Remember when your mom used to bake something that looked sooo good, smelled sooo good, and then told you that you weren’t allowed any? Yeah, that’s kinda what the fashion industry is doing to us. Because right now, campaigns are featuring leather charms in the shape of lemons and milk carton bags (and don’t forget Loewe’s heirloom tomato clutch). Heck, the invite to Fendi’s show was a literal bag of branded pasta (!!). With GLP-1s changing the public’s relationship with what they eat, fashion has decided food is just like those cookies your mom made for her friends—something to look at, not to actually enjoy. [Read more]

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

Soooo, apparently, Facebook and Instagram are losing users for the first time in seven years. Seven years!!

According to Zuck on Wednesdays earning’s call, the number of “total family dailies,” (anyone signed up and logged in to FB, Insta, WhatsApp & Threads) has slipped from the end of last year. The drop marked the social media giant’s first quarterly decline since 2019, wiping 20 million daily users from its 3.5 billion.

Zuck blames internet outages in Iran and blocks in Russia, insisting that, otherwise, “trends across our apps are strong.” And strong they are, as the drop didn’t prevent the company from monetising eyeballs nonetheless, raking in an eyewatering $55 billion in advertising revenue across the first quarter, up 33% from a year earlier.

Next! A new study published this week in Nature researchers from Oxford Uni found that AI models tuned specially to be more agreeable with users, and mimic the human tendency to occasionally “soften difficult truths” to preserve bonds and avoid conflict are more likely to validate a user’s expressed incorrect beliefs – especially when the user is sad.

You know when GPT blows smoke up your ass instead of helping you with a genuine problem? Yeah. That’s this right here. I swear you could tell it you ran over your ex and it would be all “You didn’t hide your feelings, you didn’t cause harm to yourself, and you didn’t spend another day pretending to feel something you weren’t. That’s, not attempted murder, that’s growth.”

Finally, everything is PooCrave now, according to Vulture. And you know what. I agree. If you’re late to the internet in general, PooCrave rose in the wake of PopCrave, the OG account of media and celebrity reporting. PooCrave was the OG parody account, with its PopCrave-esque logos and announcements that were blatantly fake (and funny.)

Fran Hoepfner from Vulture says that these days our feeds are filled to the brim with such content. But now, it's not funny or entertaining… just fake for fake's sake? Who can we thank… AI. Many such cases my friends, many such cases. 

-Sophie Randell, Writer

In the hallowed halls of Harrods and the sleek boutiques of SoHo, food has undergone a radical rebranding. It is no longer a biological necessity, but a seasonal accessory in these campaigns.

Think about Loewe’s hyper-realistic Tomato Clutch (a $4,000 "meme-to-reality" masterpiece), or Jacquemus’s buttered-toast invitations and "milk carton" bags.

But this gastro-fashion movement is emerging at a strange crossroads. Just as GLP-1 medications are causing a literal collapse in American caloric demand, luxury brands are filling the void with gold-leafed lattes and leather produce.

I can’t help but ask, what the actual fudge is going on here?

We are witnessing the birth of some kind of inedible smorgasbord, in a culture where food is most valuable when it’s never actually eaten.

Jacquemus serving breakfast at the opening of its New York Boutique in SoHo from a branded truck is about narrative, not nutrition. Which is a shame, because I think buttery croissants are peak nutrition, but anyway.

In our hyper-digital world, physical objects like a perfect heirloom tomato or a crusty baguette represent "the old world". They're organic, tactile, and rooted in heritage. By turning these staples into leather charms (cough** Le Valérie charms in the shape of carrots and strawberries), brands are selling a curated version of pastoral life.

This theory, often linked to Walter Benjamin, suggests that fascism turns everyday life into a highly choreographed performance to distract from material realities.

When luxury brands co-opt peasant staples like bread, milk and tomatoes, and then turn them into high-priced accessories, they are aestheticising the tools of labour and survival. It creates a "performative poverty" or a curated reality where the mass struggle for food is ignored in favour of its visual beauty.

By making food fashion, we participate in a quiet dogma where how a meal looks is more important than its communal or nutritional reality. It reduces a universal human right to a signifier of elite status.

The most "now" element of this trend is its timing alongside the GLP-1 boom. As medications like Ozempic and Wegovy rewire the affluent brain to desire fewer calories, the fashion industry is rewiring their eyes to desire the image of food more.

The statistics are startling. Households with GLP-1 users are reportedly spending significantly less on groceries. Some data suggests a nearly 10% drop in food spending among high-income users. In this Ozempic era, the ultimate luxury is a small appetite.

Eating a high-calorie raspberry croissant at the fuchsia Choo Café in Harrods is positioned as a flex. Because it suggests you have such biological control (or a high-end prescription) that you can be surrounded by luxury carbs without consuming too many of them.

In a market saturated with resale handbags, "hospitality luxury" provides an ephemeral, un-copyable experience. Brands are stepping into the "spending vacuum" left by declining food budgets to offer experiences that don't have calories, but do have high social currency.

Whether it’s the Jimmy Choo Café’s branded lattes or Fendi’s monogrammed pasta, the goal is the "check-in," not the meal.

As food is stripped of its biological function, it is repurposed as a class marker. In this strange, new reality, the most fashionable thing you can do with a baguette today isn't to share it, but to wear it.

 -Sophie Randell, Writer

Today’s viral trend comes from a clip of Gabriel, a Chelsea FC fan. It came after the Chelsea vs Tottenham Hotspur match ended in a draw thanks to Eden Hazard's stunning goal that crushed Tottenham’s title hopes. Gabriel was interviewed straight after the game and was absolutely buzzed, despite it not being a win. 

Now, creators are taking the audio and applying it to really specific, slightly niche moments that feel way bigger than they probably should. For example, "how it feels every time I come home from the same 3 bars where I see the exact same people every weekend", or even reminiscing being a junior in high school during quarantine. It's perfect for turning everyday moments into something that feels massive and emotional.

Using the audio, turn the camera on yourself looking a bit upset. In editing insert a on-screen caption starting with "how it feels...", describing your relatable moment. 

A few ideas to get you started:

-Fiona Badiana, Intern

😂Yap’s funniest home videos: I hope he's okay
✨Daily inspo: You've survived 100% of your worst days
😊Soooo satisfying: Wood ASMR
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Street Tacos at home!

Hey Chris!

Based on what we’ve seen (and we’ve done this a lot), it doesn’t seem to hurt. For example, we recently had a client re-upload the same video five times over nine days, tweaking the edit each time. The fifth version hit 500,000 views and gained 25K followers.  That said, this is still somewhat anecdotal. I don’t have hard data proving it’s 100% safe across all accounts. But from our experience, if you think you can improve your performance, just do it. Delete or archive the old versions, test your new edit, and keep iterating until something lands. 

What you should be looking at while you’re testing is your retention graphs. See where people drop off. If there’s a steep drop at the beginning, that's a clear sign your hook isn’t working. If people drop off halfway through, something in the middle is losing them. So fix one thing at a time and retest.  Don’t let fear of “the algorithm” stop you from trying to improve your content.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

We get it. Creating content that does numbers is harder than it looks. But doing those big numbers is the fastest way to grow your brand. So if you’re tired of throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks, you’re in luck. Because making our clients go viral is kinda what we do every single day.