Five years ago Facebook changed its name to Meta and told everyone we were all going to live in the metaverse. Fashion bought in. NFTs, digital runways, 3D catwalks. And then quietly it all fell apart.

Now the pendulum has swung completely the other way. And this week Anna and Caitlin decode exactly what that looks like.

Meta has signed a 10 year lease on Fifth Avenue, positioned between Dior, Gucci and Prada on Millionaires Row, not to sell glasses, but to build a world. Nothing, the London hardware brand making phones and earphones that actually look beautiful, has opened experiential creator hubs in India with New York and Tokyo next: part café, part content studio, part community. And Anthropic, the company behind Claude, partnered with Airmail to create screen free, slop free zones in New York and London. A technology company building spaces deliberately free of technology. Counterintuitive. Completely on brand.

Why is all of this happening? Because the average person cannot tell the difference between one AI and the next. Between one tech product and another. And so these brands are doing what fashion has always done, they are selling an identity, not just a utility. Nothing even poached their creative brand director straight from the fashion world. They are not hiring tech people to do this. They are hiring fashion people.

Then there is Salone del Mobile. Happening in Milan right now and quietly becoming one of the most important cultural moments in the brand calendar. Where Coachella is fun, fast and product driven, Salone is intellectual, tactile and slow. The opposite of TikTok. Gucci built a meadow with no product in sight. Davines hosted a literary salon. Jil Sander built a library. Acqua di Parma created a bookshop inside a giant perfume bottle. None of it is there to sell. All of it is positioning.

Coachella is fun. Salone is intellectual. And the brands that understand the difference are the ones who know exactly who they are and where they want to show up.

One big warning though, EMV numbers mean nothing if the content coming out of your activation is off brand. Free peppered with paid. Every time.

Decode Sessions explores the strategies, consumer behaviors, cultural shifts, and industry trends shaping the future of fashion, beauty, retail, and luxury brands.