via: Experimenta
[ed. Cool idea (and design).]
Showing posts with label Fashion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fashion. Show all posts
Monday, December 29, 2025
We’re All Unique. Or Are We?
Or perhaps you’ve had the opposite experience? You feel out of place in your day-to-day circle and dress in hopes that someone with taste as refined as yours will see your attempts to distinguish yourself in your natty suits.
Most of us have at least a passing acquaintance with the push and pull between the desire to fit in and the urge to stand out depending on the setting. Everyone, as some point, discovers the subtle sartorial codes governing their communities and must decide how much to adopt or reject them.
The two have made those sub-classifications the basis of their three-decade-long art project, which now exceeds 200 groups arranged by visual likeness. Each category features 12 individual portraits organized in a grid, named and arranged with the precision of butterflies in a entomologist’s case.
To flip at random through “Exactitudes” (a portmanteau of exact and attitudes) is to be struck by the cleverness and care the artists have taken in selecting their subjects. Looking through each grid is like playing a game. Your eyes dart from frame to frame, in search of the subtle deviances in hairstyles and the way body language speaks volumes.
Now, on the occasion of publishing the seventh and final edition of “Exactitudes,” the duo is putting the project to bed. After three decades of collaboration, they look back in fondness at the time capsules they’ve created. (...)
When they don’t have a firm handle on a subculture they’re photographing, they listen. “Some of the groups, you start and you have a vague idea about them,” Mr. Versluis said. By listening, he said, “you get educated, especially when it’s a super-niche culture or something new.”
Sometimes they wait many days on location before finding enough willing participants. Sometimes the people in the grid know each other, but not always. For the most part, they say, participants are flattered to be included in the project.
Sometimes they wait many days on location before finding enough willing participants. Sometimes the people in the grid know each other, but not always. For the most part, they say, participants are flattered to be included in the project.
‘The diverse human experience of getting dressed.’
Both artists have always worked independently and will continue to do so, though they did not rule out the possibility of a returning if a tantalizing commission comes along. Since they began shooting “Exactitudes,” the world has transformed from an one dominated by analog technologies to one ruled by digital algorithms. Where they were once perceptive humans finding patterns among the other humans, social media now serves up endless micro-trends to viewers the world over. In some way the magic of their project has been consumed by TikTok and Instagram.
by Stella Bugbee, NY Times | Read more:
Image:Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek/Exactitudes
[ed. See also: Behind Exactitudes, the photo series that inspired Vetements (Dazed).]
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
Tuesday, December 23, 2025
Stop, Shop, and Scroll
Commerce has long been central to social media; as long as ads keep the lights on at Meta, TikTok, and YouTube, we will all be pressured to buy, buy, buy. Instagram was a mall even before #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt and Pinterest became an “AI-enabled shopping assistant.” The influencer industry — which Goldman Sachs has predicted will grow to nearly half a trillion dollars by 2027 — has snowballed into a possible side hustle for anyone with access to a phone. There’s a handful of MrBeasts and Alix Earles at the top and an untold number of micro-influencers hawking goods and services at the bottom. For audiences, it means we have spent the better part of a decade living within a 24/7 digital infomercial, with social media — sponsored content and organic posts alike — resembling not much more than a buying guide, a catalog of unabashed and conspicuous consumption. Some audience members find themselves in deep debt or describe their behavior as a full-blown shopping addiction; others have developed careful strategies in an effort to limit their consumption. We have never been so aware of all the things there are to purchase, and the frictionlessness of shopping apps disguised as social media has created an army of voracious buyers. What has this abundance done to us? (...)
The impulse to shop is not exactly a secret — there’s often a resigned self-awareness to it. In a video viewed 1.5 million times, a woman stitches together clips of herself from random moments in her daily life. With a deadpan voice, and Radiohead’s “No Surprises” twinkling in the background, she recites highly specific products like she’s filling out a Mad Libs page: Chan Luu crystal toe ring. Arc’teryx hiking shoes. Vintage hoodie. “This is just the last 48 hours, mind you,” the caption reads.
This kind of video has become a mini-trend, with the idea being that the mere utterance of a temptation might soothe the part of your brain that wants to buy the item. (...)
We see so much marketing material that in certain subcultures online it is not just common but the expectation. In traditional marketing, it was understood that brands had to expose consumers to their message three times before they actually engaged with it, like going physically to a store to buy a product. In the age of social media and algorithmic overload, that number is now seven, says Mara Einstein, a marketing-professional-turned-critic and author of the book Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. For one, the vastness of the internet has allowed for the number of available products to bloat beyond imagination — there are simply too many things. But how we learn about products has changed drastically as well; as media has fragmented to a million sites, feeds, screens, and algorithms, so too has the advertising we see. There is no one TV commercial a quarter of households are seeing, then telling their friends about. Instead we see a digital display ad here, an influencer’s video there.
“You may be finding out information from people and so on, but you’re increasingly spending time in a space where you’re constantly being bombarded by sales messages,” Einstein says. Influencers know how to stay on message, constantly priming viewers to give in and buy something.
Being influenced is nothing new, of course. But the short- and mid-form video format creates a new type of intimacy and allure, especially if you are already looking for something to buy. It’s hard to argue with a sales pitch when you are watching someone in their home actually using the product they are trying to sell you.
The content doesn’t even have to be explicitly promotional: I recall a video I made last year about my reporting being used without credit by content creators. My frustration had hit a breaking point, so I recorded a selfie-style TikTok complaining about the contemporary media ecosystem. Only my head and a portion of my shoulders were in the video, but someone wanted to know where my blouse was from.
TikTok itself has only bolstered the idea that every piece of content is an opportunity to consume. Through TikTok Shop, anyone can become a digital salesperson. In much crueler, more tasteless examples, TikTok has added shopping prompts to videos coming out of Gaza: A woman in a head covering becomes a promotion for similar-looking garments with headscarves. A bespectacled Israeli activist protesting their government’s besiegement is a billboard for a pair of glasses. (...)
It’s easy to blame the influencers for all of this — and many do, regularly, like clockwork. The most recent discourse cycle, in late September, was kicked off by a TikTok video with 390,000 views and arguments that stretched on for weeks.
“These influencers make way too much fucking money,” the video begins. “You’re just getting paid to sell people shit they don’t fucking need. It’s literally just overconsumption … You’re perpetuating this cycle that’s really keeping us trapped.”
Content creators are admittedly a perfect target for the general rage many of us carry around. Many of them seem unencumbered by the endless horrors of the world, with daily routines that include blocks of time for “warm water” and to-do lists with “plan out mocktails for the new year.” Their digital presence exists suspended in time, where there is always something new to recommend, packages of shiny new things waiting for them, and a willing audience that completes the positive feedback loop. Wouldn’t it be nice — as people are in line at food banks, fighting for a precious few job listings, and snatched off streets by masked agents — to sit in your home and talk to yourself for a living?
But the draw of the influencer is powerful; even if you cannot become her, you can own the same things she does. For Antoinette Hocbo, who picked up hobbies via TikTok, the characters she encounters on her For You page seem effortlessly cool. They have an eye for design, they’re interested in the arts, they drink wine. You buy into the person first, and eventually — hopefully — you buy the stuff, too.
“[There’s] the whole idea of parasocial relationships,” Einstein, the marketing expert, says. “If somebody has gotten to the point where they’re spending that much time online with someone, they’re vested in what that person has to say.” The feeling of intimacy is physical: When followers watch their favorite TikToker, they are literally holding them in the palm of their hand. (...)
TikTok made going viral a possibility for a whole new slate of people. Now the hard part is how to keep things rolling when it happens to you. Most of the platforms themselves do not pay much for views, but brands eager to partner with buzzy people do. Creators often talk about their work in terms of self-discovery or self-actualization: This is who I want to be online, and these are the products and tips I truly, honestly want to share.
The tension comes then with the “very real commercial realities of playing to an audience, bowing to commercial sponsorships if you were lucky enough to have them,” Duffy says. “And then the new dimension, which doesn’t have the same precursors in legacy media, which is playing to the algorithm.” A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 62 percent of adults on TikTok are there to find product reviews and recommendations — especially young women. (...)
Project Pan, as a concept, is both clever and strange. For years, a community of people organized largely on the internet have committed themselves to finishing their beauty and personal care products — the name coming from your promise to hit the bottom of the pan that holds your blush, for example. It’s smart for the way it gamifies something people struggle with. (Who among us doesn’t have half-used bottles of soap or barely touched tubes of lipstick?) It’s also deeply revealing: These products are meant to be used, and we collectively are so bad at finishing them off that we need a little game to make it happen. Off the top of my head I can confidently say that I’ve never once “panned” a compact of blush; I have expensive tubes of red lipstick that didn’t end up being my color, but that I can’t bear to throw out; and I have four bottles of sunscreen that crowd my cabinet, waiting for the summer they’re finally used up. There are many more products that I could — should — Project Pan that I’ve forgotten I even own.
Cassandra Silva, on the other hand, knows exactly what she has. She knows, for example, that she spent $2,857.98 AUD on makeup in 2024 and panned products totaling $1,654.13. She owns eight eyeliners, but her ideal number would be four. In 2023 she panned seven mascaras, 11 colored lip products, and one blush, among many others, all lined up in a photo of the totally empty containers that show her progress. She keeps all this data in a giant spreadsheet that she shares with me after we talk, and as I scroll through it, I realize I have never seen an eyeshadow palette where every color is completely empty.
“Compared to beauty YouTube, it’s not insane insane, but it’s still more than any one human could ever reasonably use,” Silva says of her inventory.
She watches beauty YouTube channels, but needs to be careful about what she consumes: She tries to stay away from content showing off hauls, new releases, or the ever-tempting limited-edition holiday releases.
“I am as conscious as I can be for a makeup addict,” Silva says. “I try, and I am freaking susceptible. It’s so bad.” Recently, a palette of neutral eyeshadows hounded her Instagram feed — she caved and bought it, only to be thoroughly disappointed when it arrived. As a panner, Silva will be stuck with it for years until it’s finished.
Chessie Domrongchai used to make the kind of content that Silva perhaps would steer clear of — she was the one tempting makeup lovers with all of these products. As a beauty YouTuber, Domrongchai shared in-depth product review videos for brands like the once-buzzy direct-to-consumer brand Glossier and tested fistfuls of lip glosses in subtly different shades for her 40,000 subscribers. She shared new releases, compared similar products from different brands, and recommended items for upcoming sales. In a 2019 video, she walks viewers through her pinky-brown nude lipstick collection — 15 shades, not including lip glosses and liquid lipsticks. She followed makeup brands and watched other YouTubers, accumulating more and more products to explore ($10,000, she says, feels like a conservative estimate of the value of her collection at its peak). In makeup, Domrongchai found self-expression, creativity, and community.
Until one day in 2022, when a switch went off in her head.
“I started to view a lot of the overconsumption that I was seeing online as kind of disgusting and wrong, and I recognized a lot of the way that I showed up on the internet was to overconsume,” Domrongchai says. Not only that, but she felt her online presence also influenced viewers to keep buying more and more.
“These are just regular people that are just now stuck with the burden of their overconsumption,” she says. But as a content creator, it was hard to be part of the beauty space without having a constant parade of new products.
In recent months, Domrongchai has developed a new routine for the many products littering her home. One by one, she meticulously peels off stickers and labels: from shampoo and olive oil bottles, from dish soap dispensers and face wash. Using a mix of baking soda, mineral oil, and rubbing alcohol, she goes to town on brand names printed on the packaging of eyeshadow palettes and lipsticks, scrubbing away their origins and the millions of dollars of marketing that went into them — arguably why they are in Domrongchai’s house to begin with. The result is shelves and countertops full of bare bottles and tubes and pumps filled with product but stripped of just about everything else. Watching her videos, I’m slightly horrified at my own ability to recognize the specific products even without all the labeling, the colors and shapes of bottles acting like an afterimage of a CeraVe cleanser.
“Of course I’m going to buy the face cleanser that keeps my skin clear, but I don’t need it to continue to market to me in my own home,” Domrongchai says. “In the past I had three different [lotions] and all of their labels and their marketing on these products … They’re all kind of yelling at you trying to convince you to use it. They’re kind of [in] competition with each other.” In other words, it felt like a social media feed.
For some panners, finishing a product can elicit the same rush that buying something new does — that same dopamine rush of hitting “place order” creeps in when you hit that pan. Then you post it online for other panners to see, adding to the thrill. Finishing products becomes a task to complete, just like shopping is.
“What it can do — which I don’t love to admit to — is you’ll put more blush on than you would,” Silva says. “You just slather it on.” Silva shows me her spreadsheet page from 2024 showing colored lip products she used up: 23. Silva estimates that the average person finishes maybe one lipstick a year. In order to pan that many products, she was reapplying them 15 to 20 times a day, she says. Sometimes Silva wonders if she should ditch panning, too, like she did consumption-focused beauty spaces.
“When you first get into it, it’s so helpful, and you really get that community and you can turn some products over. Then the longer that you’re in the panning community, it’s like, all right, now panning is a problem,” she laughs. “Now I’ve taken all the problems I had with makeup consumption and translated them into late-stage panning. It’s like late-stage capitalism.”
This kind of video has become a mini-trend, with the idea being that the mere utterance of a temptation might soothe the part of your brain that wants to buy the item. (...)
We see so much marketing material that in certain subcultures online it is not just common but the expectation. In traditional marketing, it was understood that brands had to expose consumers to their message three times before they actually engaged with it, like going physically to a store to buy a product. In the age of social media and algorithmic overload, that number is now seven, says Mara Einstein, a marketing-professional-turned-critic and author of the book Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. For one, the vastness of the internet has allowed for the number of available products to bloat beyond imagination — there are simply too many things. But how we learn about products has changed drastically as well; as media has fragmented to a million sites, feeds, screens, and algorithms, so too has the advertising we see. There is no one TV commercial a quarter of households are seeing, then telling their friends about. Instead we see a digital display ad here, an influencer’s video there.
“You may be finding out information from people and so on, but you’re increasingly spending time in a space where you’re constantly being bombarded by sales messages,” Einstein says. Influencers know how to stay on message, constantly priming viewers to give in and buy something.
Being influenced is nothing new, of course. But the short- and mid-form video format creates a new type of intimacy and allure, especially if you are already looking for something to buy. It’s hard to argue with a sales pitch when you are watching someone in their home actually using the product they are trying to sell you.
The content doesn’t even have to be explicitly promotional: I recall a video I made last year about my reporting being used without credit by content creators. My frustration had hit a breaking point, so I recorded a selfie-style TikTok complaining about the contemporary media ecosystem. Only my head and a portion of my shoulders were in the video, but someone wanted to know where my blouse was from.
TikTok itself has only bolstered the idea that every piece of content is an opportunity to consume. Through TikTok Shop, anyone can become a digital salesperson. In much crueler, more tasteless examples, TikTok has added shopping prompts to videos coming out of Gaza: A woman in a head covering becomes a promotion for similar-looking garments with headscarves. A bespectacled Israeli activist protesting their government’s besiegement is a billboard for a pair of glasses. (...)
It’s easy to blame the influencers for all of this — and many do, regularly, like clockwork. The most recent discourse cycle, in late September, was kicked off by a TikTok video with 390,000 views and arguments that stretched on for weeks.
“These influencers make way too much fucking money,” the video begins. “You’re just getting paid to sell people shit they don’t fucking need. It’s literally just overconsumption … You’re perpetuating this cycle that’s really keeping us trapped.”
Content creators are admittedly a perfect target for the general rage many of us carry around. Many of them seem unencumbered by the endless horrors of the world, with daily routines that include blocks of time for “warm water” and to-do lists with “plan out mocktails for the new year.” Their digital presence exists suspended in time, where there is always something new to recommend, packages of shiny new things waiting for them, and a willing audience that completes the positive feedback loop. Wouldn’t it be nice — as people are in line at food banks, fighting for a precious few job listings, and snatched off streets by masked agents — to sit in your home and talk to yourself for a living?
But the draw of the influencer is powerful; even if you cannot become her, you can own the same things she does. For Antoinette Hocbo, who picked up hobbies via TikTok, the characters she encounters on her For You page seem effortlessly cool. They have an eye for design, they’re interested in the arts, they drink wine. You buy into the person first, and eventually — hopefully — you buy the stuff, too.
“[There’s] the whole idea of parasocial relationships,” Einstein, the marketing expert, says. “If somebody has gotten to the point where they’re spending that much time online with someone, they’re vested in what that person has to say.” The feeling of intimacy is physical: When followers watch their favorite TikToker, they are literally holding them in the palm of their hand. (...)
TikTok made going viral a possibility for a whole new slate of people. Now the hard part is how to keep things rolling when it happens to you. Most of the platforms themselves do not pay much for views, but brands eager to partner with buzzy people do. Creators often talk about their work in terms of self-discovery or self-actualization: This is who I want to be online, and these are the products and tips I truly, honestly want to share.
The tension comes then with the “very real commercial realities of playing to an audience, bowing to commercial sponsorships if you were lucky enough to have them,” Duffy says. “And then the new dimension, which doesn’t have the same precursors in legacy media, which is playing to the algorithm.” A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 62 percent of adults on TikTok are there to find product reviews and recommendations — especially young women. (...)
Project Pan, as a concept, is both clever and strange. For years, a community of people organized largely on the internet have committed themselves to finishing their beauty and personal care products — the name coming from your promise to hit the bottom of the pan that holds your blush, for example. It’s smart for the way it gamifies something people struggle with. (Who among us doesn’t have half-used bottles of soap or barely touched tubes of lipstick?) It’s also deeply revealing: These products are meant to be used, and we collectively are so bad at finishing them off that we need a little game to make it happen. Off the top of my head I can confidently say that I’ve never once “panned” a compact of blush; I have expensive tubes of red lipstick that didn’t end up being my color, but that I can’t bear to throw out; and I have four bottles of sunscreen that crowd my cabinet, waiting for the summer they’re finally used up. There are many more products that I could — should — Project Pan that I’ve forgotten I even own.
Cassandra Silva, on the other hand, knows exactly what she has. She knows, for example, that she spent $2,857.98 AUD on makeup in 2024 and panned products totaling $1,654.13. She owns eight eyeliners, but her ideal number would be four. In 2023 she panned seven mascaras, 11 colored lip products, and one blush, among many others, all lined up in a photo of the totally empty containers that show her progress. She keeps all this data in a giant spreadsheet that she shares with me after we talk, and as I scroll through it, I realize I have never seen an eyeshadow palette where every color is completely empty.
“Compared to beauty YouTube, it’s not insane insane, but it’s still more than any one human could ever reasonably use,” Silva says of her inventory.
She watches beauty YouTube channels, but needs to be careful about what she consumes: She tries to stay away from content showing off hauls, new releases, or the ever-tempting limited-edition holiday releases.
“I am as conscious as I can be for a makeup addict,” Silva says. “I try, and I am freaking susceptible. It’s so bad.” Recently, a palette of neutral eyeshadows hounded her Instagram feed — she caved and bought it, only to be thoroughly disappointed when it arrived. As a panner, Silva will be stuck with it for years until it’s finished.
Chessie Domrongchai used to make the kind of content that Silva perhaps would steer clear of — she was the one tempting makeup lovers with all of these products. As a beauty YouTuber, Domrongchai shared in-depth product review videos for brands like the once-buzzy direct-to-consumer brand Glossier and tested fistfuls of lip glosses in subtly different shades for her 40,000 subscribers. She shared new releases, compared similar products from different brands, and recommended items for upcoming sales. In a 2019 video, she walks viewers through her pinky-brown nude lipstick collection — 15 shades, not including lip glosses and liquid lipsticks. She followed makeup brands and watched other YouTubers, accumulating more and more products to explore ($10,000, she says, feels like a conservative estimate of the value of her collection at its peak). In makeup, Domrongchai found self-expression, creativity, and community.
Until one day in 2022, when a switch went off in her head.
“I started to view a lot of the overconsumption that I was seeing online as kind of disgusting and wrong, and I recognized a lot of the way that I showed up on the internet was to overconsume,” Domrongchai says. Not only that, but she felt her online presence also influenced viewers to keep buying more and more.
“These are just regular people that are just now stuck with the burden of their overconsumption,” she says. But as a content creator, it was hard to be part of the beauty space without having a constant parade of new products.
In recent months, Domrongchai has developed a new routine for the many products littering her home. One by one, she meticulously peels off stickers and labels: from shampoo and olive oil bottles, from dish soap dispensers and face wash. Using a mix of baking soda, mineral oil, and rubbing alcohol, she goes to town on brand names printed on the packaging of eyeshadow palettes and lipsticks, scrubbing away their origins and the millions of dollars of marketing that went into them — arguably why they are in Domrongchai’s house to begin with. The result is shelves and countertops full of bare bottles and tubes and pumps filled with product but stripped of just about everything else. Watching her videos, I’m slightly horrified at my own ability to recognize the specific products even without all the labeling, the colors and shapes of bottles acting like an afterimage of a CeraVe cleanser.
“Of course I’m going to buy the face cleanser that keeps my skin clear, but I don’t need it to continue to market to me in my own home,” Domrongchai says. “In the past I had three different [lotions] and all of their labels and their marketing on these products … They’re all kind of yelling at you trying to convince you to use it. They’re kind of [in] competition with each other.” In other words, it felt like a social media feed.
For some panners, finishing a product can elicit the same rush that buying something new does — that same dopamine rush of hitting “place order” creeps in when you hit that pan. Then you post it online for other panners to see, adding to the thrill. Finishing products becomes a task to complete, just like shopping is.
“What it can do — which I don’t love to admit to — is you’ll put more blush on than you would,” Silva says. “You just slather it on.” Silva shows me her spreadsheet page from 2024 showing colored lip products she used up: 23. Silva estimates that the average person finishes maybe one lipstick a year. In order to pan that many products, she was reapplying them 15 to 20 times a day, she says. Sometimes Silva wonders if she should ditch panning, too, like she did consumption-focused beauty spaces.
“When you first get into it, it’s so helpful, and you really get that community and you can turn some products over. Then the longer that you’re in the panning community, it’s like, all right, now panning is a problem,” she laughs. “Now I’ve taken all the problems I had with makeup consumption and translated them into late-stage panning. It’s like late-stage capitalism.”
by Mia Sato, The Verge | Read more:
Image: Cath Virginia
Friday, December 19, 2025
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
Saturday, December 13, 2025
The Utah Look
There’s a Reason You Can’t Tell the ‘Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Cast Apart
Does Hulu’s Secret Lives on Mormon Wives season 3 have you squinting at the TV, struggling to tell Jessi Ngatikaura and Demi Engemann apart with their identical, long, sleek waves and indistinguishable wide, thick lashes? Even diehard fans of the show admit to frequently mixing up the cast. And viewers regularly post about getting castmates confused. “Anyone else watch ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ but can’t keep up bc they all look exactly alike??” wrote one fan on Facebook.
It’s been a hot topic since season 1 and, according to some, this isn’t a simple case of women on reality TV wanting to be conventionally attractive. It’s the dogged pursuit of what many call the “Utah look.”
“Utah has insanely high standards for girls,” says fitness TikToker eharmany95. “Everybody is competing with the girl next to them to be just as perfect, just as tan, just as fit.” Or take it from Vanna Einerson, a 21-year-old Salt Lake City native on the most recent season of Love Island, whose filler and breast implants were a source of judgment and fascination online. “There’s a Utah girl stereotype,” she told castmate Ace Greene. “All the girls are, like, tan, blonde.”
“I have never felt uglier than I did living in Utah,” says TikToker @avemarin in a video explaining Vanna's look. “It’s not just being white and thin that is desired here, but what has been praised the most is extremely tiny bodies, blonde hair, blue eyes, big lips, immediate boob job—like right out of high school—and a very symmetrical face. Hence the filler and lip injections.”
Utah—and Salt Lake City, its capital—is a mecca for cosmetic procedures that help women conform to these standards. Salt Lake City has more surgeons per capita than Los Angeles (and almost as many as Miami). Residents google “breast augmentation” and other cosmetic surgeries in higher numbers than pretty much any other city. One particularly popular surgery is the “mommy makeover,” a combination of multiple procedures, including but not limited to a breast lift, tummy tuck, liposuction and labiaplasty.
It’s been a hot topic since season 1 and, according to some, this isn’t a simple case of women on reality TV wanting to be conventionally attractive. It’s the dogged pursuit of what many call the “Utah look.”
“Utah has insanely high standards for girls,” says fitness TikToker eharmany95. “Everybody is competing with the girl next to them to be just as perfect, just as tan, just as fit.” Or take it from Vanna Einerson, a 21-year-old Salt Lake City native on the most recent season of Love Island, whose filler and breast implants were a source of judgment and fascination online. “There’s a Utah girl stereotype,” she told castmate Ace Greene. “All the girls are, like, tan, blonde.”
“I have never felt uglier than I did living in Utah,” says TikToker @avemarin in a video explaining Vanna's look. “It’s not just being white and thin that is desired here, but what has been praised the most is extremely tiny bodies, blonde hair, blue eyes, big lips, immediate boob job—like right out of high school—and a very symmetrical face. Hence the filler and lip injections.”
Utah—and Salt Lake City, its capital—is a mecca for cosmetic procedures that help women conform to these standards. Salt Lake City has more surgeons per capita than Los Angeles (and almost as many as Miami). Residents google “breast augmentation” and other cosmetic surgeries in higher numbers than pretty much any other city. One particularly popular surgery is the “mommy makeover,” a combination of multiple procedures, including but not limited to a breast lift, tummy tuck, liposuction and labiaplasty.
Although Utah is hardly the only place where women feel pressure to be thin and have long hair, by many accounts the expectation here is more intense. At least some of this has to do with the Mormon Church, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A cultural behemoth across the state, LDS members are 90 percent white and, according to some experts, this sameness—in religion, race, and region—leads to an extreme pressure to conform to a very conventional standard of beauty...
Aubree Bunderson, a 26-year-old stay-at-home mom and lifelong member of the LDS church, says she can always tell a fellow Deseret native down to the “Utah curls” (think beachy waves with straight ends achieved with a clamped curling iron) and her very blonde dye job.
“You see a different kind of blonde in different states. It’s not as rich, and it’s not as soft,” she says. “Anytime I’m traveling anywhere, you can almost tell who’s from Utah and who’s not. She’s that bleach-blonde girl with Utah curls. You know she has a woman that specializes in platinum blondes do her hair. There’s not very many blondes out there. And then, here in Utah, we’re full of blondes. We’re full of athletic wear. We love the idea of the gym and being healthy and having the perfect body and beauty standards when it comes to skincare and makeup. We want to look our best and feel our best.”
For Bunderson, the widespread conformity to these ideas of beauty is inspiring. “I’m encouraged by other women that I find attractive. I’m like, I want that body. I want her hair. I want her eyelashes. I want her skin. So many influencers are from Utah. They’re in my face, looking beautiful. They look fake, but they just look amazing in my eyes.”...
Is this religion or just Utah? Can we even separate the two? Bunderson and several other women who spoke with Cosmopolitan mentioned physical “perfection” as the goal of the blonde curls and mommy makeovers. Perfection is a core value in the LDS Church, the Book of Mormon commands followers to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”...
Aubree Bunderson, a 26-year-old stay-at-home mom and lifelong member of the LDS church, says she can always tell a fellow Deseret native down to the “Utah curls” (think beachy waves with straight ends achieved with a clamped curling iron) and her very blonde dye job.
“You see a different kind of blonde in different states. It’s not as rich, and it’s not as soft,” she says. “Anytime I’m traveling anywhere, you can almost tell who’s from Utah and who’s not. She’s that bleach-blonde girl with Utah curls. You know she has a woman that specializes in platinum blondes do her hair. There’s not very many blondes out there. And then, here in Utah, we’re full of blondes. We’re full of athletic wear. We love the idea of the gym and being healthy and having the perfect body and beauty standards when it comes to skincare and makeup. We want to look our best and feel our best.”
For Bunderson, the widespread conformity to these ideas of beauty is inspiring. “I’m encouraged by other women that I find attractive. I’m like, I want that body. I want her hair. I want her eyelashes. I want her skin. So many influencers are from Utah. They’re in my face, looking beautiful. They look fake, but they just look amazing in my eyes.”...
Is this religion or just Utah? Can we even separate the two? Bunderson and several other women who spoke with Cosmopolitan mentioned physical “perfection” as the goal of the blonde curls and mommy makeovers. Perfection is a core value in the LDS Church, the Book of Mormon commands followers to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”...
While reality TV stars are anecdotal evidence of this tendency for sameness in the quest for “perfection,” data also bears this out. A recent survey on body image in the LDS church found that 14 percent of church members had a cosmetic procedure compared to 4 percent nationally. The report also concluded that although the LDS church promotes a positive body image, many religious Mormons (particularly wealthy ones) “may erroneously believe that religion is tied to perfection in a variety of ways, including physical appearance or finances, and they may attempt to conform to what is referred to as the ‘thin ideal’ in U.S. culture. Perhaps appearing to be a perfect, worthy, righteous member of the church means ‘looking the part’ as well.”
by Hannah Malach, Cosmopolitan | Read more:
Image: Mary Fama/Disney/Pamela Littky/Getty Images
[ed. The Stepford look, updated. There's even something called Christian Girl Autumn Look. Maybe we'll see Recovering Tradwife in Therapy look or Housewives of Bulimia look.]
Image: Mary Fama/Disney/Pamela Littky/Getty Images
[ed. The Stepford look, updated. There's even something called Christian Girl Autumn Look. Maybe we'll see Recovering Tradwife in Therapy look or Housewives of Bulimia look.]
Friday, December 12, 2025
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Understanding Ametora – Japan’s Americana Obsession
This article and its contents have been directly influenced by the fantastic book ‘Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style’ by W. David Marx – the book charts the full history on Japan’s relationship with Americana and is available to be purchased here. [ed. And here.]
Japan is a nation of reinterpretation. It’s a country with a long-standing fascination for taking traditional items, objects, and concepts and reimagining them in a distinctly Japanese manner – one that places function at the forefront and meticulous attention to detail close behind. There’s a national knack for spotting something made overseas and finding ways to improve it, often through minimalist refinement. Everything touched by Japanese hands somehow ends up looking, tasting, and feeling better.
Nowhere is this more prominent than in the realm of fashion, specifically, the enduring Japanese obsession with classic Americana style. Or, to give it its proper name, Ametora – a portmanteau of “American traditional” – which has not only reshaped Japanese fashion but also influenced global perceptions of Americana.
When you first think of Japanese Americana, your mind will instantly jump to exciting brands, retailers and publications, but the country’s initial foray with American clothing came long before anyone was reading Popeye or wearing Kapital…
Japan’s initial encounter with Western fabric came in the 1920s – a time when traditional art and aesthetics were beginning to merge with European life and culture. The result was a bubbling era of Japanese modernism and the creation of Asian Art Deco architecture, paintings, prints, design and fashion. Spearheading this cultural shift were two groups, the MOBOs & MOGAs, or simply Modern Boys and Modern Girls.
These groups symbolised a seismic shift in youth culture, rejecting rigid traditions and embracing style as rebellion. They filled cafés and dance halls in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kobe, dressed in garments inspired by Western trends. MOGAs adopted dropped waists, shorter hemlines, and bobbed hair – all scandalous by Japanese standards. MOBOs ditched kimonos for suits, fedoras, and wide-legged trousers. It was unadulterated counterculture, something Japan had never been confronted with before.
But this wave of modernism was short-lived. WWII brought a return to conservative politics and traditional values. Japan, once again, reverted to its most serious self.
Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces in 1945 would leave America right on their doorstep, but not in the way the MOBOs & MOGAs could have ever envisaged. U.S. troops occupied the streets of all of Japan’s major cities, maintaining a somewhat amicable relationship with the locals, with reports of soldiers helping and playing with children in the street.
The positive relationship led the soldiers to introduce locals to Western imports – khaki trousers, linen shirts, baseball caps and, importantly, American culture and fashion magazines. It was an exciting new world of function, fabric and colour, and a small subset of Japanese aficionados started to develop around the fascination with the new U.S. commodities.
A scramble amongst this niche ensued, and right at the front of it was a man called Kensuke Ishizu, a soldier who had served in WWII, and was now working as a menswear designer for his own retail company, Ishizu Shōten (Ishizu Store)
Deeply inspired by the glimpses of Americana he’d witnessed through befriended U.S. soldiers, Ishizu was determined to make his store the focal point for the wave, and chose to focus on classic Americana garments such as cotton flannel work shirts and indigo work pants, all produced under a faux American brand called Kentucky.
Ishizu Shōten became popular with a tiny niche of discerning Japanese citizens, but the market was too small. Ishizu was far too early of an adopter and noticed the majority of his income derived from the sale of high-end sports jackets for wealthy suburban families. He subsequently rebranded the company to VAN Jacket, to focus on the garments.
There was an issue, though. It was taboo for Japanese men to be at all interested in fashion. Before Ishizu could sell any of his products, he had to educate his neighbours. To do so, he became the face of a new menswear magazine titled Otoko no Fukushoku. The magazine debuted in 1954 and was designed to function as a textbook for semi-formal and business wear, but Ishizu had other ideas. He used it as a vehicle to inform young Japanese men about VAN products and his intrigue with Western collegiate style he had seen from U.S. fashion magazines, which was now coined ‘Ivy.’
Still, despite his best efforts, Ishizu was struggling to shift product. VAN was not designed for, or affordable enough for, the niche student crowd who read Otoko no Fukushoku. So, in search of true Ivy enlightenment, in 1959, Ishizu headed for the West.
Immediately upon arriving in the U.S.A., he headed on a tour of all the country’s prestigious universities, and it was Princeton where he found the fabled version of Ivy style he had been dreaming of. Students effortlessly wearing neckties, chino pants, wool sweaters and flannel blazers. It was everything Ishizu had wanted the Japanese youth to imitate, and when he arrived home, he set to work designing an ‘Ivy model’ suit, modelled on the Brooks Brother’s famed Number One Sack Suit.
After slowly developing VAN & Ivy awareness through Otoko no Fukushoku (now named ‘Men’s Club‘) Ishizu unveiled the brand’s first complete Ivy line in 1962. But once again, the colourful blend of blazers and chinos was not well received, particularly by retailers who refused to stock it for fear it was too niche.
In Spring 1963, Ishizu would connect with another Ivy fanatic and Men’s Club writer – Toshiyuki Kurosu. The two would both spend hours writing & speaking of Ivy style, and Kurosu would go on to create a column titled ‘Ivy Leaguers on the Street‘, which was supplemented with images he had taken on the streets of Ginza of those that were adopting the new look.
These editorial efforts, alongside a hugely influential photobook detailing American students wearing Ivy League style titled ‘Take Ivy‘ by photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida, resulted in the popularisation of the style in Japan.
Soon, the streets of Ginza were flooded with individuals wearing a Japanese interpretation of American prep, and one brand everyone wanted, was VAN.
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, the groundwork that Ishizu, VAN and Kurusou laid was starting to snowball.
American Ivy Leaguers had switched from sweater vests and chinos to torn denim & T-shirts. Civil rights movements, the Vietnam War and the Cuban Missile Crisis had conjured up an air of counterculture in the U.S., and it was directly assimilated on the streets of Japan. Young men were beginning to reject the work-first lifestyle and began adopting a more casual one, and it manifested through a certain fabric…
Denim.
Denim represented everything about America that Japan loved – it was the symbol for freedom, for rebels, for those who did as they pleased, and went about it in a way that didn’t please others. Wearing a pair of jeans was a statement of counter-culture, and it quickly became translated into Japanese. The blue legwear flooded the streets of Japan, covering the country’s youth like a great denim wave off Kanagawa.
Japan in the ’70s was moving faster than it ever had. Stylistically, more had been said in the last ten years than it had the previous fifty. It was a melting pot of music, fashion and print, and one of the most important publications of all would spread its wings in 1976 – POPEYE Magazine.
POPEYE, now a cult magazine even among those who can’t read it, was originally founded when two editors, Yoshihisa Kinameri & Jirō Ishikawa, were working on two American-inspired publications titled ‘Ski Life‘ & ‘Made in U.S.A.’ The two publications were so well received by the new Americana-obsessed population that their publisher, Heibon, made them an offer to produce their own magazine…
The pair leapt at the chance and were convinced that the next big thing in Japan was to be West Coast culture. So, they grabbed the first flight to L.A. to study first-hand the Californian surf & skate culture.
Ishikawa wanted to name the new magazine ‘City Boys‘, a popular term associated with Japan’s new urban youth, but Kinimeri wanted ‘POPEYE’, inspired by the American cartoon character, but also because it meant having an ‘eye’ on ‘pop.’ So, it was settled, the magazine would be called ‘POPEYE – Magazine for City Boys’
The magazine functioned differently from those at the time, opting to show hundreds of products across its pages with corresponding prices and retailers. Opening an issue of POPEYE was a portal to a world of the latest Japanese-American style; it was a manual for getting whatever City Boy look you wanted, and it spread like wildfire on the streets of Tokyo.
By the late ’80s, Japan had transitioned from one of the most stylistically uniform countries to one of the most stylistically diverse. Each day, people were trying new things and reinterpreting Western trends as their own, but it was POPEYE’s fascination with West Coast Culture combined with a certain individual, Hiroshi Fujiwara, that held the key to Japan’s next style evolution.
Fujiwara was one of the main heads in Tokyo’s music & design scene at the time and by all accounts, potentially one of Japan’s first influencers. People looked to him for anything fashion and music-related, a status that would earn him the title of ‘best dressed‘ at an underground party called ‘London Nite‘ and as a token of recognition, he received a free trip to London to meet Vivienne Westwood & her partner Malcolm McLaren.
Fujiwara’s time in London was hugely influential, largely thanks to his introduction to New York hip-hop by McLaren. He returned to Tokyo with a crate of records and a mission to spread the addictive sound among the city’s youth.
For the same reasons they had fallen in love with Ivy League & denim, Japan fell in love with hip-hop. It was against the grain and unapologetically American. Japanese rap groups began to surface, and one of them was Fujiwara’s seminal group, ‘Tinnie Pax’.
The new hip-hop scene would bring together creatives in a new way, with names such as Jun “Jonio” Takahashi and Nigo attending Fujiwara’s famed hip-hop nights at Tokyo’s nightclubs. Turned on by the loose-fitting, relaxed garb donned by Wu-Tang Clan, Run DMC & De La Soul, Fujiwara & co. found themselves competing against one another to acquire the latest American streetwear labels, predominantly Stussy.
This new infatuation would segue to the first Japanese streetwear brands, with Nigo creating A Bathing Ape, Takahashi and Undercover & Fujiwara’s Good Enough. The designs were bold – you’ve only got to look towards A Bathing Ape’s catalogue of loud camouflage jackets and neon Bapestas to understand that Japanese streetwear was here to be heard.
By the 1990s, the foundations laid by VAN, Men’s Club, and POPEYE had evolved into something far bolder. Good Enough, Undercover, and A Bathing Ape were not just brands; they were cultural catalysts. Each represented a new era of Japanese streetwear that would define global fashion for decades to come. Fujiwara’s Good Enough introduced the notion of limited drops. Nigo’s A Bathing Ape commercialised streetwear with spectacle camo patterns and cartoon graphics. Takahashi’s Undercover blurred the lines between punk, fashion, and conceptual art, bridging Harajuku and Paris.
The brands became blueprints – not only for how to build streetwear labels but how to root them in subculture and elevate them into cultural institutions. Their success opened doors for countless others: WTAPS, Neighborhood, Visvim, White Mountaineering, and more. They proved that Japan wasn’t just part of the global fashion conversation – it was leading it.
And while one thread of Ametora led toward futuristic silhouettes and streetwise rebellion, another doubled down on reverence for the past. Brands like The Real McCoy’s, Buzz Rickson’s, and Freewheelers operate with near-obsessive historical accuracy, reproducing military garments, denim, and workwear with a level of craftsmanship that often surpasses the originals. At the other end of the spectrum sits Kapital – a brand that manages to honour tradition while blending it into something artful, unexpected, and unmistakably Japanese.
Together, these opposing but interconnected forces form the full picture of Ametora. On one side – reproduction & preservation; on the other, innovation and disruption. Both are rooted in an enduring admiration for Americana.
In the world of Ametora, America may have provided the raw material, but Japan reshaped it, refined it, and ultimately redefined it. From Ivy to indigo, prep to punk, camo to cut-and-sew – the story of Ametora is proof that style, when filtered through a lens of precision, passion, and cultural sensitivity, can transcend its origins. In doing so, it becomes something greater: a language not of imitation, but of transformation.
Nowhere is this more prominent than in the realm of fashion, specifically, the enduring Japanese obsession with classic Americana style. Or, to give it its proper name, Ametora – a portmanteau of “American traditional” – which has not only reshaped Japanese fashion but also influenced global perceptions of Americana.
When you first think of Japanese Americana, your mind will instantly jump to exciting brands, retailers and publications, but the country’s initial foray with American clothing came long before anyone was reading Popeye or wearing Kapital…
1920s – MOBOs & MOGAs
Japan’s initial encounter with Western fabric came in the 1920s – a time when traditional art and aesthetics were beginning to merge with European life and culture. The result was a bubbling era of Japanese modernism and the creation of Asian Art Deco architecture, paintings, prints, design and fashion. Spearheading this cultural shift were two groups, the MOBOs & MOGAs, or simply Modern Boys and Modern Girls.
But this wave of modernism was short-lived. WWII brought a return to conservative politics and traditional values. Japan, once again, reverted to its most serious self.
1940s – Post-war influence
Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces in 1945 would leave America right on their doorstep, but not in the way the MOBOs & MOGAs could have ever envisaged. U.S. troops occupied the streets of all of Japan’s major cities, maintaining a somewhat amicable relationship with the locals, with reports of soldiers helping and playing with children in the street.
The positive relationship led the soldiers to introduce locals to Western imports – khaki trousers, linen shirts, baseball caps and, importantly, American culture and fashion magazines. It was an exciting new world of function, fabric and colour, and a small subset of Japanese aficionados started to develop around the fascination with the new U.S. commodities.
A scramble amongst this niche ensued, and right at the front of it was a man called Kensuke Ishizu, a soldier who had served in WWII, and was now working as a menswear designer for his own retail company, Ishizu Shōten (Ishizu Store)
Deeply inspired by the glimpses of Americana he’d witnessed through befriended U.S. soldiers, Ishizu was determined to make his store the focal point for the wave, and chose to focus on classic Americana garments such as cotton flannel work shirts and indigo work pants, all produced under a faux American brand called Kentucky.
Ishizu Shōten became popular with a tiny niche of discerning Japanese citizens, but the market was too small. Ishizu was far too early of an adopter and noticed the majority of his income derived from the sale of high-end sports jackets for wealthy suburban families. He subsequently rebranded the company to VAN Jacket, to focus on the garments.
1950s – The birth of Ivy
Immediately upon arriving in the U.S.A., he headed on a tour of all the country’s prestigious universities, and it was Princeton where he found the fabled version of Ivy style he had been dreaming of. Students effortlessly wearing neckties, chino pants, wool sweaters and flannel blazers. It was everything Ishizu had wanted the Japanese youth to imitate, and when he arrived home, he set to work designing an ‘Ivy model’ suit, modelled on the Brooks Brother’s famed Number One Sack Suit.
After slowly developing VAN & Ivy awareness through Otoko no Fukushoku (now named ‘Men’s Club‘) Ishizu unveiled the brand’s first complete Ivy line in 1962. But once again, the colourful blend of blazers and chinos was not well received, particularly by retailers who refused to stock it for fear it was too niche.
1960s – Take Ivy
Soon, the streets of Ginza were flooded with individuals wearing a Japanese interpretation of American prep, and one brand everyone wanted, was VAN.
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, the groundwork that Ishizu, VAN and Kurusou laid was starting to snowball.
American Ivy Leaguers had switched from sweater vests and chinos to torn denim & T-shirts. Civil rights movements, the Vietnam War and the Cuban Missile Crisis had conjured up an air of counterculture in the U.S., and it was directly assimilated on the streets of Japan. Young men were beginning to reject the work-first lifestyle and began adopting a more casual one, and it manifested through a certain fabric…
Denim.
Denim represented everything about America that Japan loved – it was the symbol for freedom, for rebels, for those who did as they pleased, and went about it in a way that didn’t please others. Wearing a pair of jeans was a statement of counter-culture, and it quickly became translated into Japanese. The blue legwear flooded the streets of Japan, covering the country’s youth like a great denim wave off Kanagawa.
1970s – The birth of POPEYE
Japan in the ’70s was moving faster than it ever had. Stylistically, more had been said in the last ten years than it had the previous fifty. It was a melting pot of music, fashion and print, and one of the most important publications of all would spread its wings in 1976 – POPEYE Magazine.
The pair leapt at the chance and were convinced that the next big thing in Japan was to be West Coast culture. So, they grabbed the first flight to L.A. to study first-hand the Californian surf & skate culture.
Ishikawa wanted to name the new magazine ‘City Boys‘, a popular term associated with Japan’s new urban youth, but Kinimeri wanted ‘POPEYE’, inspired by the American cartoon character, but also because it meant having an ‘eye’ on ‘pop.’ So, it was settled, the magazine would be called ‘POPEYE – Magazine for City Boys’
The magazine functioned differently from those at the time, opting to show hundreds of products across its pages with corresponding prices and retailers. Opening an issue of POPEYE was a portal to a world of the latest Japanese-American style; it was a manual for getting whatever City Boy look you wanted, and it spread like wildfire on the streets of Tokyo.
1980s – Japanese streetwear
Fujiwara was one of the main heads in Tokyo’s music & design scene at the time and by all accounts, potentially one of Japan’s first influencers. People looked to him for anything fashion and music-related, a status that would earn him the title of ‘best dressed‘ at an underground party called ‘London Nite‘ and as a token of recognition, he received a free trip to London to meet Vivienne Westwood & her partner Malcolm McLaren.
Fujiwara’s time in London was hugely influential, largely thanks to his introduction to New York hip-hop by McLaren. He returned to Tokyo with a crate of records and a mission to spread the addictive sound among the city’s youth.
The new hip-hop scene would bring together creatives in a new way, with names such as Jun “Jonio” Takahashi and Nigo attending Fujiwara’s famed hip-hop nights at Tokyo’s nightclubs. Turned on by the loose-fitting, relaxed garb donned by Wu-Tang Clan, Run DMC & De La Soul, Fujiwara & co. found themselves competing against one another to acquire the latest American streetwear labels, predominantly Stussy.
This new infatuation would segue to the first Japanese streetwear brands, with Nigo creating A Bathing Ape, Takahashi and Undercover & Fujiwara’s Good Enough. The designs were bold – you’ve only got to look towards A Bathing Ape’s catalogue of loud camouflage jackets and neon Bapestas to understand that Japanese streetwear was here to be heard.
1990s – Americana reproduction
And while one thread of Ametora led toward futuristic silhouettes and streetwise rebellion, another doubled down on reverence for the past. Brands like The Real McCoy’s, Buzz Rickson’s, and Freewheelers operate with near-obsessive historical accuracy, reproducing military garments, denim, and workwear with a level of craftsmanship that often surpasses the originals. At the other end of the spectrum sits Kapital – a brand that manages to honour tradition while blending it into something artful, unexpected, and unmistakably Japanese.
Together, these opposing but interconnected forces form the full picture of Ametora. On one side – reproduction & preservation; on the other, innovation and disruption. Both are rooted in an enduring admiration for Americana.
In the world of Ametora, America may have provided the raw material, but Japan reshaped it, refined it, and ultimately redefined it. From Ivy to indigo, prep to punk, camo to cut-and-sew – the story of Ametora is proof that style, when filtered through a lens of precision, passion, and cultural sensitivity, can transcend its origins. In doing so, it becomes something greater: a language not of imitation, but of transformation.
by Henry Robinson, Proper | Read more:
Images: uncredited and via
[ed. Learned something new today: Ametora. Fascinating history (with trend-setting styles still evolving and being produced). Additional pictures at the link. See also: 'Ametora': How American style changed Japanese fashion forever (ST).]
Sunday, November 30, 2025
K-Beauty Boom Explodes
On a recent Saturday at an Ulta Beauty store in midtown Manhattan, Denise McCarthy, a mother in her 40s, stood in front of a wall of tiny pastel bottles, tubes and compacts. Her phone buzzed — another TikTok from her 15-year-old daughter.
“My kids text me the TikToks,” she told CNBC, scooping Korean lip tints and sunscreens into her basket, destined for Christmas stockings. “I don’t even know what half of this does. I just buy the ones they send me.”
“My kids text me the TikToks,” she told CNBC, scooping Korean lip tints and sunscreens into her basket, destined for Christmas stockings. “I don’t even know what half of this does. I just buy the ones they send me.”
Two aisles over, a group of college students compared swatches of Korean cushion foundations. A dad asked a store associate whether a viral Korean sunscreen was the one “from the girl who does the ‘get ready with me’ videos.” Near the checkout, a display of Korean sheet mask mini-packs was nearly empty.
Scenes like this are playing out across the country.
Once a niche reserved for beauty obsessives, Korean cosmetics — known as K-beauty — are breaking fully into the American mainstream, fueled by TikTok virality, younger and more diverse shoppers, and aggressive expansion from retailers such as Ulta, Sephora, Walmart and Costco.
K-beauty sales in the United States are expected to top $2 billion in 2025, up more than 37% from last year, according to market research firm NielsenIQ, far outpacing the broader beauty market’s single-digit growth.
And even as trade tensions complicate supply chains, brands and retailers told CNBC the momentum is strong.
“We have no plans of slowing down and see more opportunities to penetrate the market,” said Janet Kim, vice president at K-beauty brand Neogen.
In the first half of 2025, South Korea shipped a record $5.5 billion worth of cosmetics, up nearly 15% year over year, and has become the leading exporter of cosmetics to the U.S., surpassing France, according to data from the South Korean government.
“The growth has been remarkable,” said Therese-Ann D’Ambrosia, vice president of beauty and personal care at NielsenIQ. “When you compare that to the broader beauty market, which is growing at single digits, K-beauty is clearly operating in a different gear right now.” (...)
But the second wave brings its own risks. A heavy dependence on virality could expose brands to sudden algorithm changes or regulatory scrutiny, D’Ambrosia said.
“When you have so much growth concentrated on one platform [such as TikTok], algorithm changes could significantly impact discoverability overnight,” D’Ambrosia said. “We’ve seen what happens when platforms tweak their recommendation engines. ... There are definitely some caution flags we’re watching.”
Rapid innovation
K-beauty’s staying power, Dang said, is rooted in an intensely competitive domestic Korean market. Trends move at breakneck speed and consumers spend more per capita on beauty than in any other country, according to South Korean research firm KOISRA.
South Korea had more than 28,000 licensed cosmetics sellers in 2024 — nearly double that of five years ago — creating a pressure-cooker environment that forces constant experimentation, said Neogen’s Kim.
“We develop about hundreds of formulas each day,” Kim told CNBC. “We build the library and we test results with clinical individual tests. ... Everything that’s very unique and works really well for skin care, we develop.”
Korean consumers churn through trends quickly, fueling a pipeline of upstart brands that can go viral and, in some cases, get acquired. For example, when gooey snail mucin, a gel used to protect and repair people’s skin, took off globally, skin care brand Amorepacific acquired COSRX, the small Korean brand that helped popularize the ingredient, for roughly $700 million.
The next wave of products, analysts predict, are likely to be even more experimental.
Brands are betting on buzzy ingredients such as DNA extracted from salmon or trout sperm that early research suggests may help calm or repair skin. They are also expanding into biotechnology.
“K-beauty is very data-driven. [Artificial intelligence] helps us get fast results for content, formula development, and advertising,” Kim said. “In Korea, they started talking about delivery systems. They’re very good with biotechnology.”
Scenes like this are playing out across the country.
Once a niche reserved for beauty obsessives, Korean cosmetics — known as K-beauty — are breaking fully into the American mainstream, fueled by TikTok virality, younger and more diverse shoppers, and aggressive expansion from retailers such as Ulta, Sephora, Walmart and Costco.
K-beauty sales in the United States are expected to top $2 billion in 2025, up more than 37% from last year, according to market research firm NielsenIQ, far outpacing the broader beauty market’s single-digit growth.
And even as trade tensions complicate supply chains, brands and retailers told CNBC the momentum is strong.
“We have no plans of slowing down and see more opportunities to penetrate the market,” said Janet Kim, vice president at K-beauty brand Neogen.
In the first half of 2025, South Korea shipped a record $5.5 billion worth of cosmetics, up nearly 15% year over year, and has become the leading exporter of cosmetics to the U.S., surpassing France, according to data from the South Korean government.
“The growth has been remarkable,” said Therese-Ann D’Ambrosia, vice president of beauty and personal care at NielsenIQ. “When you compare that to the broader beauty market, which is growing at single digits, K-beauty is clearly operating in a different gear right now.” (...)
The ‘second wave’
Over the past decade, there’s also been a rise in Korean entertainment in the U.S. — from pop groups such as BTS and Blackpink to this year’s Netflix hit “KPop Demon Hunters” —which has helped push South Korea’s cultural exports to unprecedented popularity.
“Korean culture has exploded on every front, and that has really shown up when it comes to K-beauty,” Dang said.
K-beauty’s “first wave,” which hit the U.S. in the mid-2010s, was defined by “glass skin,” 10-step routines, snail mucin, cushion compacts and beauty blemish creams. Most products catered to lighter skin tones, and distribution was limited to small boutiques, Amazon sellers and early test placements at Ulta and Sephora, beauty experts said.
“The first wave had some penetration, but nothing like today,” Horvath said. “It was mostly people in the know.”
The second wave has been bigger, faster and far more inclusive. It has spanned color cosmetics, hair and scalp care, body care, fragrances and high-tech devices.
TikTok is the central engine of discovery, especially for Gen Z and millennial shoppers, who account for roughly three-fourths of K-beauty consumers, according to a Personal Care Insights market analyst report. Posts tagged “K-beauty” or “Korean skin care” draw 250 million views per week, according to consumer data firm Spate. And viral products with sleek packaging often vanish from shelves faster than retailers can restock — particularly those that combine gentle formulas and low prices, Dang said.
“TikTok has changed the game,” Horvath said. “It’s easier to educate consumers on innovation and get the word out. Brands are deeply invested in paying influencers, and TikTokers talk about textures, formulas and efficacy.” (...)
The trend is visible across the Americas: 61% of consumers in Mexico and nearly half in Brazil say K-beauty is popular in their country, compared with about 45% in the U.S., according to Statista.
“Traditional retail and e-commerce remain important, but TikTok Shop is the standout disruptor,” said Nielsen’s D’Ambrosia. “It’s not just about the direct sales on that one platform; it’s about how it’s changing the entire discovery and purchase journey.”
Over the past decade, there’s also been a rise in Korean entertainment in the U.S. — from pop groups such as BTS and Blackpink to this year’s Netflix hit “KPop Demon Hunters” —which has helped push South Korea’s cultural exports to unprecedented popularity.
“Korean culture has exploded on every front, and that has really shown up when it comes to K-beauty,” Dang said.
K-beauty’s “first wave,” which hit the U.S. in the mid-2010s, was defined by “glass skin,” 10-step routines, snail mucin, cushion compacts and beauty blemish creams. Most products catered to lighter skin tones, and distribution was limited to small boutiques, Amazon sellers and early test placements at Ulta and Sephora, beauty experts said.
“The first wave had some penetration, but nothing like today,” Horvath said. “It was mostly people in the know.”
The second wave has been bigger, faster and far more inclusive. It has spanned color cosmetics, hair and scalp care, body care, fragrances and high-tech devices.
TikTok is the central engine of discovery, especially for Gen Z and millennial shoppers, who account for roughly three-fourths of K-beauty consumers, according to a Personal Care Insights market analyst report. Posts tagged “K-beauty” or “Korean skin care” draw 250 million views per week, according to consumer data firm Spate. And viral products with sleek packaging often vanish from shelves faster than retailers can restock — particularly those that combine gentle formulas and low prices, Dang said.
“TikTok has changed the game,” Horvath said. “It’s easier to educate consumers on innovation and get the word out. Brands are deeply invested in paying influencers, and TikTokers talk about textures, formulas and efficacy.” (...)
The trend is visible across the Americas: 61% of consumers in Mexico and nearly half in Brazil say K-beauty is popular in their country, compared with about 45% in the U.S., according to Statista.
“Traditional retail and e-commerce remain important, but TikTok Shop is the standout disruptor,” said Nielsen’s D’Ambrosia. “It’s not just about the direct sales on that one platform; it’s about how it’s changing the entire discovery and purchase journey.”
But the second wave brings its own risks. A heavy dependence on virality could expose brands to sudden algorithm changes or regulatory scrutiny, D’Ambrosia said.
“When you have so much growth concentrated on one platform [such as TikTok], algorithm changes could significantly impact discoverability overnight,” D’Ambrosia said. “We’ve seen what happens when platforms tweak their recommendation engines. ... There are definitely some caution flags we’re watching.”
Rapid innovation
K-beauty’s staying power, Dang said, is rooted in an intensely competitive domestic Korean market. Trends move at breakneck speed and consumers spend more per capita on beauty than in any other country, according to South Korean research firm KOISRA.
South Korea had more than 28,000 licensed cosmetics sellers in 2024 — nearly double that of five years ago — creating a pressure-cooker environment that forces constant experimentation, said Neogen’s Kim.
“We develop about hundreds of formulas each day,” Kim told CNBC. “We build the library and we test results with clinical individual tests. ... Everything that’s very unique and works really well for skin care, we develop.”
Korean consumers churn through trends quickly, fueling a pipeline of upstart brands that can go viral and, in some cases, get acquired. For example, when gooey snail mucin, a gel used to protect and repair people’s skin, took off globally, skin care brand Amorepacific acquired COSRX, the small Korean brand that helped popularize the ingredient, for roughly $700 million.
The next wave of products, analysts predict, are likely to be even more experimental.
Brands are betting on buzzy ingredients such as DNA extracted from salmon or trout sperm that early research suggests may help calm or repair skin. They are also expanding into biotechnology.
“K-beauty is very data-driven. [Artificial intelligence] helps us get fast results for content, formula development, and advertising,” Kim said. “In Korea, they started talking about delivery systems. They’re very good with biotechnology.”
by Luke Fountain, CNBC | Read more:
Image: Avila Gonzalez | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images
Friday, November 28, 2025
The Decline of Deviance
Where has all the weirdness gone?
I’m not the first to notice something strange going on—or, really, the lack of something strange going on. But so far, I think, each person has only pointed to a piece of the phenomenon. As a result, most of them have concluded that these trends are:
a) very recent, and therefore likely caused by the internet, when in fact most of them began long before
b) restricted to one segment of society (art, science, business), when in fact this is a culture-wide phenomenon, and
c) purely bad, when in fact they’re a mix of positive and negative.
When you put all the data together, you see a stark shift in society that is on the one hand miraculous, fantastic, worthy of a ticker-tape parade. And a shift that is, on the other hand, dismal, depressing, and in need of immediate intervention. Looking at these epoch-making events also suggests, I think, that they may all share a single cause.
by Adam Mastroianni, Experimental History | Read more:
Every new apartment building looks like this:
b) restricted to one segment of society (art, science, business), when in fact this is a culture-wide phenomenon, and
c) purely bad, when in fact they’re a mix of positive and negative.
When you put all the data together, you see a stark shift in society that is on the one hand miraculous, fantastic, worthy of a ticker-tape parade. And a shift that is, on the other hand, dismal, depressing, and in need of immediate intervention. Looking at these epoch-making events also suggests, I think, that they may all share a single cause.
by Adam Mastroianni, Experimental History | Read more:
Images: Author and Alex Murrell
[ed. Interesting thesis. For example, architecture:]
***
The physical world, too, looks increasingly same-y. As Alex Murrell has documented, every cafe in the world now has the same bourgeois boho style:Every new apartment building looks like this:
Thursday, October 30, 2025
Every Wrinkle is a Policy Failure
A lot of people blame their frown lines on their job, the tanning salon, or aging. I blame the government.
There’s a treatment for wrinkles—Botox and similar toxins that freeze your face in place.. It can be pricey. The average price of a Botox treatment is above $400, depending on how many doses or units you get injected. But Botox isn’t patented so why is it still so expensive?
But wholesale Botox is still kind of cheap- you can get it for $3.50 a unit but the price the consumer pays is around $20 in urban areas.
If you’ve ever gotten Botox or its equivalent, you know you are not getting highly tailored and personalized injections here- you can get a same-day appointment, walk in, get injected, and walk out.
This should not require a medical degree.
Unfortunately, in some states only physicians or nurses supervised by physicians are allowed to. The obvious solution is to just let more people inject Botox- I can’t imagine a state just fully deregulating injection rights, but allowing pharmacists (who already handle a huge share of vaccinations), pharmacy techs under pharmacist direction, or registered nurses could make getting Botox way cheaper and make the number of facilities where you could Botox way larger.
The cost savings to the consumer might actually be larger than what you would think given the difference in labor costs. There are already cheaper alternatives to Botox that work just as well like Dysport or Xeomin (which is pure toxin without the additives) . But in the U.S. where we’re already paying so much for labor, the cost difference of the injectable can be overlooked. But in other countries, Botox alternatives are outcompeting Botox.
Liberalizing injection laws would make Americans look younger and spend less per treatment.
Are You Using Tretinoin?
Botox regulations aren’t the only way the government tries to make us look our age.
I think most of my readers here are straight men but if I could give you some non-policy advice, it would be that you should consider using tretinoin. It’s a cream you can use for acne but unlike a lot of woo-based anti-aging products it actually works to reverse the effects of sun on skin aging. [ed. Retin- A, Avita, Renova, others]
Unfortunately, you need a prescription to use it even though it’s incredibly safe as long as you aren’t pregnant- and if it irritates your skin just stop using it. So every time I see an urgent care doctor for whatever reason at the end of the appointment, I always ask “could I have a prescription for this?” It has never failed.
Tretinoin is still pretty cheap but the necessity of the prescription drives up the price in terms of time and inconvenience. Federal rules require it to be prescription-only but states have a lot of discretion to make “prescription required” a fairly nominal requirement. For example, states could allow pharmacists to prescribe the cream so instead of scheduling a telehealth or doctor’s appointment, you just show up at the pharmacy and ask for it. States can also make laws friendly to telehealth.
While I think every state should do this as well as make it easy to inject Botox, Nevada or Florida seem like the perfect first-movers. Both attract a ton of tourists, both have a lot of sun (photoaging!), and both just have the Botox-friendly vibes. You could also throw in easy-to-prescribe finasteride rules to help out balding men.
by Cold Button Issues | Read more:
Image: uncredited via
[ed. Botox and GLP-1's (Ozempic, Wegovy etc,). Everyone wants to look their best.]
Friday, October 24, 2025
Stanley Cup Madness: The Great Silent Majority of American Basicness
I first noticed the prevalence of the Stanley Quencher H2.0 FlowState™ tumbler last April when I wrote about #WaterTok. I’m still unclear what to make of #WaterTok, but I eventually settled on the idea that it’s several subcultures overlapping — weight-loss communities, Mormons, and those people who don’t like the “taste” of water. But in the majority of the #WaterTok videos I watched, people were using Stanley’s Quencher to carry around their liquid Jolly Ranchers. And the ubiquity of the cup has sort of haunted me ever since.
I grew up in the suburbs, but I don’t live there anymore. So every time the great silent majority of American basicness summons a new totem to gather around, I can’t help but try and make sense of it. Was this a car thing? A college football tailgate thing? An EDM thing? Cruise ships? Barstool Sports was of no help here, so I filed it away until this Christmas when it exploded across the web and forced me to finally figure out what the heck was going on. And it turns out, the Stanley cup’s transformation into a must-have last year is actually, in many ways, the story of everything now.
CNBC put together a great explainer on this. Stanley, a manly hundred-year-old brand primarily aimed at hikers and blue-collar workers, was rediscovered in 2019 by the bloggers behind a women’s lifestyle and shopping site called The Buy Guide. They told CNBC that even though the Quencher model of the cup was hard to find, no other cup on the market had what they were looking for. Which is a bizarrely passionate stance to take on a water bottle, but from their post about the cup, those attributes were: “Large enough to keep up with our busy days, a handle to carry it wherever we go, dishwasher safe, fits into our car cupholders, keeps ice cold for 12+ hours, and a straw.”
The Buy Guide team then sent a Quencher to Emily Maynard Johnson from The Bachelor after she had a baby because “there is no thirst like nursing mom thirst!” Johnson posted about it on Instagram and it started to gain some traction. The Buy Guide then connected with an employee at Stanley, bought 5,000 Quenchers from the company directly, set up a Shopify site, and sold them to their readers. According to The Buy Guide, they sold out in five days. All of these things are very normal things to do when you discover a cool bottle.
After mom internet started buzzing about the tumbler — a corner of the web that is to dropshipping what dads are to Amazon original streaming shows — Stanley hired Terence Reilly, the marketer credited for reinventing Crocs. Reading between the lines of what Reilly has said about his work at Stanley, it seems like his main strategy for both Crocs and the Quencher was capitalizing on internet buzz and growing it into otaku product worship. Or as Inc. phrased it in their feature on him, he uses a “scarcity model” to whip up interest. Cut to three years later, now we’re seeing mini-riots over limited edition Stanleys at Target.
My reference point for this kind of marketing is the Myspace era of music and fashion, when record companies and stores like Hot Topic and Spencer’s Gifts were using early social media to identify niche fandoms and convert them into mainstream hits. In this allegory, Target has become the Hot Topic of white women with disposable income. And their fingerless gloves and zipper pants are fun water bottles and that one perfume everyone in Manhattan is wearing right now.
I’m always a little wary about giving someone like Reilly credit for single-handedly jumpstarting a craze like this — and I am extremely aware that he is a male executive getting credit for something that was, and still is, actually driven by women content creators — but this is the second time he’s pulled this off. Which, to me, says he’s at least semi-aware of how to pick the right fandoms. He may not be actively involved in the horse race, but he clearly has an eye for betting on them. And, yes, the Stanley craze is very real.
It’s turned into a reported $750 million in revenue for Stanley and both Google Trends and TikTok’s Creative Center show massive growth in interest around the bottle between 2019 and now. With a lot of that growth happening this year. On TikTok, the hashtag #Stanley has been viewed a billion times since 2020 and more than half of that traffic happened in the last 120 days.
And with all viral phenomenon involving things women do, there are, of course, a lot of men on sites like Reddit and X adding to the discourse about the Quenchers with posts that essentially say, “why women like cups?” And if you’re curious how that content ecosystem operates, you can check out my video about it here. But I’m, personally, more interested in what the Stanley fandom says about how short-form video is evolving.
Over the last three years, most major video sites have attempted to beat TikTok at its own game. All this has done, however, is give more places for TikToks to get posted. And so, the primarily engine of TikTok engagement — participation, rather than sharing — has spread to places like Instagram, YouTube, and X. If the 2010s were all about sharing content, it seems undeniable that the 2020s are all about making content in tandem with others. An internet-wide flashmob of Ice Bucket Challenge videos that are all, increasingly, focused on selling products. Which isn’t an accident.
TikTok has spent years trying to bring Chinese-style social e-commerce to the US. In September, the app finally launched a tool to sell products directly. If you’re curious what all this looks like when you put it together, here’s one of the most unhinged Stanley cup videos I’ve seen so far. And, yes, before you ask, there are affiliates links on the user’s Amazon page for all of these. [ed. non-downloadable - read more]
by Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day | Read more:
Image: Stanley/via
CNBC put together a great explainer on this. Stanley, a manly hundred-year-old brand primarily aimed at hikers and blue-collar workers, was rediscovered in 2019 by the bloggers behind a women’s lifestyle and shopping site called The Buy Guide. They told CNBC that even though the Quencher model of the cup was hard to find, no other cup on the market had what they were looking for. Which is a bizarrely passionate stance to take on a water bottle, but from their post about the cup, those attributes were: “Large enough to keep up with our busy days, a handle to carry it wherever we go, dishwasher safe, fits into our car cupholders, keeps ice cold for 12+ hours, and a straw.”
The Buy Guide team then sent a Quencher to Emily Maynard Johnson from The Bachelor after she had a baby because “there is no thirst like nursing mom thirst!” Johnson posted about it on Instagram and it started to gain some traction. The Buy Guide then connected with an employee at Stanley, bought 5,000 Quenchers from the company directly, set up a Shopify site, and sold them to their readers. According to The Buy Guide, they sold out in five days. All of these things are very normal things to do when you discover a cool bottle.
After mom internet started buzzing about the tumbler — a corner of the web that is to dropshipping what dads are to Amazon original streaming shows — Stanley hired Terence Reilly, the marketer credited for reinventing Crocs. Reading between the lines of what Reilly has said about his work at Stanley, it seems like his main strategy for both Crocs and the Quencher was capitalizing on internet buzz and growing it into otaku product worship. Or as Inc. phrased it in their feature on him, he uses a “scarcity model” to whip up interest. Cut to three years later, now we’re seeing mini-riots over limited edition Stanleys at Target.
My reference point for this kind of marketing is the Myspace era of music and fashion, when record companies and stores like Hot Topic and Spencer’s Gifts were using early social media to identify niche fandoms and convert them into mainstream hits. In this allegory, Target has become the Hot Topic of white women with disposable income. And their fingerless gloves and zipper pants are fun water bottles and that one perfume everyone in Manhattan is wearing right now.
I’m always a little wary about giving someone like Reilly credit for single-handedly jumpstarting a craze like this — and I am extremely aware that he is a male executive getting credit for something that was, and still is, actually driven by women content creators — but this is the second time he’s pulled this off. Which, to me, says he’s at least semi-aware of how to pick the right fandoms. He may not be actively involved in the horse race, but he clearly has an eye for betting on them. And, yes, the Stanley craze is very real.
It’s turned into a reported $750 million in revenue for Stanley and both Google Trends and TikTok’s Creative Center show massive growth in interest around the bottle between 2019 and now. With a lot of that growth happening this year. On TikTok, the hashtag #Stanley has been viewed a billion times since 2020 and more than half of that traffic happened in the last 120 days.
And with all viral phenomenon involving things women do, there are, of course, a lot of men on sites like Reddit and X adding to the discourse about the Quenchers with posts that essentially say, “why women like cups?” And if you’re curious how that content ecosystem operates, you can check out my video about it here. But I’m, personally, more interested in what the Stanley fandom says about how short-form video is evolving.
Over the last three years, most major video sites have attempted to beat TikTok at its own game. All this has done, however, is give more places for TikToks to get posted. And so, the primarily engine of TikTok engagement — participation, rather than sharing — has spread to places like Instagram, YouTube, and X. If the 2010s were all about sharing content, it seems undeniable that the 2020s are all about making content in tandem with others. An internet-wide flashmob of Ice Bucket Challenge videos that are all, increasingly, focused on selling products. Which isn’t an accident.
TikTok has spent years trying to bring Chinese-style social e-commerce to the US. In September, the app finally launched a tool to sell products directly. If you’re curious what all this looks like when you put it together, here’s one of the most unhinged Stanley cup videos I’ve seen so far. And, yes, before you ask, there are affiliates links on the user’s Amazon page for all of these. [ed. non-downloadable - read more]
by Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day | Read more:
Image: Stanley/via
[ed. Obviously old news by now (10 months!) but still something I wondered about at the time (and quickly forgot). How do these things go so viral? It'd be like L.L. Bean suddenly being on red carpets and fashion runways. There must be some hidden money-making scheme/agenda at work, right? Well, partly. See also: Dead Internet Theory (BGR).]
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Saturday, August 30, 2025
Taylor Swift’s Engagement Ring Marks a Return to Vintage Elegance
The pop star’s antique-inspired sparkler channels the “heirloom look,” reflecting a return to antique stones.
In her 2008 classic song “Love Story,” Taylor Swift fantasized about getting proposed to: “He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring / And said, ‘Marry me, Juliet.’”
Seventeen years later, Ms. Swift, 35, finally had her fairy-tale engagement. The football player Travis Kelce, also 35, proposed with what appears to be an elongated, old mine cushion cut diamond set on a yellow gold band. (A cushion cut diamond has rounded corners.)
The ring was designed by Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry in New York. Ms. Lubeck makes hand-engraved jewelry with natural gemstones.
“It’s not just a flashy piece, but more of an aesthetic, really beautiful diamond,” said Marion Fasel, a jewelry historian and the author of “The History of Diamond Engagement Rings: A True Romance.” Her friends in the jewelry world, she said, have been excited about the piece because of its high quality.
“You can tell this is a beautiful diamond from the light and faceting arrangement,” Ms. Fasel said, estimating the weight to be around seven carats.
“It’s a real trend in jewelry and diamonds and engagement rings to choose antique stones because they have a very different kind of light,” Ms. Fasel said. “Even though this is a giant diamond, it’s a much softer light.” (...)
There also appears to be engraving on the side, as well as two smaller diamonds. “They must mean something, because everything with Taylor means something,” Ms. Fasel said. (...)
Nilesh Rakholia, the founder of Abelini Jewellery, a modern British jewelry brand, estimated that the ring weighs seven to 10 carats, costing between $1 million and $1.3 million.
“What makes this design particularly striking is its blend of vintage charm and modern minimalism,” Mr. Rakholia said. “The choice of yellow gold has been making a huge resurgence in fine jewelry, loved for its warmth and ability to enhance the brilliance of white diamonds.”
Jason Arasheben, the founder of the jewelry company Jason of Beverly Hills, said that he anticipates an uptick in requests for elongated, old mine cushion cut diamonds, as well as thicker bands and antique aesthetics. “I know I’m going to get tons of screenshots from clients,” Mr. Arasheben said, citing the Taylor Swift effect.
Ms. Fasel doesn’t expect too many details about the ring to be confirmed by Ms. Swift soon. “With my history in celebrity engagement rings, no one says anything,” she said.
Much of the jewelry worn by celebrities tends to come from professional relationships with major brands. Ms. Swift, for instance, has almost exclusively worn Cartier and Lorraine Schwartz pieces for red carpets. But an engagement ring, Ms. Fasel said, is different: It’s the “one thing that is not branded, and I feel that’s part of the reason the excitement around an engagement ring has accelerated to such a high level.”
by Sadiba Hasan, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce
In her 2008 classic song “Love Story,” Taylor Swift fantasized about getting proposed to: “He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring / And said, ‘Marry me, Juliet.’”
Seventeen years later, Ms. Swift, 35, finally had her fairy-tale engagement. The football player Travis Kelce, also 35, proposed with what appears to be an elongated, old mine cushion cut diamond set on a yellow gold band. (A cushion cut diamond has rounded corners.)
“It’s not just a flashy piece, but more of an aesthetic, really beautiful diamond,” said Marion Fasel, a jewelry historian and the author of “The History of Diamond Engagement Rings: A True Romance.” Her friends in the jewelry world, she said, have been excited about the piece because of its high quality.
“You can tell this is a beautiful diamond from the light and faceting arrangement,” Ms. Fasel said, estimating the weight to be around seven carats.
“It’s a real trend in jewelry and diamonds and engagement rings to choose antique stones because they have a very different kind of light,” Ms. Fasel said. “Even though this is a giant diamond, it’s a much softer light.” (...)
There also appears to be engraving on the side, as well as two smaller diamonds. “They must mean something, because everything with Taylor means something,” Ms. Fasel said. (...)
Nilesh Rakholia, the founder of Abelini Jewellery, a modern British jewelry brand, estimated that the ring weighs seven to 10 carats, costing between $1 million and $1.3 million.
“What makes this design particularly striking is its blend of vintage charm and modern minimalism,” Mr. Rakholia said. “The choice of yellow gold has been making a huge resurgence in fine jewelry, loved for its warmth and ability to enhance the brilliance of white diamonds.”
Jason Arasheben, the founder of the jewelry company Jason of Beverly Hills, said that he anticipates an uptick in requests for elongated, old mine cushion cut diamonds, as well as thicker bands and antique aesthetics. “I know I’m going to get tons of screenshots from clients,” Mr. Arasheben said, citing the Taylor Swift effect.
Ms. Fasel doesn’t expect too many details about the ring to be confirmed by Ms. Swift soon. “With my history in celebrity engagement rings, no one says anything,” she said.
Much of the jewelry worn by celebrities tends to come from professional relationships with major brands. Ms. Swift, for instance, has almost exclusively worn Cartier and Lorraine Schwartz pieces for red carpets. But an engagement ring, Ms. Fasel said, is different: It’s the “one thing that is not branded, and I feel that’s part of the reason the excitement around an engagement ring has accelerated to such a high level.”
by Sadiba Hasan, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce
[ed. Who doesn't love Taylor and Travis? Reminds me of another similar engagement: Inside Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio's Roller Coaster Romance (Biography). See also: Taylor Swift’s Engagement Ring and the Romantic Mystique of Old Mine Diamonds (Sotheby's).]
Monday, August 18, 2025
Thursday, July 3, 2025
So You Want To Look Rich?
So, you want to look rich? Well, you’ve come to the right place. And no, I won’t be peddling any “quiet luxury” nonsense here (barf). I’m here to show you the cheapest way to get the biggest, boldest piece of artwork in your home. Because nothing says “Daddy Warbucks” quite like art that eats an entire wall for breakfast.
“HoOooOoOw does this make meEeeeeEe look riiiiicCccCCh?” you ask. Well, if you’ve ever tried to frame anything in this godforsaken town, you know it’s astronomically expensive. And sure, I respect the craft—cutting glass, sanding wood, fastening a perfect corner joint? Not easy. My wallet, however, does not share the same sentiment and admiration for *~craft~* (one day). Large-scale framing is expensive, so having large-scale art in your home must = wealth. Is this girl math?
Lucky for you, I’m scrappy/good at connecting dots and figured out a workaround that gets you art + a frame for around $200(ish). And when we’re talking large-scale art? That’s not not highway robbery!!!!!!!!
So, here’s a breakdown of exactly what you’re going to do:
Step 5:
Time to get that m-effer in the frame! I recommend doing this with a friend (free labor, obviously) because getting the fabric pulled taut and snapped cleanly into the back of the frame is much easier with an extra set of hands. Like most things IKEA, the setup is pretty painless and requires little to no tools.
Step 6:
Honestly, I wish there was more to it, but that’s it. Hang it up and you’re done. You look rich, and now everybody wants to be your friend!
Anyway, without further ado, here are some gorgeous examples of large-scale artworks in homes I love. May they inspire your walls: [ed. more..]
by Juliana Ramirez, Search Terms | Read more:
Images: Andy Williams; John Decker, Green Plums, 1885; Peter Henry Emerson, Marsh Weeds, 1895.[ed. See also: Everyone’s Moving (thoughtful gifts for new beginnings). Lots of good links.]
“HoOooOoOw does this make meEeeeeEe look riiiiicCccCCh?” you ask. Well, if you’ve ever tried to frame anything in this godforsaken town, you know it’s astronomically expensive. And sure, I respect the craft—cutting glass, sanding wood, fastening a perfect corner joint? Not easy. My wallet, however, does not share the same sentiment and admiration for *~craft~* (one day). Large-scale framing is expensive, so having large-scale art in your home must = wealth. Is this girl math?
Lucky for you, I’m scrappy/good at connecting dots and figured out a workaround that gets you art + a frame for around $200(ish). And when we’re talking large-scale art? That’s not not highway robbery!!!!!!!!
So, here’s a breakdown of exactly what you’re going to do:
Step 1:
Buy this huge-ass frame from IKEA. As someone who has spent far too much time on the hunt for large-scale frames at a kind price, let me tell you, this frame is a godsend.
Buy this huge-ass frame from IKEA. As someone who has spent far too much time on the hunt for large-scale frames at a kind price, let me tell you, this frame is a godsend.
Step 2:
Head to the National Gallery’s website and dive into their free image archive. I first discovered it in college thanks to my genius art history professor Brantl (miss you, legend). Their open-access archive lets you download high-res images of various works, totally free. Pro Tip: make sure the free image download filter is turned ON.
Feeling overwhelmed by the options? Don’t panic, hun. That’s what I’m here for. Below are some solid search terms and filters to get you started:
Search Terms: Horse Race, Shaker Drawings, Edgar Degas, Flora and Fauna, Alfred Stieglitz, Post Impressionist, Pierre Bonnard, Holger Hanson, Tamarind Institute, Robert Frank, Spanish Southwest, Realist, George Bellows, John Sloan, Abstract Expressionist, Mark Rothko, Kenneth Noland, John Frederick Peto, Realist (Subject>Still Life, Photography (Themes>Motion), Landscape, Painting (Subject>Place Names), Ernst Kirchner, Charles Logasa, Drawing (Subject>Objects), Paul Klee, Walter Griffin, Drawings (Subjects>Flora & Fauna), Index of American Design, Mina Lowery.
Here are some fun ones I found: [ed. more...]
Head to the National Gallery’s website and dive into their free image archive. I first discovered it in college thanks to my genius art history professor Brantl (miss you, legend). Their open-access archive lets you download high-res images of various works, totally free. Pro Tip: make sure the free image download filter is turned ON.
Feeling overwhelmed by the options? Don’t panic, hun. That’s what I’m here for. Below are some solid search terms and filters to get you started:
Search Terms: Horse Race, Shaker Drawings, Edgar Degas, Flora and Fauna, Alfred Stieglitz, Post Impressionist, Pierre Bonnard, Holger Hanson, Tamarind Institute, Robert Frank, Spanish Southwest, Realist, George Bellows, John Sloan, Abstract Expressionist, Mark Rothko, Kenneth Noland, John Frederick Peto, Realist (Subject>Still Life, Photography (Themes>Motion), Landscape, Painting (Subject>Place Names), Ernst Kirchner, Charles Logasa, Drawing (Subject>Objects), Paul Klee, Walter Griffin, Drawings (Subjects>Flora & Fauna), Index of American Design, Mina Lowery.
Here are some fun ones I found: [ed. more...]
Step 3 (Edited):
Hit! That! Download! Button! And throw your chosen artwork into Photoshop. Crop it to your frame size (78.75" x 55"), then head to ‘Image Size’ and bump the resolution from 72 to 300 PPI to keep things crisp. Then (important!) grow the artwork by 3 inches, bringing it to 81.75" x 58". That extra bit will help it sit just right and tight in the frame.
Hit! That! Download! Button! And throw your chosen artwork into Photoshop. Crop it to your frame size (78.75" x 55"), then head to ‘Image Size’ and bump the resolution from 72 to 300 PPI to keep things crisp. Then (important!) grow the artwork by 3 inches, bringing it to 81.75" x 58". That extra bit will help it sit just right and tight in the frame.
Step 4:
Next, head to www.bagofloveuse.com (I’m serious), toggle over to the Fabric & Leather Printing menu, and upload your artwork under the “Print on Fabric” section. You’ll want to input custom dimensions and choose a fabric that prints rich, saturated color with zero shine. I went with the 6.28oz cotton twill and can’t recommend it enough. It has weight, texture, and looks way more expensive than it is. Also, because you added that 3-inch border around your artwork, you can opt for the “uneven scissor cut,” which is free (I swear I’m not usually this cheap).
One note: Bags of Love now caps their print width at 57.09 inches, but since that’s still wider than your frame, you should be fine. You’ll just have to be a bit more precise when snapping it in. Horizontal images still work best, but if you’re feeling bold with a vertical, go for it. You do you.
Next, head to www.bagofloveuse.com (I’m serious), toggle over to the Fabric & Leather Printing menu, and upload your artwork under the “Print on Fabric” section. You’ll want to input custom dimensions and choose a fabric that prints rich, saturated color with zero shine. I went with the 6.28oz cotton twill and can’t recommend it enough. It has weight, texture, and looks way more expensive than it is. Also, because you added that 3-inch border around your artwork, you can opt for the “uneven scissor cut,” which is free (I swear I’m not usually this cheap).
One note: Bags of Love now caps their print width at 57.09 inches, but since that’s still wider than your frame, you should be fine. You’ll just have to be a bit more precise when snapping it in. Horizontal images still work best, but if you’re feeling bold with a vertical, go for it. You do you.
Step 5:
Time to get that m-effer in the frame! I recommend doing this with a friend (free labor, obviously) because getting the fabric pulled taut and snapped cleanly into the back of the frame is much easier with an extra set of hands. Like most things IKEA, the setup is pretty painless and requires little to no tools.
Step 6:
Honestly, I wish there was more to it, but that’s it. Hang it up and you’re done. You look rich, and now everybody wants to be your friend!
Anyway, without further ado, here are some gorgeous examples of large-scale artworks in homes I love. May they inspire your walls: [ed. more..]
by Juliana Ramirez, Search Terms | Read more:
Images: Andy Williams; John Decker, Green Plums, 1885; Peter Henry Emerson, Marsh Weeds, 1895.
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