Welcome to Friday Fives, Vol. 292
Every Friday, we highlight five things we have on our radar that we think should be on yours, too.
This week, we’re shopping our way through an album release, going eco for designer items, sipping on the concerns of microplastics, setting sail on a new Clippers logo design, and toting a new L.L. Bean bag trend.
01. Etsy Taps Into a Deeper Well
The once glitter-and-glitz cowgirl Kacey Musgraves is trading in the lasso and cowboy boots for the more rustic, field-roaming, bread-making styles and sounds of “cottagecore.” Teaming up with Etsy, Musgraves created a shoppable mood board on the platform to promote her upcoming third album, “Deeper Well.” The items are meant to represent the creative process of making the album, which apparently included a “Wooden Cardinal Whistle” and a “233-year-old San Francisco Sourdough Starter.” The idea is to allow fans to feel more intimately connected to the musician through tangible objects. What better way to do that than artisan whistles and, of course, bread.
02. Circling Back to Designer Repairs
What’s trending in fashion right now? Sustainability. Or, as retail circles call it, “circularity.” Designer bag strap broke? Don’t throw it out! Bring it in for repairs. Luxury brands, like Loewe, are pioneering physical repair spaces that serve the purpose of product longevity. While repair services for designer brands are no new feat, the creation of physical stores with the sole purpose of re-stitching, replacing handles, and offering custom recrafts is, and emphasizes a certain eco-friendly mindset to customers. Yet, with unsold inventory remaining one of the world’s top polluters, how large does the circularity initiative have to be to make a big enough impact?
03. The Macro Problem of Microplastics
Think of your average water bottle. You’re probably imagining labels depicting lush forests and bright blue lakes. But the reality may look a bit more contaminated. In fact, researchers from Columbia University found that a normal bottle of water carries about 10 to 100 times more plastic particles than previously thought. So why aren’t producers calling this out on labels? Ask the profit-minded scientists. While some say the exact concerns of toxicity are unknown, there’s also an estimated tens of millions of bits of plastic per liter of bottled water. This, unfortunately, has us considering investing in the viral (possibly lead-laden?) Stanley.
04. A New Team Look Sets Sail
All aboard the Clippers redesign ship! The Los Angeles team is starting off the 2024–2025 season at the Intuit Dome with new, yet somewhat familiar, “drip.” The team’s logo, uniforms, and merchandise got a big makeover that combined the team’s iconic maritime history with its current state, and its future. Utilizing a quite-nautical color palette of navy blue, Pacific blue, and ember red, the logo depicts a compass and oncoming ship. The team’s president of business operations made clear that this redesign fully embraced the feedback and critiques of the Clippers nation to create something that both the team and fans would be proud of. The response has been a big difference from that of the recent Fanatics-manufacturer redesign of MLB jerseys, which struck out big time.
05. Boat and Tote and a Fraction of the Banknote
Preppy is taking a turn thanks to growing interest in the L.L. Bean “Boat and Tote,” a durable, fairly-affordable bag slung over the shoulders of celebs like “Goop” queen Gwyneth Paltrow and indie-darling Chloë Sevigny. The 80-year-old bag is the “it girl” when it comes to L.L. Bean products, becoming a beacon of ironic chicness in opposition to “Emily Mariko’s $120 tote and other bags of status-symbol note. Its personal, intimate touches, like a card that shares who hand-sewed your very bag, are what differentiate it from “preppycore” staples. The bag was made even more popular in recent years by the “Ironic Boat and Tote” trend, which includes monogramming your bag with unhinged words or topical lingo. This tote definitely has the ability to reign supreme over all other amazing, barely-used totes overflowing in your closet.
