CATCHING FIRE: Death pants, cookie stuffing and Hailey Bieber
Do keep up!
Hello! This letter is coming to you days later than I hoped. I moved flats at the end of last week and my life has been in chaos. On the upside Mr Rachel and I love the new gaff and have a very cute stoop…
Away from my domestic dealings we have an awful lot to catch up on, including…
Gen Z’s obsession with CDs they don’t play
The low-rise jeans that sold out in hours
The flood-the-zone album drop trend
Sports’ chokehold on monoculture
Waiting in line lunacy
Stomach bug summer
A nepo baby business scandal
The Zara trousers causing serious injuries
This is a bumper edition so it might be easier to read it online or in app.
Everyone’s talking about
Zara’s death pants… Wide leg trousers from the fast fashion chain Zara are being blamed for multiple injuries as women trip over the voluminous fabric at the ankle.
The £25.99/$45.90 baggy trousers, and the broken bones they’ve apparently caused, have inspired thousands of TikToks, many of them showing doorbell footage of victims face planting as they try to walk in the extra long, swishy pants.
Some woman are even posting “hacks” showing fellow ‘death pant’ owners how to hitch them up to avoid a fall.
Zendaya’s red carpet slay… Even by her own high standards Zendaya, and her long time stylist Law Roach, stole the show during the press tour for The Odyssey.
Forever literal, Roach channelled her role as Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, and draped her in yards of cream fabric. Fashion watchers were already gasping and then she appeared in London in a Schiaparelli couture dress that had been presented at their runway show just hours earlier.
It was a fashion flex that should have been the pinnacle but then days later Zendaya arrived at the final premiere in a breathtaking gown with feathered wings from hot-right-now French brand Matières Fécales (literal translation: Fecal Matter).
As the kids say it was a generational run.
Cookie stuffing… A scandal surrounding Phia, the buzzy fashion recommendations start-up from Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe and her Stanford classmate Sophia Kianni, has taken over feeds in the last week after they were accused of taking credit for sales that they didn’t drive.
A bombshell report from Bloomberg claimed that Phia:
Automatically inserted their affiliate link on purchases they had not initiated, a practice known as “forced clicks” or “cookie stuffing,” resulting in merchants paying them for nothing
Overrode affiliate links from rivals and creators, meaning that they took payouts that should have gone to others
The allegations have drawn outsized attention because Phia had aggressively pursued publicity and attracted millions in funding from such a large number of celebrities and big name VCs that they announced their series A investment round in a poster that parodied a Coachella line-up poster.
So far Phia is not facing legal action but the reputational hit may sink the business anyway.
The Natalie Portman novel… Move over Belle Burden, we’ve got another messy book and this time it’s celebrity shaped.
Life of M is a “dark” and unflattering novel that is reportedly about the actor Natalie Portman. Unherd revealed that the book is written by her (maybe one time) friend, the author Rachel Cusk.
“Chatter in New York literary circles says that Cusk’s upcoming novel, Life of M, is based on Cusk’s relationship with Portman,” wrote Valerie Stivers.
She added: “The novel, which will be published next month, is about a famous actress, M, and a nameless writer-friend’s project to chronicle her. M’s key biographical information is very similar to Portman’s. The actress’s dissatisfaction and betrayal at the finished product, as recorded in the final pages of the book, is also said to be true to life.”
Juicy.
Life of M is out August 25.
Line culture… At least three articles have dropped in the last few weeks that try to make sense of why everyone - and specifically New Yorkers - seem so enthused to wait in a very long queue for whatever is hot right now.
While the stories make various claims my take is that optimisation culture translates into a desire to have ‘the best’ and motivates people to try the thing that must be so good others are prepared to wait for it. FOMO, of course, comes into play and I don’t think we can discount that the friction and tension that is inherent in the wait makes for an engaging content creation opportunity.
The flurry of features made me wonder if people are still queuing up for dot cakes. If you’re anywhere near Butterfield Market in Manhattan please do some boots on the ground journalism and let me know.
If you want to go deeper here’s the links…
It’s Humiliating. It’s Exhilarating. It’s a Line. in Curbed
Why Do We Wait in Those Big Dumb Lines? in Ravenous
The Line Outside Is Almost More Famous Than the Food in Bloomberg
Stomach bug summer… Americans are avoiding lettuce and other fresh produce after a parasitic infection called cyclospora hit record highs. Victims are reporting that the bug causes “explosive diarrhoea,” so that’s nice.
So hot right now
CDs… I’ve told you before about Gen Z’s embrace of analogue formats like vinyl, but now the humble CD is getting in on the nostalgia act. Sales of CDs rose by 16 per cent in the first half of 2026, outpacing vinyl which grew by 2.4 per cent.
The data comes from Luminate who also found that approximately half of Gen Z and Millennial CD buyers do not even own a CD player, and instead they see the discs as covetable collectables.
RELATED The same report found that “39 per cent of the U.S. general population consider themselves content creators” which further proves that the tech lords have convinced so many of us to work for them for free.
Hailey Bieber’s GAP jeans… The patron saint of off duty style finally collaborated with her favourite denim brand to birth The Hailey Jean - and they sold out super-fast.
The demin range (two styles and three washes) has since divided the internet over exactly how to wear them (must be low rise and baggy) and who suits them (peeps with shorter torsos). If they ever restock you can get them in the U.K. for £70 and in the U.S. for $89.95.
Love Island USA… I told you last month that American audiences had fallen hard for the dating reality show, and now that it’s wrapped Peacock have revealed that a tonne of the viewership was driven by Gen Z.
Nearly 50 per cent of watchers were Zoomers which will thrill TV execs who’ve struggled to hook highly marketable young people into network series.
Christopher Nolan… The director’s latest epic production, The Odyssey, is crushing at the box office and winning the culture war.
According to Universal Pictures the A-lister packed film took $264/£196 million in its opening weekend, eclipsing Nolan’s last film Oppenheimer. Shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, fans are doing all they can to watch it on a 70mm IMAX screen. So much so a black market has emerged for sold out tickets. CULTURED reported that a pair of seats at New York’s AMC Lincoln Square were listed on a resale site for $999/£747. I have tried to get my mitts on some in London and even mid-week screenings at 9am are sold out.
Ahead of its release conservative agitators and professional rage baiters, led by Elon Musk, tried to torpedo The Odyssey by griping about the casting of black and trans actors and moaning about historical accuracy. Their cry baby complaints haven’t put even a small dent in consumer demand and led Ryan Broderick of Garbage Day to conclude that it’s yet another example of right wingers losing their grip on the cultural conversation.
Trends, trends and even more trends
Multiple album drops… Bieber released two within weeks, Drake gave us three all at once and now Lana Del Rey says she’s dropping a country album called Stove, AND a companion album Spyda. Flooding the zone is officially IN.
The disturbing rise of masturbation assaults on women… Female shoppers in America are being targeted by men who ejaculate on them, and sometimes film their attacks, according to an alarming report in The Guardian.
Need to know
The World Cup proved that the monoculture is alive and kicking… While many a think piece has posited the end of shared culture, several times a year something unites us. Last year it was the Coldplay couple and this year it’s a football extravaganza that gave us a tonne of great memes and introduced the world to Erling Haaland…
While music and television have fragmented, sport has remained steadfast in being appointment to view and captivating to millions. A record 62.8 million Americans watched the final, and it was a massive pull for Gen Z audiences too.
It’s also become a reliable stage for non sports stars to boost their profile. Justin Bieber got a 240 per cent bump on his streams following his World Cup Final half time performance. And the livestreamer IShowSpeed, who had an all-access pass to the tournament, added nearly four million subscribers to his YouTube channel in the last month following his almost daily programming.
RELATED David Beckham made an estimated $25/£18 million this World Cup… and he never even kicked a ball. The former footballer appeared in commercials for at least 10 different brands including Ninja, Stella Artois, Adidas, Lay’s/Walkers/Pepsi, Home Depot, Lenovo, McDonald’s, Verizon, Bank of America and Major League Soccer, making him unavoidable during the ad breaks.
Fewer young people own homes than we thought… A new measure of home ownership has found that just 22 per cent of under 35 Americans are homeowners, significantly down on the 37 per cent previously cited. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis started tracking share of the adult population who own their home, as opposed to the share of housing where the owner is a resident. Turns out that metric included a load of kids still living at home and those who share with owners.
Some people have so much money they can spend over $50/£37 million on dinosaur bones… A record price for a dinosaur fossil was reached when a T rex skeleton went up for auction at Sothebys. Imagine how big the buyer’s house is if they can fit a dinosaur in it.
This week I’m…
OBSESSED WITH
Why people are so in to The Hamptons. I’ve been twice. Once I stayed in a hotel so maybe I didn’t do it right. The second time I was invited to a friend’s gorgeous home in East Hampton and it rained non-stop for 48 hours. I wasn’t exactly gagging to go back but when I read Ashley Baker’s piece on why she’s happy she left and The Hamptons Chronicle’s report on the Lyme-disease-carrying ticks that plague the bougie neighbourhoods, I’d rather spend my time in sweaty and smelly Manhattan than go out east.
Tom Brady pretending to have beef with Logan Paul for a WWE storyline. Cringe doesn’t cover it.
Victoria Beckham’s indifference to the World Cup
Shakira being 49 years old when she looks like the child of a 49-year-old
Josh Kerr running a mile in 3:42 minutes and smashing the world record that had stood for 27 years
READING
I was a high-flyer. Now, I’m broke and unemployed in The Times (gift link)
Netflix hasn’t had a hit in ages and they’re freaking out about it according to Vulture
$12 water is a thing now, and of course it’s from Erewhon in TMZ
The New York Teen at Home in Curbed
Music influencers are getting paid to promote songs — and they’re not telling you in NPR
Celebrity influencers paid up to £1m to advertise deodorant on Instagram from BBC News
Plot to destroy the press: the real story of Harry’s hacking trial in The Times (gift link)
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highly flammable is produced and written by me, Rachel Richardson
I’m a content creator, commentator and a consultant for hire at Beginning, Middle and End
Say hello at rr@bmend.com
I want to do a whole story on Hamptons haters (like Keith McNally!). It's not for everyone.