CATCHING FIRE: Nepo baby brands, the song of the summer and AI toxicity

Do keep up!

Hello! Has summer started where you are? We had hailstones in London this week. Thankfully there’s guaranteed heat in today’s letter where we‘re taking the temperature of:

• The rise of nepo baby beauty brands

• Gen A’s spending power

• The red flats queen’s next move

• Hypebeast grocery stores

• Gen Z’s swing away from Trump

• The new tech upending marriages

• A right wing firebrand’s flop era

• An unlikely fashionista shilling for fast fashion

• The 2026 update on the Jet2 holidays song

• The rise of the house manager

• Women in SPAM

Paid subscribers get the lot, free subscribers get a preview. Before we jump in, some thoughts on one of the few issues that nearly all of us can agree on…

AI hate goes mainstream

If celebrities and public figures had not yet got the memo that carrying water for the AI industry was the quickest way to taint their reputations then surely they heard it loud and clear in the last few days.

In the run up to the week when AI became officially toxic, figures like Reese Witherspoon and Mel Robbins had already felt the wrath of those opposed to AI because of its impacts on the environment, creative industries, jobs and our brains. Yet that didn’t stop two entrepreneurs - #GirlBoss author Sophia Amoruso and August founder Nadya Okamoto - from pushing weirdly similar posts about how AI was changing how they work.

Okamoto appears to have deleted the post since she was hit with criticism that promoting AI cut against her sustainable credentials. Amoruso on the other hand read feedback like this and decided to double down.