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The Glossy Podcast
Abercrombie’s earnings, Kelce’s American Eagle role and eBay's branded resale — plus, back-to-school trends with After School's Casey Lewis
01:01:38
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- [00:04]
A
Business growth doesn't just happen. Brands get blocked by bad data, slow decisions, and media that doesn't pull its weight. Tenuity is the only agency that helps brands eliminate waste and unlock real growth with strategy, with tech, with people who treat your business like their own. Love growth, Hate waste. Find out what your media is really doing. Visit lovegrowth hate waste.com hello and welcome back to the Glossy Podcast. I'm your host, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi, and I'm here with our international reporter, Zofia Zviglinska. Hello, Zofia. Thank you for joining.
- [00:49]
B
Thank you for having me. It's so fun to be on again.
- [00:53]
A
Yeah, and I often say we have a fun episode and then we like talk about really depressing stuff. This time we do actually have a fun episode in the second half. First half is fun too, but the second half is going to be very fun. First half we are going to be breaking down some news from the week. We want to talk about Travis Kelce being a new American Eagle ambassador, which was great timing for them for multiple reasons. We're also going to talk a little bit about Abercrombie and Fitch. They had earnings this week and they announced that they're the first official fashion partner of the NFL. Then we're going to talk a little bit about Marks and Spencer opening a store on ebay and ebay's fashion and ambitions. They're doing a lot of stuff around New York Fashion Week again this year or this season, I should say. That will be our news portion. In the second half of the episode we have a segment led by you, Zofia, specifically about back to school fashion and what teens are wearing. Can you tell us a little bit about what we're going to hear later?
- [01:49]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So I spoke to Casey Lewis who is the author and I guess much lauded person around Gen Z. She runs the substack for after school and that's, that's something that's read very widely for knowing what Gen Z are into. And obviously with this year the kind of back to school trends, you'd expect that a lot of them would be affected by, I don't know, tariffs or economic issues. But it seems like teens are spending just as much as before and they're coming up with some very creative ways of putting up their back to school halls. We spoke a little bit about the kind of rise of denim and why that's kind of link to personalization as well as some other kind of more ephemeral topics like what was it we got into? I Think we talked a little bit about K Pop and its influence on the general fashion sphere. So a lot to get into there.
- [02:48]
A
Yeah, it's a great conversation. Also, last week we put out a call for listeners to call in and tell us the teen trends that they're seeing, either if they are a teen or if they have teens in their lives. I think most of our callers were just adults with teens in their lives, but we got some great call ins with thoughts on what teens are wearing. And after our news segment, we're going to play a few of them and we'll discuss what people called in and said. But let's get into the news. First off, I want to talk about Travis Kelce and American Eagle. Honestly, perfect timing for American Eagle. Travis Kelce, he was announced as a new brand ambassador for American Eagle. They're doing a collaboration with his brand, True Colors, right after he and Taylor Swift got engaged, which is like the biggest media event engagement, like, in recent history. It's very good timing for them. I almost. I'm like, it's so weird when you're a celebrity and you're doing brand deals and stuff. I'm like, did he tell them, like, hey, by the way, I'm getting. I'm gonna propose. Like, I don't know. It just feels. It's like a weird mixing of personal and professional. But very good timing for American E Claw. What do you think, Zofia?
- [03:58]
B
Yeah, I mean, obviously the amount of story building around kind of Taylor Swift and every single life event is very big. And I think the kind of engagement announcement was also timed to the release of her album. It was packed with all the usual Easter eggs. And I'm wondering if Travis is kind of in on that as well. I highly doubt that this American Eagle campaign was not planned to go live at this time for that reason. So I think, yeah, they definitely picked a good moment. And I'm sure it won't be the first one that we'll see from either American Eagle or other brands that are going to be gunning for this engagement and all of the different brand deals that I'm sure the couple will have.
- [04:44]
A
Yeah, I think you're right that there's for such a big event. And they both have to know both meaning Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. They both have to know that when it happens, it was gonna be like a huge deal. They both have teams of publicists and all sorts of stuff. So I'm sure there were plans in place. It's just interesting. But I actually was just Talking with somebody from a watch retailer who was telling me that Taylor Swift wore like a Cartier Santos recently and they had one in stock and she was photographed wearing it and instantly they had like 70 people like lined up like a wait list just for this one watch.
- [05:20]
B
Oh my God.
- [05:22]
A
So yeah, like overnight. So she and this might sound rude to him, but by extension Travis Kelce, I think are both big draws. He's got his podcast, which I've never listened to, but I know is a huge thing. She was on the podcast recently, which was also a huge thing. He has his brand, True Colors, which is. It's funny, the American Eagle collaboration is not. It's like with the brand with True Colors, not with Travis Kelce. But the way it's presented, it's like. It's true with Travis Kelce. I feel like his. There's celebrity fashion brands or beauty brands or whatever that kind of transcend the celebrity that started it. And I don't think True Colors is at that point yet, but maybe it could be someday. But like rare beauty or something I think is beyond Selena Gomez. It's just like its own thing, you know what I mean? True Colors I think is not there yet.
- [06:14]
B
No, definitely. And we saw that after the announcement of the collaboration. I think their Stock jumped nearly 9% after the launch. So you can already see the image, media impact that goes from that. And obviously they had a similar one with Sydney Sweeney's campaign and obviously that fell through after a while. But I wanted to kind of bring a little bit more attention to obviously athletes becoming creative directors. And with him having his brand, he's obviously not like the only one you've got Russell Westbrook, who launched his brand, another gift. And he's kind of co creative directed stuff with Nike. AJ Wilson, LeBron James, obviously I'm wondering if that's his kind next stage. Like he's setting himself up for his next career as a kind of side creative director. Because being a major athlete is not enough work to be doing at one time. But yeah, no, I think the American Eagle thing is just the first one of many. And I kind of expect it's going to be like Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, Summer, the way we had Barbie.
- [07:26]
A
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. And you mentioned the Sydney Sweeney campaign at American Eagle. We do not have to relitigate this because it's been dissected by every podcast that's even somewhat adjacent to it. But that obviously turned into a big headache, I think for American Eagle. And it's just Funny that. It's like they have another huge celebrity campaign very shortly after. I have no idea if anything is related to maybe wanting to move on from the Sydney Sweeney thing or if they just already had it planned or if they wanted to time it to the engagement. I have no idea. But it is interesting that they had this one campaign that generated a lot of not always positive attention, and now they're immediately kind of moving on to another one. Yeah. Let's move on to our next topic. Speaking of athletes in fashion, and actually one more thing about Travis Kelce. The American Eagle campaign also features not just him, but a ton of other athletes. Jeremiah Smith, Suni Lee. Like, a lot of from tennis and football and lots of different sports. I was at the US Open this past weekend and I wrote about it this week, and it really feels like the sports fashion crossover is still going extremely strong. Abercrombie and Fitch announced this week that they're going to be the NFL's first official fashion partner. That includes dressing the players, but also developing apparel lines featuring the players in their marketing campaigns. Having a presence at NFL games in person. It's very comprehensive. I don't know. What are your thoughts? We can get more into Abercrombie specifically and their earnings, but just generally, I want to know, like, what are your thoughts on the sports fashion moment? It feels like every day there's like, you know, some sort of new collaboration.
- [09:07]
B
Yeah, I'm kind of always wondering about the longevity of these things because there's a difference, I think, between fashion items and merch. And I think a lot of brands have been trying to kind of cross over and do both. Whether that's, you know, merch for, like, of film or a series, you know, kind of, again, talking about Barbie or, I don't know, Wednesday. Let's do something more current. You know, those kind of things are very popular, but I don't know how, like, long those kind of things typically last. Whereas something like the NFL, you're kind of going more into, like the sports jersey. You know, there's a lot of people and fans in the uk People buy football shirts every season because they come out with different designs. Like, is this the kind of relationship, I guess, that Abercrombie wants to have with its customers? Because I think up till now they've mostly been focused on fashion. So is this kind of like an add on to that existing fashion line or will it become, you know, something that almost kind of overwhelms the brand? I don't know what you think, like, is it going to be like a side segment.
- [10:11]
A
I totally agree that, like, I also wonder about the longevity of a lot of sports fashion crossovers just in general, because there's been so much interest. Like, when I was writing about the US Open, I talked to multiple brands who were working with some of the players and they were all like, this is our first sports thing. So I think there's a lot of brands that are not traditionally associated with sports who are now getting into it. And a lot of times when there's a gold rush, there's like, there's a reaction. You know, I think you make a good point about the difference between fashion and merch. Last week on the Glossy podcast, we had Vicky Pica from Off Season, which is sort of a fashiony brand that's all about sports. It's basically all about that question of like, how do you make something that's like branded sports merchandise that doesn't look like merch, that does look a little bit more like something you'd wear? But I think you're right that there's. Because there's so much of it and so many brands getting in on sports for the first time, I wonder if there's going to be a little bit of like, okay, this is getting stale and let's move on a little bit. I'm not sure in terms of like taking over their business though. I think Abercrombie is big enough that I don't think, I don't think being an NFL partner is going to swallow up the rest of their business. I do think it could end up taking a lot of resources and they maybe will decide they don't want to do it anymore in like a year or two if it's like, not worth it. I've talked to a lot of people who do partnerships with leagues and one of the things they always say is like, if you partner with the NFL, for example, it's not like you're partnering with one brand. You're partnering with like 32 or however many teams are in the NFL. I clearly don't watch a lot of football, but. But you're partnering with every team in that league. And each team has their own aesthetic and their own kind of customer base. So I do think it's a big lift to partner with a league directly as opposed to a one off thing with one athlete or one team. So in that sense, I could see it being maybe in a year or two they're like, okay, we're done with this. But I don't know.
- [12:10]
B
Yeah, I'm interested in the details of that deal. How many of the different clubs will be involved. What does that mean for the kind of contractual agreements between Abercrombie and the athletes that each of those teams are in? Like, yeah, there's a lot of money talk, but I think it's interesting to know because obviously Abercrombie also reported its earnings this week and it posted its 11th straight quarter of growth. So net sales hit 1.2 billion, up 7% year over year. And most importantly, the earnings have beaten expectations, which for a lot of companies, you know, the quarters have been a little bit rough recently. And what's interesting is that Abercrombie is actually not the brand driving most of the growth for the group. It's Hollister who's like, you know, the. The kind of teenage sub brand that kind of has been doing all of these Y2K reissues. They've had like some seasonal drops. They're doing some more like collegiate things and that's been really popular. And I know that I talked a little bit about Hollister with, with Casey later on in the episode, but it seems like Abercrombie itself, even though it had a very big year last year, it's kind of dipping a little bit. I think it's dipped 5% in comparison to last year where it was up 26%. And they're definitely clearing some old stock and they're doing some more things around some new trends like western and boho and denim, which is a massive category for them. But yeah, I'm interested within that. Are they going to be doing the same kind of push across Hollister and NFL? Because for me it feels like collegiate stuff with Hollister and NFL stuff with Abercrombie is kind of similar. You're getting into that similar kind of branding deals and it's not like a licensing thing. They're just doing it as a partnership.
- [14:03]
A
Yeah, no, I'm glad you brought all this up. I mean, I remember, I believe it was last year Abercrombie was the best performing stock across the stock market. They were just doing super well. Even if their most recent earnings are, like you said, dipping just a little bit, it's still positive growth. I think they increased their full year revenue outlook like 5% to 7% or something. It's interesting, actually. I think it does tie in really well to your conversation later with Casey, that when I was a teenager, Hollister was huge and Abercrombie was huge. And then there's been this, you know, valley for them for a little bit and now it's like they're back, and they're back with the same age group. You know, it's like, not the same people. There are brands who are. It's like, it was popular with teens in, like, you know, the 2000s, and now it's still popular with those same people, even as they're now in their 30s or whatever. But this is more like it's popular with the same age group that it was popular with back then, which I think is, you know, a good sign for them. Before we move on, I just want to say, if you couldn't already tell that Zofia was British, I love that you called them clubs for the NFL instead of teams.
- [15:10]
B
There you go. Yeah. That's the difference. If we're talking about the Premier League, I'll be able to get into that. And there's a lot of partnerships there, too. But I think, obviously, with the NFL.
- [15:20]
A
Much bigger, and actually, I'm glad you mentioned that, because there was one other thing I wanted to say, which is I do feel like the NFL, despite being huge in the U.S. it's a massive, massive sports league. I feel like they're a little bit behind on fashion compared to, like, the NBA or other sports, mostly just because I feel like there's a little bit less of a natural connection. Like, basketball is, like, the origin of American sneaker culture, so there's a very clear, very organic connection to fashion. Tennis and golf, I think both have long histories with fashion and brands like Lacoste and newer brands like Malbourne or whatever. There's like, a natural kind of connection. And even soccer, because, you know, because of, like, the Premier League and La Liga in Spain, it's like, it's got this connection to Europe and the places where a lot of the big fashion brands are from. There's a natural connection there. I feel like the NFL and American football doesn't really have, to me, a very natural connection to fashion. Like, there's not a lot of, like, football fashion, like, kind of mainstays that you can. That I can think of anyway, so. And even Abercrombie, it's sort of like. I don't know if I've ever seen, like, football people wearing Abercrombie, like, not saying they don't, but just, like, it just feels like a random brand a little bit. So that's. That's my last thought on that. Is just not sure if football and American football and NFL are at the same level as, say, like, the NBA in terms of the. The maturity of their Fashion kind of efforts.
- [16:51]
B
Yeah, I think we can go into that like a lot more, but like the, the football culture in the UK, like it's all very reliant on, on almost like a 90s kind of culture of outfits. Like the football shirt, like all of those things are really tied to it. And I've always seen that there's a culture around the NFL, but it's not a fashion culture. You have. What's that thing where you watch the game outside and barbecue and stuff?
- [17:18]
A
A tail game?
- [17:19]
B
Yeah, that's something like that. That I think is part of that culture. Whereas the outfits were almost part of it because you wanted to show your allegiance and you're quite like. There was a lot of customizing going on as well. People kind of made their own thing with the shirts and wanted to kind of stand out and look cool.
- [17:38]
A
Yeah. And also I want to say I'm not a huge football American football guy. So if I sound totally ignorant and there are people out there who are like, there's a deep culture of fashion in football legitimately, let me know. I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong about that. Let's move on to our last topic. I wanted to talk about Marks and Spencer, speaking of Britain, very British kind of high street brand. They announced that they are opening an official ebay storefront this week so you can sell or trade in old Marks Spencer stuff. They already were letting you do that in the store, but now you can do it on ebay and it's including some categories that they weren't taking in the store. I think that includes footwear, but you can also buy pre owned Marks and Spencer stuff through the ebay store. This is something I've covered a lot at Glossy, the official crossover between fashion brands and resale platforms. And particularly I think ebay is an interesting one because they've been pushing a lot into fashion. Fashion. They already have, I think watches and sneakers and handbags, like kind of collectible things. There is a history there with ebay, but recently they've been pushing more toward apparel. They have been doing a lot of New York Fashion Week stuff since last year, which we can get into. But to start off, Zofia, what did you think of Marks and Spencer specifically?
- [18:56]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think that Ms. Is kind of one of those places that is still seen as almost like a quality high street brand. It's not something that ends up falling apart after like five wears, at least from, from what I've heard. And there's a lot of again, like cultural interest in having M and S items that are older as well. I think they actually used to have like a sub line way back in like the early 90s. I think that was really popular as well and gets a lot of interest on Depop nowadays. But this program which is being run by Reskinned, so customers kind of ship their old Ms. Clothing in for free and if at least one item is resellable and branded, they also get a £5 voucher towards a £35 purchase. And they can do that six times a year. So that's like very. I think again an incentive measure for resale is quite interesting, especially at this scale because I think in the UK you've had clothing bins in stores where you can give older items for a really long time. And I think that culture is already there. So I don't know if I think resale is quite a natural progression for Ms. Compared to what they've been doing. They've been collecting the used clothes since 2008. I think it's under their Schwabping program, which is a fun name. And they've collected over 36.5 million items. So I guess it's just scaling that and then doing it through a branded kind of platform. And it's not the only one as well because obviously Adidas, Dyson as well as some other kind of luxury brands like Mulberry and Louis Vuitton have some things through ebay's authentication guarantee. But it's one of the first brand led big efforts happening on ebay.
- [20:44]
A
Yeah, and on the ebay side in particular, it's really interesting. So since last New York Fashion Week, or last September I should say, they started doing something called the Endless Runway. They're partnering with a bunch of designers, they're doing it again this season. They're working with Erdem and Altazara to basically include pre owned vintage pieces on the Runway sourced from ebay. So multiple designers will be having secondhand pieces found on ebay on the Runway in addition to their new clothes, which I think is a really cool sort of just a symbol of the kind of official relationship between secondhand and the primary market of fashion. There's been a lot of unofficial sort of relationship between those two markets for a long time, but now it's like really kind of solidified actually. I missed this at the time, but at the Met Gala this year, ebay said that Emma Chamberlain, Jeremy Pope, Law Roach and Chapel Roan all wore pre owned clothes from ebay at the Met Gal. I missed that at the time, but I think that's another pretty cool example of that crossover.
- [21:47]
B
I was going to say that this year the designers that are going to be included are Erdem, Blueir, Kalmier, and Alawalia. So I'm assuming some of those will be over in New York and then others will be in London. But from what I've seen, both of those runways are relatively popular in the UK definitely. So I've been to a few of them and they've been quite high interest. I think maybe more people are interested in resale fashion on the runways and the fact that obviously younger designers are involved as well.
- [22:18]
A
Yeah. Cool. Before we wrap up this first half of the episode, I mentioned you have your conversation with Casey Lewis coming up, but we also got some great call ins from listeners to tell us what they think the teens are wearing today. And I thought we could listen to a few and talk about it briefly before we take a short break and you have your talk with Casey. So let's hear our first caller.
- [22:44]
C
Hello, my name is Harley. I am actually a fashion business student. Absolutely love the podcast. I'm not a high schooler, but I do work in the retail space and a lot of high schoolers and young kids come in and they cannot get enough of the barrel. They love the barrel feed. They also love wearing black. I feel like it's almost as if you took the 90s and made it a little more emo coded. Also too, the kids love oversized clothes. Would say those are the main things by Botus. Thank you so much.
- [23:33]
A
First of all, thank you for calling in and thank you for saying nice things about the podcast. That's always nice. But yeah, I definitely think that my anecdotal experiences, the oversized 90s trend is obviously still extremely huge with young people. The barrel jeans is interesting and actually listening to this caller made me want to do a big story on Glossy. Kind of just checking in on the denim styles because I feel like there was obviously the skinny jean era and then that went out and then now you've got stuff like the J. Crew, like giant chinos. I feel like big pants are back for men and women, so there's a lot to unpack there. But definitely, I think the denim part of it is super interesting. What about you, Zofia?
- [24:14]
B
Yeah, so we do dig into all of these topics with Casey, but obviously it's so interesting. I think that every time that there's a teenage group, you end up having a bit of a uniform and we speak a little bit about kind of like the tank tops and sweatshirts or else oversized jeans and like how that's kind of becoming a bit of a thing for teenagers nowadays. And I think that that's exactly what you're speaking to here. It's a lot of very oversized silhouettes, you know, especially kind of like a mini top and then like really oversized jeans. And I think Casey speaks about this a little bit more, but she talks about comfort and we'll get into that kind of when we get into that segment.
- [24:59]
A
Yeah, I saw something once that was like every outfit is like big pants, little shirt or little shirt, big pants. And that's definitely true. Let's hear one more caller and then we can wrap up this first half of the episode.
- [25:12]
D
Hi, my name is Jennifer and I'm calling in from Savannah, Georgia. My daughter Stella just started her senior year of high school in Savannah and is taking dual enrollment classes through scad. That said, she has a fashion responsibility to be on trend, yet classy seeing her friends tend to shop at Urban Outfitters, H and M or for one off purchases, sometimes at Anthropologie. Due to the lack of shopping options in Savannah, they mostly shop at Urban Outfitters. They are wearing a lot of feminine skirts, straight cut or boot cut jeans with Mary Jane flip flops or on the trendier days or days that they're going out with maybe a boot. Stella has stolen my Frye harness boots from the early 2000s, but her friends tend toward the cowboy type boots. Mostly the finds that they wear are from Depop, which seems to be its own social media. They buy and sell from a community of people who have liked their items or purchased from them in the past. Also known as, I guess, lookers, they shop within their own group. Stella tends to search more for Vivienne Westwood items. We often take trips to New York City just so she can get to that Vivienne Westwood shop. But she dreams of adding someday the Margiela tabby to her cart and making the real purchase. I hope this answers your question and I love your podcast. I'm just a mom that enjoys fashion and so I'm responding.
- [26:54]
B
Thank you.
- [26:56]
A
Well, thank you, Jennifer. Thank you for calling in and thank you for telling us about what your daughter's wearing. The first thing that immediately pops to mind. Obviously we're just talking about ebay, but like, I absolutely think teens are driving a lot of the resale trends shopping on depop. Stealing your mom's boots. I think that's very common thing for like fashionable young people to do is take their parents clothes. But yeah, I mean, I think that's very much from what I'm seeing as well. What about you, Zafia?
- [27:26]
B
Yeah, it's so interesting because obviously so much of this is talking about like the western trend which we talked about already with Abercrombie, you know, somewhat with American Eagle and denim and again the kind of side things around 16 year olds or 15 year olds looking towards their next big purchase. And that being something from Vivienne Westwood, which is again, massive 90s noughties kind of nostalgia brand. I think the pearl chokers are particularly popular, but obviously the corset tops are much higher ticket, so maybe that's something that she's looking to buy in the future. And yeah, the resale component is massive on that. Depop is such a community and it has such a community feel, like the captions can literally be anything. And granted people do describe the items mostly, but it's also a lot of fun interactions and it just feels like its own little world that you don't really get on other platforms that almost feel a little bit more transactional.
- [28:27]
A
Yeah. Well, thank you to the callers for calling in. And Zofia, thanks for doing the news breakdown with me. We're going to take a very short break and then we'll have Zofia's conversation with Casey. Every brand says they want growth, but here's the thing about growth. Most of the time it's being held back by waste. Waste in your media plan, waste in your measurement, waste in the way decisions get made. Tenuity is here to end that. Tenuity is an independent media agency built for brands that want to grow. Their humans are brilliant. Their technology is powerful. Tinuity Tech shows you exactly what's working, what's wasting budget, and what to do next. They don't just talk about growth, they engineer it. Love growth, hate waste. Find out what your media's really doing. Visit lovegrowth hatewaste.com.
- [29:36]
B
Hi, and welcome back to the Glossy podcast. I'm international fashion reporter Zafia Zaglinska, and today we're taking a closer look at Back to school shopping, an $128 billion season that's shaping teen culture in real time. And joining me today is Casey Lewis, writer, trend forecaster, and the voice behind After School, her substack newsletter that decodes what Gen Z is buying, watching and obsessed with each week. Kasey's been tracking thousands of back to school hauls this year, I think tallying up the top 15 purchases and surfacing the bigger cultural shifts that they reveal so. Hi, Casey. Lovely to have you on.
- [30:12]
E
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
- [30:15]
B
Yeah. And I know that we're here to talk about a very big season and something that seems to be immune to any financial shifts that are going on elsewhere. Tell me about how back to School has evolved. First, what is it like this year?
- [30:29]
E
I expected it to be a little subdued, just based on the larger economic climate. Halls seemed bigger than ever, actually, so that kind of defied expectations. I think people are, I think in particular buying a lot of jeans, which are not cheap, you know, and we can get into the denim of it all. But, you know, we're not talking about, like, a stack of T shirts. We're talking about shoes, jeans, backpacks, things that really do hit the wallet in a. In a pretty big way. So all of that was really interesting to me.
- [31:09]
B
Yeah. And you've said that the haul itself is kind of now the whole point, with some of the teens even staging some shopping bags for TikTok, which I found absolutely, absolutely hilarious. You end up buying something in one boutique and you bring it home or like, you buy it online, and then you actually have the bags from other stores just to make sure that you have those in. In the bags. It's very weird to me.
- [31:29]
E
So I've. I've been doing this haul deep dive for the last three years around back to school. And it. It really struck me the first time I did it how much emphasis there was on the shopping bag. And, you know, even going to Hollister and getting a single tank top. You want to get the shopping bag from Hollister instead of throwing it into the big bag from garage. And part of that is for the sort of theatrical flourish of the hall so that you can show, you know, this is what I got from Hollister and then take it out of the bag. But this was the first year of the years I've been doing this that I actually saw girls put things, put items into bags that they had ordered online for the sake of the haul.
- [32:12]
B
Oh, my God. The performance of it all. Anything for the TikTok haul.
- [32:17]
E
Exactly.
- [32:17]
B
And I think the kind of back to school spending part of it is interesting because as you mentioned, you'd expect attitudes to be a little bit more subdued. Almost kind of half of families cite inflation as a concern kind of around back to school. So why is it that teen culture seems to be immune to these cutbacks, at least on social media?
- [32:41]
E
Man, that's a good question. I don't know if it. If part of it is that Back to School shopping has become such a thing, not for the actual act of going back to school, but because of the performative social media aspect of it, that kids are putting the pressure on their parents, you know, and saying, like, this is a priority. I don't care about my Christmas gifts. I need to have the stuff now. If you spend time watching hauls, you know that many of them do a preamble ahead of jumping into things where they say, I'm very grateful to my mom and dad for giving me this amazing experience and all of these beautiful things. And then this year, I did hear more perhaps than last year say, I worked really hard this summer for this. I also heard a couple of kids who were clearly micro influencers say, I'm grateful to you, my followers, for helping me pay for this. And so maybe part of that sort of. Maybe part of the reason it seems recession proof or economic climate proof is because they are working to help subsidize it.
- [33:55]
B
Yeah, definitely. Maybe a TikTok call, especially around back to school, is the start of some content creator careers. Maybe that's the video that sets off.
- [34:06]
E
It only takes one. It only takes one viral video.
- [34:11]
B
And, you know, you mentioned denim before, and so that's something that is back in a big way. Everything from, you know, Cat's Eye and Gap to, you know, American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney, you know, all of these things are influencing the way that, you know, denim culture is perceived. But also, it seems like there's an uptick on the shopping side in terms of the styles of jeans that are popular with, you know, younger people nowadays. So what's fueling that kind of denim resurgence, you know, around baggy jeans or barrel jeans? And you mentioned black washes as well. And what does it signal about kind of shifting fashion cycles?
- [34:45]
E
Yeah, it's been fascinating to this year after year just because you really can see how things are changing. So 2023 still very much focused on leggings, a lot of flare leggings. At that point, Lululemon girls were wearing like a. Like a dance pant from Lululemon that was a little bit more like a cargo. There were lots of cargoes, broadly, like khaki cargoes, twill cargos. And at that point, it really just. There wasn't a lot of interest in denim. And my theory, and I think probably others would support this theory, is coming out of COVID You know, we just weren't wearing a lot of jeans at home. Jeans aren't thought to be super comfortable. And so we were used to a level of comfort, Especially these kids who had school from home, like they were wearing pajamas 24 7. So I think there it took time to kind of get used to the idea of wearing jeans again. But I think that's why baggy jeans in particular are the ones that have really, you know, taken off, is because they're comfortable. You know, when you're wearing a pair of jeans that's three sizes too big, kind of low slung, there's none of that discomfort that you might get from, you know, the. The high rise kind of suck you in ones like, that's not comfortable. And so I think that young people who are sitting in school all day, they value comfort. They want to, you know, not feel that sort of waistband digging in in fifth hour, you know, eighth hour or whatever.
- [36:08]
B
Yeah, no, definitely. I think that I've got the same mentality. Most of my high rise jeans have been relegated. And I do have a pair which is definitely low rise and baggy that I kind of lean towards.
- [36:19]
E
So that comfort element, it's like you're wearing sweats almost. You know, they look nice enough to run errands in and go to meetings in, but they're so comfortable.
- [36:29]
B
Yeah. And I'm sure that that's also a little bit of a difference now between what kids are actually wearing to school as well. Like, maybe there is a little bit more of a formal approach, but that formal approach is jeans over sweatpants, not, you know, something more kind of nice.
- [36:44]
E
Yes. You know what, though? I will say, as popular as the low rise baggie jean is, and it was extraordinarily popular, where girls are buying five, six pairs of this very similar baggy low rise gene, I was also seeing experimentation with more like, Flair Y2K ISH jeans. So the sort of like true religion style, the gap long and lean style, which we saw cat's eye wearing, like, there is more experimentation. And I think that, you know, denim as a category, There was a point, you know, in the 2010s where it was only the skinny jean, the stretchy skinny jean. And now there's more variation where it's like the low rise baggie. There are still high rises, of course, the barrel jean. So I just think that category is interesting because people are experimenting within it.
- [37:33]
B
Yeah. And it kind of feels like the same thing that people are saying around bags and personalization. Like, denim feels like that kind of category where everyone can find a pair of jeans that suits them, depending on shape or embellishments. I think the American eagle ones had a little butterfly mark like, is that something where showing off personality is maybe more important for younger people?
- [37:55]
E
Definitely. And I'm really glad you mentioned that because Hollister has a low rise baggy jean that they make in like 25 different colorways. But they're really like, some of them have little flowers embroidered on the back, other ones have different stripes and things like that. And so it's like these sort of these tiny little touches that almost seem DIY but aren't where it feels special.
- [38:19]
B
Yeah, definitely. I remember patchworking my jeans, I think mostly, like, when they wore out, but maybe now it's a bit more contrived. Maybe they want to buy into that look a la, you know, golden goose with the trainers. Like, that's the kind of thing for denim.
- [38:33]
E
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:36]
B
And, you know, with leggings, you mentioned Lululemon, and I guess the prevalence of that beforehand, you know, it seems like leggings are having a little bit of a downward moment. It doesn't seem like they're as pop popular. The kind of big workout pants are definitely taking over. So do you think this might be the end of a 20 year athleisure era, or is it a little bit too early to say that?
- [39:01]
E
I think it's too early to say that, though. I was very amused watching all of these hauls and thinking, like, wait, leggings are like, nowhere to be mentioned. And then as I was doing this haul deep dive, Rory at the Wall Street Journal posted the piece about the downfall of leggings, and I was like, oh, my God, it all makes sense. But I think that I will say I did still see girls getting buying the. The align flares from Lululemon, which you and I would probably call leggings, though they are flares, but so that idea of like a flared yoga pant is still relevant. I mean, they're so comfortable. Right? Like, and so I think that that will never go away. I also just saw yesterday Kaia Gerber, who's Gen Z style icon and model, released a collaboration with Fiore, and there are leggings in that collection. And so I thought that was really something notable. When you think about is it really the end or are people just sort of, we are going all in on leggings. Are they just pulling back a little bit?
- [40:11]
B
Yeah, definitely. That's interesting. Yeah. Because it definitely was the, like, tighter kind of slim, you know, I guess, like skinny legging that was the trend. And maybe the flares are offering a bit more of that kind of comfort and, you know, I guess, like softness as well. Like you don't feel like you need to be zipped up into your leggings either.
- [40:30]
E
Totally. And I actually think part of that has to do with the shoes they're wearing where it's like this Adidas campus shoe is a big one where it's a little bit of a, you know, larger, like more of a skater style shoe. And that shoe lends itself well to the baggy jeans, to the flared leggings, and also to the, to the sweatpants that are, you know, loose around the ankle. It's almost like they're resistant to like any sort of like, ankle, you know, anything that like striction. Yeah, exactly. But I mentioned this in my newsletter. But one thing that really amused me, puzzled me and then amused me once I figured it out. There were all these girls, you know, they were buying sweatpants, they'd hold them up and they would say, these are uncuffed. These are uncuffed. Demetra Diaz has a, has a collaboration with Aeropostale. And one of the girls was like, these are the cuffed ones, but I like them enough. And I was like, what is a cuffed sweatpant? And it was just elasticized ankles. And so they are like, they hate elasticized ankles. They call them cuffs and a lot of them are like de cuffing some of their cuffed sweatpants.
- [41:37]
B
Oh, I love that. If your mum gets you cuffed sweatspants, like, that's the thing that's, that's like not cool factor. Bust the scissors out. And you mentioned the Adidas camper sneakers. And obviously the shoe trends are also quite indicative of what's popular with younger people as well. You know, those ones are in, Birkenstocks are in and then Crocs are kind of like an out, you know, what do you think all of these kind of micro shift. Tell us about how quickly Gen Z cycles through status footwear.
- [42:07]
E
You know, the sneaker thing is one example of how quickly they cycle through. Last year it was absolutely all about the samba and, you know, girls were just so obsessed with that style and, you know, other shoes. Five years ago. I've only been doing the newsletter for four and a half years, but I used to, I've worked in media for a long time and I've always been in this sort of like trend space. And I remember in the like 20, gosh, 19 era, it was all about the Air Force ones, but no one's wearing Air Force ones now. And so, you know, sneakers in particular, I think are a way to signal like, I know what's cool right now. But I will say Crocs, like, even though they were not mentioned, Crocs had such a stronghold on this generation for so many years that I, that one doesn't feel to me to be super fleeting. And Uggs were also, also one of those things where it's like they're just mentioned again and again. I think they did come up in some back to school halls, but I think that this, it seasonally, it's a tough time for Uggs. People aren't really thinking about it. So I'd be curious to see, and I will be keeping my eye on when holiday rolls around, will Uggs still be such a huge category in gifting? Because historically they have been.
- [43:27]
B
Yeah, no, definitely. And to be honest, all of this is making me think about, I guess, the Gen Z uniform and how some brands end up almost coming back or having enough of a stronghold that they come back again and again. So Hollister had its moment back in the 2010s when we were both younger, and its hold on that generation was extreme. And I feel like it's, it's kind of leaning into that nostalgia a little bit more now. Do you think there's any other brands that have kind of either successfully navigated this nostalgia shift or have just been eponymous from Birkenstocks to Uggs as well? They've been around for forever.
- [44:10]
E
Yeah. I mean, Hollister, I think is a fascinating example just because with Abercrombie sort of made the comeback first. And even as recent as last year, it felt like Hollister was still a little bit like very much trying to be part of the zeitgeist. And in back to school halls last year, I remember a specific Abercrombie camo sweatshirt was like the it item sold out such, you know, it was all about that Abercrombie camo sweatshirt. And then this year it was like Hollister had totally replaced Abercrombie in terms of the like, cultural conversation. I think part of that happened has to do with the economy just because Hollister is a much better price point. And I, I don't know that the quality of Abercumbia is that much to justify the higher price point. But it has been such an interesting one. I don't know if you saw their reissue collection that they put out a couple of weeks ago, but can you imagine wearing sweats that say 2001 on the butt? Like girls are buying that. It's just so funny.
- [45:14]
B
So it was those and like the double tank tops.
- [45:17]
E
Yes.
- [45:17]
B
Oh my God, the double tank Tops, so, so bad.
- [45:19]
E
Yeah. But, you know, I think Hollister, I think American Eagle, you know, Sydney Sweeney aside, has done a good job of really maintaining relevance with his audience. Aerie in particular has helped them a lot because, you know, Aerie has nice underwear and like, like loungewear. And loungewear is such a huge category with this, this, with this age group because, you know, the bed rotting, the, you know, they're, they're so into to like cuddly, comfy clothes. And I think a lot of that is because of TikTok. Like they're spending so much time at home both consuming content, but also many of them making content that they want what they're wearing around the house to be aesthetic.
- [46:06]
B
Yeah. And beyond price point. You know, is some of this also down to the marketing? You know, is. Is, for example, a collection like Gaps with Cat's Eye, Is that something that is going to get customers to buy more of that? Especially in this age group?
- [46:22]
E
Yes. So the Cat's Eye collaboration, or the Cat's Eye campaign in particular, I was so interested in it because I think a lot of people don't understand how much of a phenomenon Katseye is. K Pop is such a huge category, but I think a lot of maybe elder Millennials, Xers, Boomers, et cetera, haven't paid as much attention to K Pop and maybe hadn't heard of Cat's Eye before this collaboration or campaign. Katseye had a campaign with Glossier a couple of months ago. It was huge. The success of that kind of made me believe that this Gap one would be similarly successful with this age group. And of course, I think what was super brilliant with this particular Gap thing is that it was a familiar song to Millennials and Xers and the choreography felt very retro. And so I think it was a very nice cross generational campaign. But to answer your question about the clothes, so one particular skirt, I believe it was the pleated jean skirt, like sold out, went viral. So, yeah, I think it does very much translate to sales. And I also, one of the girls was wearing the men's baggy jeans. And then a couple of days later, and I believe this was a coincidence, but maybe it was product placement. Hailey Bieber was spotted wearing low rise jeans and she commented on someone's TikToks with the clothing ID and it was. They were the Gap baggy jeans that were also in the campaign. So it's working.
- [47:52]
B
Okay. And what about, like, more kind of typical Gen Z brands? Cause when I think Gen Z, I'm like, it's Brandy Melville. You know, where does that pop up in all of this?
- [48:02]
E
Yeah, I mean, Brandy is still, I would say 80, 90% of the hauls that I watch mention Brandy. And I think one of the genius things about Brandy Melville is, you know, they don't have stores everywhere, but they are sold at pacsuns. So it's the accessibility of the brand is, you know, anybody, you know, I'm from rural Missouri, and so I always think about, like, what I would be able to buy, you know, as a kid, and I wouldn't be able to go to a Brandy Melville proper, but a pacsun, you know, you can get the same look. So I think that is something that a lot of people don't realize or, you know, older elder millennials than Xers, I don't think realize that. But that gets so much foot traffic into pacsuns. And so pacsun is going back to one of the millennial brands that is doing really well right now with Gen Z. Pacsun is one of those partly because of the sort of Brandy Halo. Brandy and Garage, I would say, are the, like, big Gen Z brands that are just extraordinarily popular. And Garage in particular came up again and again with their sweatpants, which they make sweats and all these like, actually really beautiful, like, rich colors. And you can get the sweats in the matching baby tee, you can get the sweats in the matching tube top, the hoodies, like, so there's a lot of, like, interesting mix and matching happening. And one of the big outfits for school is girls will wear camisoles or even tube tops, the ones who have more lax dress codes. So a tube top and then low slung, baggy sweats, very like 90s.
- [49:39]
B
Feels like garage is the place to go if you want to buy the whole look.
- [49:42]
E
Go there.
- [49:43]
B
Yeah, I think that that's really interesting that there's always a uniform for different, well, maybe not quite subcultures, because obviously we're not talking about goth here. But it feels like Gen Z also has a uniform and some of those brands play into that. Is there anything that if you had to tell like a brand marketer how to address that age group with those products or with the marketing, like, what should they be doing?
- [50:10]
E
I think the. That's a good question. I think what we've seen with the two sort of loudest back to school campaigns, Gap and American Eagle, I mean, kind of putting those side by side, it's easy to see if you think about it critically, like why one resonated with the target audience. And one didn't. And, you know, the thing about the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle campaign is it got attention, right? Like, and they haven't had their earnings call. Like, we don't know. It maybe did get people in the store. Like, time will tell. I did a lot of research on, like, what was the teen girl response or, you know, Gen Z woman response, just because that is their target audience. Today's Travis Kelce collaboration, I think that will resonate really well with both, you know, college guys and their girlfriends who buy them clothes. So, like, that, to me is, like, genius. Right? The Cat's Eye collaboration, I think, was super smart because it shows. It not only shows the diversity of Gaps products, but it even beyond just Cat's Eye, like, that whole video has so many different people in it. There's, like, some diversity in body types, ages, all of these things. And they're all putting their own, like, personal style stamp, seemingly. Of course, you know, it was all styled, but, you know, it just kind of shows the range that Gap offers, which I think is really smart and appeals to young people where they want to be able to put their own stamp on something while also signaling to others that they get it.
- [51:50]
B
Yeah, definitely. I think that representation in that campaign was really good. And it is something that I think has resonated across different cultural kind of age groups as well. It's not just, let's say, a US audience that would be interested in that. And I think the K pop angle makes it also quite globally relevant. A lot of people are interested in it. I, for one, have been watching K pop Demon Hunters. And that, for example, is you.
- [52:16]
E
As many people. I mean, I just thought it's the most watched movie ever. Ever.
- [52:22]
B
Yeah, it seems like it's really, really popular. And I'm sure that, like, the actual K pop element is such a big part of it. I'm wondering how many, like, young people actually watch it or whether it's just, like, older people who like it.
- [52:35]
E
But how cool that so many people are being exposed to K pop for the first time.
- [52:41]
B
Yeah, I think it's really interesting how diverse it is. And obviously with Jennie, with all of the blackpink members, I think that that's kind of the starting point for that. And I think it kind of feeds well into this whole Gen Z nostalgic noughties aesthetic. These bands all have very similar kind of nostalgic covers. The costumes. It all seems to play into that. I'm wondering if that's also influencing some of these style choices for Back to.
- [53:14]
E
School I definitely think so. And I think it goes both ways. Where these Gen zers are so into low slung, they're into tiny tops. Although something we didn't talk about earlier but something that I think is interesting and have been watching is as jeans have gone lower, the tops are getting longer. So people are less interested in crop tops and more interested in. You know, one thing I picked up on a lot of hauls is girls would say I got this T shirt, it's long, it wouldn't actually be long. It would like hit their hips but like long comparative to what they're used to. And so I think, you know, of course as jeans go lower that makes sense. You know, we all started wearing crops shirt or like shrunken shirts when our jeans went up to our ribs. And now, you know, what goes up must go down. But yeah, I think, to answer your question, I think that the celebrity, celebrity style, K pop style, that certainly feeds what Gen Z is doing. But I also think because so much, so much trends, so many trends begin on TikTok among young consumers that there are also. So I think it's sort of a cycle, they're reflecting one another.
- [54:28]
B
Yeah, definitely. I think that there's so much that is almost getting mirrored both ways. So with Gen Z we're also seeing the rise of resale and rental with Nuuly and Depop. What does that. I guess how does that play into these back to school haul trends and where does retail have that place in it?
- [54:49]
E
Speaking to rental specifically, I see that much more. It's coming up a lot more with college kids. So I saw a lot of college girls who used Nuuly or similar services for Rush or things like specific events like that. I did not see it come up with any high school kids. I don't know if that's because they don't allow kids under 18 or if that actually is interesting, I'm not sure or if maybe that is just not something that is that teens are aware of. But depop came up quite a bit especially for specific items like for instance a band tee or a low rise jeans from the Y2K or vintage American Eagle mini skirt from 2007. Like these very specific items. And I think Depop because it is, is so peer to peer in a like very Gen Z way. Like it's different than Poshmark. Poshmark. You're like, you know, it's almost like ebay. It's, you're sort of, it's faceless, it's, it's, you know, it's a mass service. Whereas Depop feels very almost, almost like like blog esque in that people are really, you know, sometimes very. There was a girl who like went viral for her entries for her listings which read like diary entries. There's just a lot more room for I think self expression and also there's viral Instagram accounts over the funniest DMs. So I just think it's more of a, I think it's more of a thing culturally and because of that it is top of mind for teens when they're trying to, to track down something. But I will say like in terms of back to school halls, it was far and away mall stores and far and away not just malls, but like not online. You know, if, if you could get something in person, you would get it in person. You would only shop online if it was out in your size. And that would be sort of a bummer because then you wouldn't get to do the whole like theatrical pulling it out of a bag.
- [57:06]
B
You know, if you had to say like with back to school this time around, what do you think it tells us about where Gen Z is emotionally and kind of culturally?
- [57:16]
E
I mean what's happening in the economy was not reflected in these halls at all. And a lot of, you know, maybe because of the subject matter, but the mood seemed very like, you know, enthusiastic, you know, very excited and optimistic. I do think part of this Y2K early aughts nostalgia is, I mean I'm not a psychologist, but I think it's easy to like tie that to like you know, they longing for a simpler time. They're so entrenched in tech. Like they, you know, wonder what it would be like to have lived in like clueless era. I think there's just like such an interest in the past because it seems easier and simpler. And I think that definitely is part of the whole trend cycle and why they're looking back. But I also think I was having a conversation with a friend who told me, you know, when she was in high school she wanted to dress like a hippie and her mom was like, you don't even know what a hippie is. But you know, among young people there's always this looking to the past for style and inspiration. It seems especially amplified by this generation with the flip phones and the digital cameras and all of this. But I do think overall I felt like, okay, these are optimistic kids who feel excited about the prospect of going back to school. They're excited about these beautiful items that they've bought I did not get any sense of, I don't know, ennui or, you know, I, I think there's so much about Gen Z. You read the headlines and you're like, they're all depressed, they're all lonely. They, you know, all these things. And of course, like, this could be because these are back to school halls and these are not representative of all gen zers. Although I would say, like, you would be surprised how many kids make back to school halls compared to, you know, not a lot of teens would consider themselves to be content creators, but they will still make hauls.
- [59:26]
B
That's so interesting. Yeah. I'm wondering if that's just part of the way that they engage with content is almost like participating in this bigger trend.
- [59:36]
E
Yes.
- [59:36]
B
But I think that that's kind of everything that we have time for this week. And thank you so much, Casey, for coming on. This is so interesting to break it down as like a, a barometer of teens and when they are.
- [59:48]
E
This is so fun. Thank you so much for having me.
- [59:55]
B
And that's all the time that we have this week. Don't forget to give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening to this. It really helps us out a lot. Thanks for listening.