CATCHING FIRE: World Cup WAGs, Sophie Cunningham and Taylor Swift wedding discourse
Do keep up!
Hello! Happy 250th to my American readers, and happy Taylor and Travis wedding weekend to those who celebrate. I’m locked in and poring over every single detail and hot take. More on that later.
In today’s letter we’re taking the temperature of:
The new generation of World Cup WAGs
Gen Alpha’s mental health crisis
Meta Glasses backlash
The air con culture war
The Noah Kahan poop scandal
The song of the summer
Gen Z’s problem with purpose
The support for social media bans for teens
French girls versus Clavicular
Paid subscribers get the full debrief, free subscribers get a preview. Let’s jump in…
So hot right now
World Cup WAGs… It was 20 years ago when British tabloids first coined the term WAGs to refer to the wives and girlfriends of the England team who had joined their footballer partners in Germany for the World Cup. The papers were keener than usual to cover the women as in amongst them were Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham and Cheryl Cole, a member of Girls Aloud when the band was at the peak of its pop powers.
The coverage was sneery at best and deeply problematic at worst, but readers lapped it up. Fast forward twenty years and the concept is no longer limited to football. Just the other week we were talking about Jordyn Woods and her lucky bag that was credited with helping the Knicks win the NBA Championship. Paige Lorenze, the soon-to-be-bride of Tommy Paul, is one of tennis’ most well known faces after her star turn in Netflix’s Point Break and Alexandra Leclerc, the wife of Ferrari driver Charles, has her own set of fans.
Instagram and TikTok allow modern day WAGs to tell their own stories, and while they aren’t a monolith, the ones with the biggest followings tend to follow the same playbook. Their lavish lifestyles are showcased and, nearly always, their most popular posts are the ones that reveal their game day fits. Look at enough of their accounts and you’ll notice a fashion formula. Official shirts and uniforms are bedazzled or styled into crop tops, custom looks are made in team colours and many have the fashion designer Antonia Bronze on speed dial so they can get their hands on one of her uber-popular bespoke moto jackets with their partner’s name on the back.
For a WAG there’s no bigger stage than the World Cup and many of them have seen their social stock soar since the competition began. I’ve been tracking the most high profile partners, and after crunching the numbers can tell you exactly who’s blowing up. Using the percentage of followers gained in the last two weeks, here’s your ranked list of the top ten WAGs winning this year’s World Cup.
1. Isabel Haugseng Johansen
Instagram followers: 454k, up 100 per cent
