The Digest 25
portable paradise, sensorial sustainability, and yassified gas stations
Welcome back!
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Let’s get Digesting!
At The Composite, we serve up a curated collection of culture, beauty, and critique—served in parts, meant to be savored whole. Think of The Digest as your quick, thoughtful read to replace the morning scroll, offering a bite of everything you need to stay in the loop. Come hungry. Leave questioning everything.
Aperitif
Trending Tidbits:
At the Composite, trends are tracked not always for the purpose of following them, but for what they reveal. Not necessarily an endorsement, but a thought starter
Recommended Reading
📖 Meat Is Back, on Plates and in Politics
📖 Recession fashion is on its way
📖 My GLP-1 Medication Changed the Way Perfume Smells to Me
📖 This TikTok community wants to make weight loss mean again
📖 Dressing the Uninvited: Reflecting on Fashion, Power, and Presence by Styling an Exquisite Corpse
📖 Luxury hygiene: How fragrance brands are redefining the scent of clean
The Main Course:
I forced myself to write shorter form bullets this week, true to the original Digest format. I’m notoriously long-winded, so while it’s hard for me I ultimately think you like it better - let me know if so!
I’ve been dreading the drop of khloud, Khloe’s new protein popcorn snack. I feel of all of the sisters, Khloe has been both the biggest victim *and* biggest perpetrator of diet culture. Let’s leave the food descriptor “Guilt-free” in 2003
Okay Burberry! Love to see this and this, especially from a luxury brand
“America’s age of health anxiety” is causing women who are very conscious of what they put into their body to become conscious of what they’re putting on their body
On that note: seeing an uptick of content about “eating your skincare” - also, a related read: how organ meat got into smoothies
In the age of AI slop, I love to see posts like this from brands that leverage real artists in their marketing. J.Crew is also fab at this. We’re going to see this divide deepen between brands who lean into AI and those who stand firm
Doechii on the cover of Cosmo is soooo fucking good
Formerly (almost) defunct underwear brand Parade launched a swim collection consisting of 7 styles in sizes XS-3X1
Modern Retail dug into why brands are collaborating with activists, dubbing them “the new influencers” and claiming that “Slow fashion is replacing quiet luxury”
Crown Affair partnered with Eliou to create a very beautiful pearl adorned scrunchie as well as a beaded necklace. As always, their social around the collab was so good
Barnes and Noble evidently plans to open more than 60 stores this year after opening 57 in 2024
Marie Claire rounded up some dystopian / climate fiction novels, some of which I absolutely love and others that are on my list to read
Last week I wrote that Glossier should’ve used scratch-n-sniff in their OOH marketing for Fleur. This week, razor brand Billie unveiled scratch-n-sniff in their OOH marketing
Demi Lovato’s “cherry jello” nails are described as “fruity gelatin suspended in time” - sounds familiar, no? And on that note - my jello salad predictions are coming to fruition!
I honestly really love the Jacquemus x Timberlands boat shoe. The color, the silhouette - there’s something so cheeky about them, and they walk the nostalgic-contemporary-futuristic line that I really appreciate
BeautyMatter names Neuro-Boosting Beauty, Next-Gen Exosomes, Sensorial Sustainability, Marine Protectors, and Hyaluronic Acid 2.0 as 5 key areas of upcoming beauty innovation. Lots of good stuff in here
I was delighted by North of North on Netflix and always love seeing Teen Vogue’s profiles on diverse up-and-coming stars like Anna Lambe (and my fave, Jensen McRae)
When I predicted more outer space in fashion this year, I did not mean it literally. And on that note, let’s not colonize the ocean
Nuuly has been tapping microinfluencers to plan intentional, local community events like bouquet making and book swaps. I like this strategy and predict we’ll see more customers + small creators in marketing efforts
Add brand employees to that list - Rare Beauty, for example, just dropped this really charming series featuring members of their own team
Cult-favorite sunscreen brand Vacation dropped 3 body mists, dubbed “portable paradise”. They announced the launch with digital ads modeled after 80s magazine print ads2
e.l.f served up cherry and chocolate beauty products with their 50s style Glow-and-Go Diner at Stagecoach
The food x beauty craze is far from over - Dove partnered with Chamberlain Coffee on a pop-up cafe to promote their new oat milk + berry brûlée products
A new “yassified gas station will serve ceremonial-grade matcha as you pump” reported
. I’m honestly surprised the aesthetic gas station market hasn’t been cornered before“Sleep is an uncompromising interruption of the theft of time from us by capitalism” - or is it? Wake up girls, they’re commodifying bedtime (as I’ve been saying!)
Digestif
At this point we likely all know that there is a strong link between the concerning rise of conservatism in America and the increasingly aggressive push towards thinness in our culture. This week, though, I saw two very upsetting (although not surprising) articles:
The Women Who Want to Make America Hot Again (Glamour)
Now comes the ‘womanosphere’: the anti-feminist media telling women to be thin, fertile and Republican (The Guardian)
In the Glamour article, writer Sam Reed goes to a party thrown by a conservative women’s publication, the goal of which is to “restore long-lost moral and aesthetic refinement”3. She speaks to Jayme Franklin, the 27-year-old founder of the publication who makes a slew of disturbing comments rebuking the “feminist, progressive lifestyle” and says that they are aiming to “bring back traditional femininity”. She says that mainstream media outlets, like Glamour, for example, are “trying to take things that are just what everybody knows are ugly and trying to make it like they’re good”, claiming that people want to see more beauty ideals from the 80s and 90s, like Cindy Crawford supermodel types.
Reed also hears from a guest at the party who is upset that men in attendance are joking about taking away women’s right to vote. Can you really be surprised about that when the entire point of your message is to restore 1950s-era gender roles in America, laughing in the face of women’s right to progress?
Meanwhile on The Guardian, Anna Silman delves into “the womanosphere”, characterized by a “desire to return to a gender-essentialist worldview: women as submissive homemakers, men as strong providers”. Similar to Franklin in Glamour’s piece, these conservative women are denigrating anyone who does not fit within their narrow view of what a woman should look like, and, by extension, behave like.
They go so far as to claim “skinny sex is the best sex” and that there’s a “‘lack of self-control, unattractiveness, and state of disease’ that results from embracing body positivity”. They believe in an objective, universally accepted standard of beauty that leaves no room for deviation. “They want to bring back your mother’s – or your grandmother’s – women’s magazine, in which it was OK to celebrate a certain body type over others”.
Hear me when I say this: There is no self-worth to be found in being thin. There is no morality to be found in eating low-cal popcorn. There is no pride to be found in promoting gender essentialism and the regression of women’s rights. There is, however, a whole lot of diet culture and unattainable beauty standards to be found laced throughout conservative rhetoric in this country. Know what it looks like so you can protect yourself from it. Think about it the next time you’re tempted to make a comment about your own or someone else’s body. Resist through radical acceptance of yourself and others.
Recommended listening:
Mentioned this week:
If you’re here for a new perspective on fashion, beauty, and culture, you’re in the right place. Pull up a chair. The table is wide, and the conversation is layered.
They’re celebrating their swim launch with an event with Haricot Vert, a popular kitschy NYC store, where attendees can charmify their Parade swim. Cute!
I love how they replicated the look of seeing the next magazine page through the ad- so clever and effective
AESTHETICS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH MORALS I WILL SCREAM THIS INTO THE VOID UNTIL I DIE
I always love the variety of content you share! The Guardian piece was terrifying, but also so interesting to read about Nuuly's smaller community-focused events (I've been seeing some on Bookstagram!).
amazing!! really interesting to see this backwards trend we’re seeing in the beauty / wellness space. the comment in the glamour article regarding melania deserving to be on the cover of vogue is hilarious. not even in another century would they allow that.