CATCHING FIRE: Clavicular, 2026's new catchphrase and the Staples baddie
Do keep up!
Hello from Los Angeles where I finally have a fully functioning water-tight roof, have felt the sun on my face and eaten all the tacos. I return to rainy London this weekend.
In today’s letter we’re taking the temperature of looksmaxxing going mainstream, Anna Wintour failing the boss vibe check, Gen Z creators humbling well-resourced marketing teams, a “Wuthering Heights” flop, the hot new dating app taking over an American college, jestergooning and so much more. Let’s get into it…
Everyone’s talking about
The Anna and Chloe show… Whoever had the idea for outgoing Vogue editor Anna Wintour and incoming Head of Editorial Content, Chloe Malle, to sit down with The New York Times for a joint interview must be regretting it.
I guess they thought that the two-header would set the stage for Malle, 40, as she debuted her first cover in charge of the storied title, but the awkward AF interview instead showed that Wintour, 76, is still large and in charge and highlighted what a truly awful job Malle is going to have working in her shadow. I mean, just look at the body language…
Much was made of this part where Wintour corrects at best, and contradicts at worst, Malle’s enthusiastic and well thought out response to a question about what she would do if she had a Vogue budget from the late 90s…
But I am still hung up on Wintour damning Malle with faint praise AND referring to herself in the third person, when she said “she [Malle] is not A.W.-lite in any way”.
When I was half way through the toe-curling, clash-of-the-generations interview, it occurred to me that this could actually be a rather excellent piece of guerrilla marketing for The Devil Wears Prada 2. Alas, no, Wintour really is that icy, unable to cede control and will cling to her corner office until the day she dies.
The bad reviews for “Wuthering Heights”… The Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi powered reimagining of the Brontë classic might have been able to survive the savaging from critics who described it as an “emotionally hollow, bodice-ripping misfire” but a 65 per cent score from regular Joes on Rotten Tomatoes makes its smash hit chances slim. I’m going to try and catch it anyway, if only to see the costumes…
The Nancy Guthrie kidnapping… It is almost impossible to not be gripped by the curious case of TODAY show anchor Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother going missing. And the slow drip of ransom notes, terrifying doorbell camera footage of her masked abductor and police missteps have all kept the horrifying story at the top of the American news agenda.
It’s been 13 days since Nancy was taken from her home in Arizona, and the police seem no further forward in cracking the case. It’s left Savannah, her brother and sister - who have posted multiple messages to her kidnapper and offered to pay for her return - devastated.
Going viral
Clavicular… who is the latest fringe character to get mainstream attention after a clip of him went viral and his twisted worldview became a meme.
The online jokes may poke fun at his obsession with looksmaxxing, mogging and his use of extremely Gen Z language, like looksmaxxing and mogging, but they’re also pouring fuel on his celebrity. It’s led Clavicular, 20, to see major surges in followers on his Instagram and TikTok accounts, and it’s nigh on impossible to spend more than a minute on Twitter/X without seeing clips from his livestreams on Kick.
Clavicular found fame after making content about extreme self improvement, known as looksmaxxing. He claims to have taken steroids since he was 14, purposefully smashes his cheekbones to heighten them and uses crystal meth to hollow out his cheeks.
The creator, whose real name is Braden Peters, also pushes a nihilistic belief system, known as the black pill, that thinks physical appearances are all that matter. He’s also deeply misogynostic, uses the n word and is a frequent troll.
If all of that wasn’t bad enough he sells his looksmaxxing methods and punts advice to impressionable young men, hooking them in with videos of the “glow ups” he says his coaching is responsible for.
Clavicular’s rise came at the end of last year after a series of collaborations with manosphere personalities like Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, Adin Ross and Sneako. He was with some of these deeply problematic grifters in January when he went to a Miami nightclub and sang along to Kanye West’s song Heil Hitler.
Then last week Clavicular reached a new level of viral fame when a clip of him standing next to a “frat leader at ASU (Arizona State University)” exploded because the poster claimed that he’d been “brutally frame mogged” as the frat boy was substantially more jacked.
The expression “frame mogged” caught the attention of the tens of millions who saw the post and it sparked a new trend to create posts that jam in as many looksmaxxing phrases as possible.
This was one of my early favourites…
More recently there were some crackers from the wild ride that was Pam Bondi’s appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday…
If you have no idea what any of these words mean, don’t worry I’ve got you. Here’s your guide to looksmaxxing brain rot…
