TR.BIZ: 7.15.2025

Your early-mid-week check-in ✨

Welcome to The Trend Report: Business Edition™, a midweek look into top stories, trends, and more of what’s happening online and off from Kyle at The Trend Report™. Today, we’re discussing the new Bieber’s creative connection, ratios making a comeback in politics, and one of the best brand collabs in a very long time.

🤩 Hollyweird Insider: Druski Bieber

So many thoughts on the new Bieber album, not that I will ever listen to it: the “I am a white boy with sauce!” positioning of it all is getting to me. It’s not only extremely insecure straight guy stuff but also is an interesting internet dog whistle: he is a former YouTube breakout who framed the album around collaborating with a YouTuber. Obviously we’re talking about the Druski thing, who made not one, not two, but three appearances on the album as “Bieber’s therapist and/or confidant,” as Pitchfork explains, who jokingly-and-not tells him, “Your skin white, but your soul Black.” Talk about exposing your psyche! This is clearly an effort to buy street cred which he arguably is doing poorly given he (and Druski) making a song based on his cringe meme that butchered AAVE: the internet snake devours its tail.

• What can you do about this? This is like a masc-for-masc situation, a creator-for-creator fondling proving YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers, etc. in the mid-2020s are no longer “creatives” but spokespersons, commercial leaders who drag along specific demos. It’s the “in-house influencer” thing but also that “UGC creators” thing which will get eaten by (Blackface) AI influencers, cutting out humans from the job. From Time to the Democrat establishment to the whole of marketing, creators are tapped for “instant” clout. See the Trump podcast election thing! Bieber’s dropping an album holding Druski’s hands proves how creators are more hype people than “actual product.” Another thing, in these Trump 2.0 times? A rise in white boys “with swag” which means we’re about to witness a mass Chet Hazing, of rich white kids appropriating Blackness for advancement. It’s not just the AI Blackface thing but the viral robots using Black culture for attention too: snake meet tail, etc.

👠 Aesthetically Pleasing: Neo workwear 2025

I sense a new era for workwear that is less Carhartt and more dad in a garage, more Al Bundy: see the viral Kendall Jenner tank top” (and Loewe tank), the re-rise of the flip-flop, and bandanas, as seen on Zoe Kravitz and Gracie Abrams — but also Timothée Chalamet, nibbling Asap’s nachos (and Recho Omondi’s). This new workwear smooshes together dad vibes with Black street culture with grunge’s long tail: it’s very Gen X style expressed by Gen Z. I noticed my king

Max Berlinger

wearing one on Insta and knew that, yes, this is happening — so I asked him about it! “I first considered a bandana last year when I was on a press trip with Haider Ackermann,” Max shared by email. “He wears one over his hair and then will just pull it down around his neck, which is, like, the chicest (he’s the chicest man to exist). It struck me as both stylish in a really self-assured way as well as functional.” Max’s bandana is a fetching green number he got at Front Street General and had it lying around for some time — and it finally clicked to wear it, which he said friends have called very Rosie The Riveter. “It’s been really hot lately and my hair is in a weird in-between awkward length so I just tossed it on after a few days of wearing baseball hat and hitting baseball hat fatigue,” he said. “I think it’s a good look for summer — it fixes any bad hair days (of which there are many in humid New York), and is good if you’re sweaty (again: humid). There’s a slight 90s vibe to it (I think of Keanu and Bruce Springsteen, but also something sort of debonair about it too, and even a little ‘Euro Summer’ vibe.” I can definitely see this, which also gets at something else on the mind that one could argue all these looks get at: the rise in climate-proof styles. Think the above but also parasols and less-is-more wears in impossible heat. Read more from

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🏛️ Politicultural: Ratios are so back lol