sunday night coming fast, brands are expected to pay upwards of $7m for a thirty second space during the big show, the highest on record up from $2.2m in 2004.

So you’d be forgiven for thinking that they actually work.

Yet in a recent study, Schlisser shares that only 20% of viewers can actually remember who the Superbowl advert was for.

That’s despite companies like UberEats now making ads for their own ads weeks before the event. Adweek’s Super Bowl Ad Tracker now begins as far back as December 2023. As Schlisser points out, when coupled with the fact that some celebrities can be seen endorsing several brands in the same ad break, it’s no wonder there’s confusion.

Like a big budget Oscar level premiere for a film with no prior marketing, with brands going bigger than ever this year to gain our attention what’s the point if they haven’t already built a level of salience amongst their target audience?

Mani’s full article argues for a more well rounded approach, and for brands to start treating the Super Bowl as the blockbuster moment of a larger campaign rather than the be all and end all that it used to be.

You can read it here.

Until next time.

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Tesla’s Cybertruck. Humane’s Ai pin. Musk’s Neuralink. Apple’s Vision Pro. 

These are just four of the inventions making headlines in the last year.

Us twenty-first century humans are used to innovation. We’ve seen the iPhone, re-landable (and re-usable) rockets and blockchain all happen in the last ten. But in what feels like just a few weeks, we’ve seen the future move into view at a startling pace - maybe even an uncomfortable one. 

Our snap reaction to this discomfort is often to dismiss anything future-facing as a passing fad:

The Cybertruck was clowned for it’s Tron-like aesthetic. Yes it can haul a Porsche 911 quicker than a Porsche 911 hauling, well, nothing, but Pharrell couldn’t park it in Miami’s design district, so how can I be expected to?

Debuted during a famous TED Talk by co-founder and Ex-Apple designer Imran Chaudhri, Humane’s Ai pin shows us what an artificial intelligence wearable might look like. It sits on your pocket or clips on to your tee shirt, and looks quite stupid. It can promptly translate you asking ‘where’s the nearest sandwich shop’ in Portugese for the small price of listening to you. All the time.

At first glance the ‘Neuralink’, a first-of-its-kind brainchip designed by futurist and X tyrant Elon Musk, seems to have good intentions. With the first use cases intended to be the severely disabled, connecting damaged neural pathways through microcomputing, he asks us to imagine the future - one where ‘Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer.’ A convenient distraction from our seemingly inevitable reality where human will falls into the hands of robots.

Then last week came the big one. If anyone could market us the future, it’d be Apple. For the small price of $4,000, you can pick up the Vision Pro headset, the firms debut ‘spatial computing’ product. The internet came ablaze with surreal videos shortly after showing the futuristic goggles being used in public as crypto-bros attempted to bring up YouTube videos of Patrick Bateman’s morning routine while crossing the road in New York. All you have to do is look at what you want, and pinch. 

Humans have a weird relationship with the future. We are simultaneously afraid and intimidated, yet excited and optimistic for it. During times of distress we say to each other ‘time heals all’. We celebrate the coming of the new year. We manifest, forecast and hope, all for the future.

Yet throughout history the attempts made to bring us closer to it have consistently been met by naysayers. People thought cars were always going to be too pricey for most people to afford. The moon landing, arguably humanities greatest accomplishment, was snubbed as fake. The iPad slammed for being neither a laptop or a phone.

With time, the critics fade away and our culture changes up to make space. But what is it about these forward thinking ideas that makes us so uncomfortable? Is it the unapologetic display of optimism that so strongly juxtaposes most people’s attitudes during a time of global conflict and economic struggle? Is it that we’re just more aware of what it costs to bring civilisation forward as those who make the most progress are also the ones most prepared to trade ethics with business achievements?

It’s easier than ever to snub the new ideas we’re sold daily. To see the bad over the good is to forget that the Cybertruck is a self-driving car, the stuff of science fiction. That Humane’s Ai pin can tell someone with allergies, in real time, if a food is ok for them to consume by just the scan of a barcode. That Musk’s Neuralink might well transform the lives of people affected by brain damage, giving them a new chance at life. That Apple’s Vision Pro is (so far) mankind’s best attempt at simplifying the personal computing experience by completely eliminating the need to touch a physical device.

In a time when we’re accelerating towards it the quickest, it’s a sense of excitement for the future that we’re lacking more than ever. But despite their glitchy infancy, these moments of human ingenuity have a track record of letting us peak into the unknown. Sure, that place might be sometimes unbelievable or unlikeable, but we’re the only ones that get to watch it happen.

Pulling the wool over your eyes now might mean missing it forever.

Until next time.

I hope you enjoyed this read. If you’re new here, remember to subscribe, it’s free. To hear first about new writing, you can follow me on Instagram, and connect with me on LinkedIn.

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Hello and welcome back.

This is my first post of 2024. It feels way too late to wish anyone happy new year, so instead I’m going to excuse myself entirely by explaining that my challenge this year is to write on Substack at least once a month. And here we are, on the penultimate day of the first one. Better late than never.

Now feels a good time to say that how I use this platform is changing too. You can still expect the longer op-ed articles on brands and culture, but far more frequently will be smaller articles like this. The whole reason I started writing was to become a better writer, and setting the bar high for myself has only halted the output. So I’m lowering the bar for myself, and in the process sharing anything and everything that comes to mind. These entries are going to be more informal, written right into Substack with the aim of minimal editing and should be quicker for you to read in your inbox.

Let’s dive in.

Diffusion Line Revival? No Problemo

Today Aries Arise, the cult London streetwear label started by Sofia Prantera clicked live on a new project dubbed ‘No Problemo’. The diffusion line takes Aries’ familiar hero slogan (originally taken from Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2) and sees it used across streetwear staples at a lower price point - a tee is now £45 compared to Aries' usual £95.

It comes after the brand made headlines as the main feature of a Guardian article published last year titled ‘No problemo’: what Gen Z are really saying with their T-shirts’ that featured Haley Lu Richardson as Portia in Season 2 of the HBO show White Lotus wearing a tie-dye No Problemo sweatshirt.

It’s a clever move from from a brand that unapologetically speaks to Gen Z and youth culture but whose price aligns more with its made-in-Italy quality. With Hugo Boss launching HUGO and BOSS as separate lines last year, Marc Jacobs finding success with the brand Heavn and Kiko Kostadinov announcing Otto 958, a new collaborative brand with Asics, Aries are the latest to add to the recent trend of building extensions to existing brands in order to find new ground.

It’s a tried and tested idea - we’ve seen Armani Exchange all the way to Comme Des Garcons Play. But with cost of living at an all time high and Gen Z increasingly price sensitive as a result, Aries will be bidding to appeal to a different customer segment - one perhaps with a closer purchasing power to that of Stüssy, a brand that continues to go from strength to strength.

Showing Appreciation

Every now and again I come across a quote that really hits me. This week, on what marks the 40th birthday of the Apple Mac, it came from Ex-Apple Head of Design Jony Ive, and it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard said about human creativity:

Steve said one of the most succinct and poetic and really beautiful things to say - that we make something to try and express our appreciation for the species, for humanity. He said that in thirty seconds and I would take half an hour, but that’s exactly why we do what we do - it’s that sense of thanking people, and saying thank you to people you’ll probably never meet.

— Jony Ive speaking on the late Steve Jobs. Source.

By thinking this way, it takes the idea of creating something - a concept we often consider a selfish act, done to benefit the creator - and reframes it as an act of service. To anyone stuck in a creative rut this comes with a degree of liberation. Lifted are feelings of guilt, replaced by a sense of confidence in doing good. Creativity takes work. It takes time and care. When that output is shared, like a present, it is a way to give back, and show appreciation for the species.

Until next time.