TR.BIZ: 1.22.2026

From an Olympic preview to Vinted launching in the USA, this is your late-mid-week check-in 💫

Welcome to The Trend Report: Business Edition™, a midweek look at top stories, trends, and more of what’s happening online and off by Kyle of The Trend Report™. Today, we’re digging into the Winter Olympics, Korean television shows, Club Chalamet’s pivot, and Vinted launching in the NYC.

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🎪 Eventful: NYC, LET’S GOOOO

Two quick things, if you’re in NYC! Tonight I’m doing a meet-up at Bearded Lady in Brooklyn — RSVP here for it! — and next Tuesday we’re doing another live 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 podcast recording featuring Cosmopolitan and Seventeen editor-in-chief Willa Bennett, which you can RSVP for here. See you then/there/etc.! And hope the snow doesn’t mess any of this up!! (Missed Tuesday’s recording with Nikita Walia? Listen and watch the episode, on Spotify and YouTube.)

👀 Trend Watchers: 2026 Winter Olympics things to watch

We are fifteen days away from the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics and it feels like a decided calm before the storm as there…isn’t a whole lotta buzz around the games just yet, likely as the Super Bowl is sucking up all the sporting energy. That said, this is going to be a major moment and Olivia Choi and I wanted to share a few things we’re looking out for.

• KRF: The final hurrah for Heated Rivalry, as the show’s bubble has nearly burst as it relates to Hollywood but not as far as it relates to fandom. (More on that in a moment!) While ice hockey is always a hit for winter games, we can anticipate a one-two punch of “boyquarium” conversations rising anew and Connor and Hudson having a breakout moment sponsored by a brand. Who will it be and what will they be pushing? Might it be another Italian brand, given Dsquared2’s work with Hudson? Or Lululemon as they’re outfitting the Canada team? Unsure, but the hockey space is most definitely where we will find the breakout sexy Olympian these Olympic games.

• OLIVIA: The new sport of ski mountaineering (or “skimo”) premieres this Olympics, which honestly looks like one of the most exhausting sports on the schedule. It is a frantic mix of sprinting uphill and skiing downhill, so expect a lot of chaos and adrenaline-rushed strategy in the sprint events — and people imitating it on TikTok.

• KRF: The Winter Olympics falls between two fashion weeks in Milan, as men’s fashion week just wrapped and the games conclude two days before Milan Fashion Week A/W 2026 begins. I would not be surprised if there was a major breakout or focus on the Italian brands flexing their craft muscles in an attempt to cover up the wider “Made in Italy” worker abuse scandals of the past year. Armani is making a claim for the title as they already have rolled out a series of immersive initiatives in the city which is tied to their outfitting the Italian team. However, in perusing the larger Olympic swag world and largely finding polyester stuff made in Bangladesh, it’s fairly obvious the machine that is the Olympics didn’t think this through. But who will? I expect this to be a narrative throughout the competition.

• OLIVIA: The biggest storyline for Team USA is definitely the return of Alpine legends, with Lindsey Vonn coming out of retirement to race alongside Mikaela Shiffrin. Can 41-year-old Vonn manage to secure the title of “oldest Alpine skier to win a medal”? Can Mikaela Shiffrin redeem her 16th-place finish at the 2024-25 Alpine Ski World Cup? Everyone is watching to see if these two legends can manage to share the podium one last time.

• KRF: Here’s who I have my eyes on as far as breakout athletes: US figure skater Alyssa Liu is most obvious, who I first noticed after Cris did some fangirling about her very alt-Y2K vibes and is most def going to land a few brand deals; China freestyle skier Eileen Gu is already buzzy (Ahem, Vogue and InStyle.) and seems poised to have a Western moment; Jamaica’s alpine skiing triplets Helaina, Henri IV, and Henniyah Rivers already are getting some family feel good buzz which will def tie into the return of the Jamaican bobsled team; Georgia figures skating duo Luka Berulava and Anastasia Metelkina could storm the competition given their winning the EU’s figure skating championship — a first for Georgia — following a big win last year in China (all of which is aided by Luka’s adorable tooth gap which people will buzz about); I cannot quite explain why but I feel like US bobsled dude Ryan Rager will have a MAGA breakout given his underdog story and Christly bio; US figure skater and “quad god” Ilia Malinin will have a big culture crossover given his athletic abilities and his cosplay style.

👠 Aesthetically Pleasing: Vinted lands in the USA

I got some intel this week that I thought was interesting in that I hadn’t heard anyone talking about it: EU super resale platform Vinted has come to the USA, with a recent launch in New York pitching the need for resale via a social stunt with artist Ian Padgham. For the unfamiliar, Vinted is a hugely popular digital thrift store with an $8.7B valuation. It’s the top clothing sales app in France too! While the US has depop and Real Real and ebay and Vestaire Collective and many other resale apps and services, Vinted seems to have cracked the code as far as making digital retail resale easy while expanding beyond clothes. The launch of the brand in the city is specifically playing into the notion that New Yorkers having limited space, where cluttered closets and unworn clothes make the matter worse (a la: “56% of New Yorkers say they don’t have enough closet space” and “21% have $500+ in unworn clothes”). A solution? Selling secondhand via Vinted, which one would assume could and would take off in the city and spread nationally as economic stresses have people getting creative with how to make money and spend less. Stay tuned on how this picks up but I’d place my bets on things going quite well, given the brand’s international success.

🤩 Hollyweird Insider: What people are watching in Korea

KRF NOTE: Olivia Choi mentioned a few shows were causing a stir in South Korea — and I thought that would be good to know, considering how K-dramas and Kpop have the world in a chokehold. Might these be the next crossover shows? You tell us, but I’d def put my money on the food show.

As Hallyu expands its influence to Western Hemisphere, why not take a glance at what shows Korea has been up to recently? Let’s look at three that are particularly resonant right now —