The Relevancy Read

Hot takes, early calls and astute observations, carefully curated.

A Sampling

Kinky fashion and dupe culture.

February 07, 2023

Things are looking kinky approaching Valentine’s Day.

Consumers got into erotica during the pandemic, normalizing new-age porn and acting on impulses. Now brands go from embracing sex to unleashing inner freaks. Parade’s recent collaborations with Smarties and “post-fetish” leather designer Zana Bayne mainstream edible underwear and BDSM couture. The Attico’s campaign Pleasure Matters celebrates unbridled indulgence and seduction. What started out with soft and cheeky positioning, sexual wellness gets ultra explicit. Perfect timing for Madonna's Celebration Tour. Expect style throwbacks to the Queen of Pop and sexual liberation.

Gen Z dupe culture is a doomsday for luxury.

Blame it on inflation or fast fashion, young consumers have glorified the knock-off. Finding the best dupe proves serious business for content creators, with #dupe viewed 2.2 billion times on TikTok. As dupe mindsets proliferate, lines between real and fake blur; Cartier announced it will no longer authenticate its Love bracelets due to a saturation of high-quality fakes in the market. While knock-offs are nothing new, luxury brands will have to reconcile this shift, as Gen Z solidifies their spending share and scoffs at senseless designer purchases. They’ll need to get creative when it comes to bringing value to this cohort. Our hunch says hospitality will be a key part of this equation.

Aesthetic pleasures are on the chopping block amid budget concerns.

Americans are going “recession brunette,” as maintaining blonde hair is costly and time-consuming. The Cut documents that additive cosmetic procedures like fillers are falling out of favor, while subtractive procedures, like dissolving fillers and buccal fat removal, uptick. Besides shifts in beauty trends and health concerns, this phenomenon follows the same thrifty logic. Less upkeep required; more money saved. Gen-Z is even curbing its Shein addiction, spending less on clothing, which applies universally to the pan-demographic consumer allocating funds to necessities instead of luxuries, no matter how small.

Sustainable alternatives are getting weirder and weirder.

Netherlands-based company Human Material Loop turns human hair into sweaters using hair waste from salons, working B2B with existing fashion brands through collaborations. We visited the Design Museum Denmark over the summer and were taken with a garment spun from milk yarn made of dairy production waste. Less appetizing, in the realm of lab-grown grub, human flesh may be in the future for synthesized meat, if we can get past the yuck factor.