Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, how amplifying tailoring is (finally) giving exclusive fashions for all…

Tell me more…  With actor/ seamstress now a popular hyphenate career (see Joe Ando, 2.5m followers), WWD declaring Tailoring as the Fall 2024 trend, and #SewingTikTok on 7.4 billion views to date, it’s clear that tailoring is getting even more attention than a disappointing Shien haul.  

Not surprising, it’s the perfect fit for our times… It’s bespoke, sustainable and the process of making it produces great online content. Tailors, dressmakers and designers gain countless followers by sharing the step-by-step processes behind their creations. When @er.embroidery (185.5K followers) embroidered a moon and stars over a mushroom on TikTok, it was viewed nine million times. Custom-fit clothes have gone from being just an option for the richest shopper to one available to all – whether that’s doing it yourself or finding a reasonably priced seamstress.  

So, it’s democratising fashion? Yes, by showing that fashion simply requires patience, and anyone can do it if they put their mind to it. It’s not as complicated as the couture runways make it look. 

Meanwhile, upcycling… is not a lifestyle, it’s a necessity, right. Of course, the statistics on waste and carbon emissions from textile production are horrifying – there’s no excuse not to take an alternative seriously. 

So big fast fashion brands are out, where is in? Made to measure fashion brands are booming online in Vietnam. Hashtags such as #Vietnamfashion and #Vietnamesefashion on Instagram and TikTok have amassed tens of thousands of gushing posts and millions of likes, in contrast to the growing disenchantment with Chinese fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu.  

And it’s gone corporate… The Singapore National Heritage Board recently launched Recustom, a fashion brand aiming to revive the country’s tailoring community with designs not available off-the-shelf. Instead, customers must visit local tailors to recreate the looks using provided design blueprints and their own pre-loved garments as raw material.  

But it’s also still punk… You only need to look at Melisa Minca’s upcycled suits emblazoned with sarcastic and disruptive motifs (definitely NSFW) to see this… 

TL; DR: Forget the disappointment of What I Ordered v What I Got and embrace the opportunity to instead get exactly what you want – tailoring offers fast fashion, done your way.   

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, Crowd’s Olivia Anderson on how literature is taking luxury by storm… 

Tell me more. Picture the scene: you’re bored of performatively reading Sylvia Plath at Jolene cafe. You want to take your carefully cultivated Reader Aesthetic to the next level, but you aren’t sure how. Enter luxury fashion houses. 

Word on the street is ‘book girl summer’ … It’s so much more than that. Literature is becoming a lifestyle, and one that is distinctly aspirational. Valentino really got the ball rolling with their SS24 collection using Hanya Yanagihara’s acclaimed novel A Little Life as a conduit to explore new meanings and expressions of masculinity. And Thom Browne’s NYFW show in February of this year drew inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe, because goths are important too. 

So it’s the luxury version of dressing up for World Book Day? It goes a little deeper than that. Miu Miu’s Summer Reads initiative sees the brand gifting copies of seminal novels – all written by women – to visitors at pop-up locations around the world. Maison Valentino even sponsored the Man Booker Prize this year. Chanel’s 7L bookstore in Paris is now host to an arts programme designed to cultivate creativity and foster appreciation of the arts. While Aesop is getting in on the action too with its Women’s Libraries, using A Tale of Two Cities as the theme of its Women’s Day activations in China and dedicating its stores to novels written by or foregrounding women. Brands are using literature as a vehicle for something deeper than dress-up.  

It’s all very Dead Poets Society. It’s not just for the Dark Academics amongst us – Audi recently released Handbook Novels, where they partnered with up-and-coming authors in Spain to write novellas featuring key words from the cars’ instruction manuals in a bid to get people to actually read their instruction manuals. 

Rise up, English teachers. Pretty much. In the same way that luxury brands like Burberry and LVMH started producing PPE and hand sanitiser during COVID, we’re seeing this reverence of literature bubble up at a time when creativity is under threat, when “truth” is no longer an absolute, when the maelstrom of the online world makes it hard to distinguish signals from noise. It makes sense that brands are turning back to what feels time-honoured, certain and lasting – what culture writer Nadja Sayej calls “the timeless wisdom that can be sought if we put down our phones”. And fashion and literature are natural bedfellows – it’s all about cultural commentary and storytelling, be it pen and paper or needle and thread. 

Wicked smart. The message is clear: literature is a still point in a turning world, and one that is being called on now more than ever. Close enough to describe our realities, far enough removed to allow us to examine them through the trusted lens of cultural artefacts that have stood the test of time. 

TL;DR: literature is hot vital. Brands looking to cultivate credibility and foster ideas should lean on literature – particularly the certainty that the classics offer – as a north star and a source of inspiration in a world freighted with opposing cultural forces. 

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, Crowd’s Olivia Anderson is looking at how Big Tech is wanting to stake a claim to our subconscious…

What’s all this then? Thanks to new technologies, we may soon be able to unlock the inner workings of our minds, and capitalise on our subconscious. We’re arriving at a new horizon, one that lights up the dimly-lit corners of our brains. And this will mean that cognitive liberty, ie the freedom to control our own thoughts, is set to become one of the most important topics of the next decade.

Sounds dystopian. That’s only because it is. 

Not sure if I like the sound of that. Big Tech doesn’t care. This is the final frontier for brands to stake a claim on. Did you know Apple quietly filed a patent for AirPods that monitor and track biosignals and brain activity last summer and start-up NextSense aims to sell earbuds that can collect heaps of neural data — and uncover the mysteries of grey matter for health benefits. Writing about Apple’s patent, tech expert Gautam Hazari described it as a big step in the so-called ‘Internet of Thoughts’, explaining: “The bio-sensing electrodes as on-ear EEG sensors built into the AirPods fit the generic, multipurpose device, opens the door for the IoTh to become a mainstream reality…”

But does anyone really care outside of Silicon Valley? Funny you should say that. You might have noticed that Ariana Grande’s new album and music video riffs off of the cult movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – a movie about memory-hacking – 20 years almost to the day after it first hit cinemas. And while brain-hacking, and memory-altering tech has often been part of our creative inspiration, the key difference now is that this technology may well have caught up with our imaginations.

That’s pretty meta. So I’ll be able to erase memories of my ex? Not exactly. But we could, for example, be able to induce lucid dreams. One product in development is The Halo, an AI headband that will use a combination of ultrasound and machine learning models to allow users to control their own dreams. “Together we will pursue the answers to life’s biggest questions,” it teases. If we can hack our subconscious, we could access a whole new level of human understanding. Already the practice of using lucid dreaming as therapy is becoming more accepted, with more patients open to learning how to disrupt their dreams to process debilitating symptoms.

What’s the down side? Well, this scenario pretty much is an advertiser’s dream (pun intended). Think of all that untapped real estate in your brain. Forget DTC – we’d be going DTS (direct-to-source). In fact, A24’s recent movie Dream Scenario shows us a world where this can happen. And you can imagine how that pans out. Not to mention the implications for productivity – why rest when you can be on 24/7, conscious or not? – and our ability to exercise autonomy over our own thoughts. 

Seems like a dodgy threshold to be crossing. It’s a double-edged sword, a Faustian dilemma of the modern world: would you trade understanding – and access to a higher level of consciousness – for your own cognitive liberty? 

TL;DR: Brands and Big Tech are starting to reckon with the potential of our subconscious and our dreams in a way that might be equal parts enlightening and sinister, and we’re seeing these ideas trickle down into mainstream culture. Sweet dreams™. 

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, the revaluation of bodily functions from waste to wonder…

What’s all this then? We’ve had #GutTok (over 800 million views) and posting a stool sample to a nutrition app for analysis. Now comes the next big branding of bodily functions: the drive to tap menstrual blood as a valuable health resource. 

Has ‘period positivity’ come this far? Yes. Content creator wild.witchy.woman (26.9 followers on TikTok) is among the advocates for actually drinking menses for optimum well-being… Meanwhile, healthcare start-ups are capitalising on this with research into the medical value of menstrual effluence (which contains blood, vaginal secretions, cervical mucus, and endometrial cells), and demonstrating its value to a consumer.

Tell us more… Theblood (www.theblood.io) offer a kit that will give insights into individual menstrual cycles from a sample, and can be studied for conditions such as endometriosis. Founders Isabelle Guenou and Miriam Santer believe: “Menstruation can be the answer to problems and pain”. Meanwhile, Qvin™  has designed the Q-Pad (qvin.com) for the supply of a sample of menstrual blood that can be then tested for critical health information like biomarkers for diabetes. 

So why is this ‘waste’ product being re-valued now? It’s time to take the female body seriously – all of it and especially the bits greeted with disgust. Healthcare services are being called out for failing to do so; from ‘medical gaslighting’ to blaming terminology (eg, ‘geriatric mother’; ‘hostile uterus’) and the so-called Gender Data Gap where treatments efficacy may only have been tested on male bodies. 

It’s a long way from hiding tampons up sleeves… Absolutely. To have the option of giving a blood sample that is not only for research into overlooked health issues, but taken from a bodily process often treated with unease by medical professionals (or much worse) is empowering. As one of the participants in a Qvin™ study to assess if menstrual blood can be used to screen for cervical cancer put it: “For me, it’s just a win overall if this becomes a product because it will reduce my anxiety and will give me more control over what’s going on with the testing.”

And let’s not underestimate how this research is needed: Note, in a recent review of scientific papers, Leah Hazard finds that there are about four hundred studies on menstrual effluent compared with more than fifteen thousand for semen or sperm (Womb, published 2023).

Where else is this health empowerment happening? Plugging the data gap on hormones, individuals track their cycles – to then sync to exercise, diet, skincare, mood or productivity (and yes, bypass a visit to the docs altogether and download one of the many apps to get personalised insights). There’s more and more options like this for people to choose – and therefore control – the process of tracking their health themselves. 

TL;DR: While looking at periods with wonder may have happened because people feel let down by traditional medicine, it has forced new insights, research and empowered attitudes to health. So the opposite of waste – thankfully. 

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, Crowd’s Sundari Sheldon-Collins is asking why has messy realities replaced the ‘clean’ movement?

What’s all this then? People, we don’t have to take a clean, pristine and pure approach to life — dirt, grime, mess, and mud are being accepted as a new (likely to be rusty) gold standard.

Phew! No more wipeable sofa cushions! So where are messy aesthetics being celebrated? They’ve moved on from just a social media-fueled shock tactic as people have grown desensitised to yuckiness. Now mess and dirt are making an impact by appearing in everyday, big ticket pleasures. 

Tell me more… There’s a lot of mud being thrown in high fashion — think Elena Velez models and mud wrestles on the runway, or Kylie Jenner’s recent Acne Studios campaign clothed in thousand dollar garments and splatters of mud. We’ve also seen the return of the moto and rain boot, and also niche creations like Crocs’ new Shrek-themed shoes (“get out of my swamp!”-core).

How else is messy realities making an impact? Meanwhile, on social media you’ve probably noticed the dirty/messy trend. Think: glass tubs filled with paint being rolled down stairs for ASMR videos, or wine bottles being thrown into walls. And if you can bear to watch it, there’s the ‘is it cake’ trend’s viral older sister — the zit popping cake and the bloody cake smash trend.

Ok, give me the dirt on dirt – what’s really going on here? It’s way more than just surface level spillage. It’s a manifestation of our collective desire to embrace imperfections and chaos in an overly curated world. It’s how Kylie appears with a dirty double of herself in the Acne Studios advert, signalling that this aesthetic is an acknowledgement that we all – yes, even the supremely manufactured Kardashians – have a good and messy side…

So no more clean fun? The world is literally boiling and the clean movement just didn’t seem to capture the overall dirtiness of how people have been feeling. We’re living with dirty realities all around us, and there’s a collective sigh of relief in being honest about it.

TL;DR: As the earth boils and the ground muddifies, everyone and everything is welcome in this swamp! 

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, how the fashion for clothes that shroud or reshape give confidence to take up space in the world…

What’s all this then? This summer, Kanye West took girlfriend Bianca Censori to church, with her concealed by a cushioned wall encircling her neck and black fabric that stretched all the way over her head and torso with no arm holes or sleeves. Also seeking clothing for concealment at a blockbuster premiere, actress Hayley Atwell hid half her body in oversized-plus trousers by Ashi Studio – opting out of the red carpet norm for female actors. Meanwhile weeks earlier, at London’s fashion week, models had their necks and ankles covered up by super voluminous ruffles, and wore big brooches that were more armour than accessory.

Finally, a stylish alternative to the kaftan! Yes, these clothes look pretty darn cool. But more than that – and yes, even more importantly – these cover-ups will administer safety. They are clothes that give anonymity, or they rebuff the male gaze, or literally allow the wearer to take up more space – actions desired by celebs and people in everyday life alike. 

A cover-up? Sounds like the opposite of the bodycon trend… Not at all, and that’s what makes this so exciting. The original bodycon clothing equalled women being tightly stitched into their dress to experience the suffocating grip of passing as skinny and hot. But these clothes are still look-at-me fashion like the bodycon dresses that clung to every line of the figure. Yet it’s moved on to reflect our current needs: clothes that provide service to the wearer (safety, or space) as well as body confidence that is no longer predicated on binaries like fat or thin, small or large. 

Stylish clothes serving up body confidence for more of us? We like… And there’s more. Let’s look at how pop star Sam Smith doesn’t let their gender identity be reduced to choice of clothing by embracing this new bodycon trend. At the Brit music awards earlier this year, their outfit by HARRI featured a high neck, inflated arms and legs and a zip-up design over the chest – mocking the traditional concepts of couture that flaunt the perfect shape of the body. Embracing sculptural clothes was a way for them to comprehensively present their identity as not narrowly defined, as fluid, as a new shape entirely.

Body and soul confidence, then… and clothes helping us to have the space for that exploration is quite a cultural moment. Holding space and…

… literally giving space… You’ve got it. In our post-pandemic world it is also quite handy to have a large floral accessory that both serves looking stylish and makes people stand some distance from you. 

TL;DR: What to wear has always been a dance between personal expression and the need to pass in the world at large. This new body-con enables both: to be confident about your expression of self in clothes, and feel safe doing so. It takes the body-conditioning – that we all need to look a certain way – out of body-con. And that’s true body confidence for all.

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, how local neighbourhood stores are selling luxury convenience…

What’s all this then? An everyday visit to the local convenience store is turning into a luxury browsing opportunity. You may have heard of the lipstick index: it’s a way to spot a recession by lipstick sales going up as people turn to purchasing treats within their budget. Now look instead to the ‘local store index’, because this is the new place for cash-strapped consumers to find affordable luxuries.

Luxury among the cans of baked beans? Tell me more… The neighbourhood shop has undergone a glow-up. We see this in the bodegas of New York city making space for guest-curated snack boxes, craft beers and fancy, localised gifts.

Now you mention it, I have noticed expensive olive oil and kombucha on tap… Bingo!

So will we be ditching mega supermarkets? They’ve jumped on the local luxe movement, too. In the UK, supermarket giant Asda launched On The Move convenience stores last year – promising “a wide range of premium ‘Extra Special’ products” – while Aldi’s Corner Store in Sydney does a fast turnover in treat lunches: fresh sushi and artisan baked goods. Meanwhile, luxury convenience stores in South Korea have overtaken Japan in scale, and doing so with a focus on “developing unique products” (McKinsey, 2023).

Isn’t the economy amazing! Sure is. But local luxe is not just being driven by the economy. It reflects changing consumer values – as we see in how 7-Eleven (the largest convenience store chain in the US) is installing new charging stations for electric vehicles in its local branches, hoping to attract the environmentally-minded customer.

And the cherry on the luxe cake… here’s the even better sell: it takes us full circle back to a time when we’d go to the local baker, butcher and candlestick maker. Now the corner shop is getting the good stuff on the shelves – and not just essentials, which it always has done – it offers the kudos of a local market, of knowing what their customer really wants, of generating word of mouth recommendations.

Will this change the aspirations of product makers? They may move away from wanting to sell in enormous bulk to supermarkets and want to talk to local shop owners (even if it means lower profit margins) instead. Or brands may get better quality awareness from a local, trusted supplier.

Blimey. And the local store index? In a tougher economic landscape, few would argue with the sense in turning to the small treats to sustain us rather than emptying our bank accounts with bigger ticket items. Some may even claim their local artisan bread habit as an act of anti-globalisation… 

TL;DR: Local, luxury, convenient and conscious consumption – now that’s a shopping style that should outlast the cost-of-living crisis.

So this isn’t just men wearing old festival wristbands? No, this is much more intentional. Unlike festival wristbands that are usually forgotten and left on for the entire summer, the bro-celet is a carefully considered accessory – often with a heavy subtext. For Charles, the inclusion is a subtle nod to his positioning as an environmentalist King. 

Clever! These are very carefully planned. Men are purchasing them from designer boutiques and incorporating them into their daily wardrobes. Work, gym, pub; the bro-celet is a constant companion, favoured by both bankers in boardrooms and tech bros in Silicon Valley who wear them as a savvy power move, often paired down with an Apple watch.

And what about those A-listers you mentioned? Bro-celets have appeared on the wrists of some big names, like David Beckham, Harry Styles, Timothée Chalamet and Brad Pitt. It’s a subtle way to show some rebellion, and can easily be hidden under a sleeve when needed. Plus, many of these bracelets have a charitable connection, which is a nice bonus for those who want to avoid getting too political about capitalism and what not.

I was planning on wearing a tuxedo today, can I still ‘bro-celet’? Go for it! While some may assume a casual bracelet wouldn’t go with a formal suit, like the one worn by King Charles, the mix of high and low is all part of the charm.

TL;DR: Want to tell the world how much you care about [insert charitable cause], but are too busy getting ahead? Throw on a bro-celet and let your accessory of choice do the talking for you.