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 unpacking fashion week so far, the expanding dramas of Paramount, Apple’s in-person eventizing, and how kids and tween books are being ruined to keep up with contemporary culture.
👠 Aesthetically Pleasing: 2026, the year fashion gave up
The vibes around this September’s fashion month are…not great. Let us count the ways!
The NYFW breakout was the head of the CFDA literally attacking PETA protestors, which was a big tell that corporatized fashion cares more about an exploitative business as usual than considering less harmful approaches (even if it’s “just wool”). The CFDA head, Steven Kolb, has since resigned — and rightfully so! It was a shocking reaction to something PETA has been doing for years and years and years. “Watching Kolb physically restrain protesters…felt dystopian,” Amy Odell said. “Kolb essentially serves as the American fashion industry’s chief diplomat. This wasn’t the even-keeled, media-trained person (who’s worked at the CFDA for 20 years!) whom the industry is used to seeing.” Oof. Talk about a death rattle, given nothing else (Other than Eckhaus Latta and Conner Ives.) broke my noise guard.
LFW fared somewhat better, but represented a different mania: upholding decorum while losing one’s mind, balancing the duality of this moment in fashion. Christopher Kane’s Mulberry debut was the buzziest, asserting a dreamy return for a British classic. Burberry had a similar story thanks to beading and face prints, which showed Daniel Lee hitting his stride. But beyond that? Sprayed breast milk at Di Pesta, “Kelly Osbourne returns to runway and pays homage to her dad on OnlyFans catwalk,” and a robot in a fur coat walking the runway for Tulasi Parmar.
Speaking of! Kicking off MFW was the mess of Vogue World, which should be smothered in its sleep before it does anything else in the future because it was a parade of not-very-good robots “modelling.” This showing was widely condemned, cringed upon in real time by Alessandro Michele and Miuccia Prada. There were embarrassing “runway” performances by humans, which goes to show that robots and celebrities and fashion are becoming an increasingly toxic out-of-touch two-hitter. As I said on Twitter, the affair shows where the media brand and fashion hold their allegiances to — and it’s not people like us. They might as well have let Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos cream on the floor and slow zoomed in on it for forty-five minutes. There’s always next year!
Lastly — and also bad — were the related “collaborations” that dropped. I’m mostly talking about the eye-crossing APC x GAP basic denim chungus link-up, which was rivaled by Law Roach’s Asos “stylist in residence” appointment, which was rivaled by Law Roach’s debut collaboration with Kim Kardashian. (Again, the only bright spot: Eckhaus x J.Crew.) (But even then…eh.)
The theme of the month thus far is who fashion is loyal to: empire and legacy, which is very of the moment in the worst ways possible — meaning it is not of the moment. Not of the people, not accessible, not even luxurious: what is the point again? I’ve rung this alarm for seasons now, but the feeling may be trickling up at least in relationship to NYFW: Vanessa Friedman described the week as “streamlined, if not super exciting,” as Cathryn Horyn spoke from within the month, to say collections have increasingly become “abstractions of ideas that don’t tie to real life.” Sure, many are — and always will be — buzzing about fashion now, but it’s starting to seem like culture has moved on from the territory in the same way it has from Hollywood and tech and social media because the counter-programming designed to exploit you isn’t hitting like it once did. What is fashion, particularly over-priced fashion, to a jaded world? Nothing, it seems, which is only made worse as the industry doesn’t care to see anyone but its richest ranks as human. They’ll even punch you in the face to get their point across too.
📓 NYC Diary: Little creators everywhere
Bobby Aaron Solomon and I spent the past week in Downtown Brooklyn, staying nearby the Ace as we had last week’s event. Which was cute! And more soon, as I’m going to try to be doing things on a monthly basis. We are deep in the throes of looking for an apartment, which has had us all around the city and observing lots of interesting things. A few thoughts!
Ghost kitchens are not new and are certainly global, but brands that try to make ghost kitchens cute are really…icky! Take Wonder, for example, which puts multiple “celebrity” chef restaurants under one roof so you can have Bobby Flay in the same place you have your Marcus Samuelsson. In looking up restaurants on a place like Google or even DoorDash, Wonder isn’t what comes up but the individual concepts, which confuses and flattens cuisines to an algorithmic pulp, turning the cultures food comes from into keywords instead of edible history born of people refining taste for centuries. It’s a very sad summation of life now, where food “isn’t food.” Then again: I’ve been banging that gong for months.
There are little celebrities everywhere, which I’ve heard from friends and am increasingly experiencing — and by this I mean: everyone is a social star. The bartender at the hotel, the person sitting at said bar, the person across the street at the coffee shop, the person working at the coffee shop: all TikTokers and YouTubers with tens of thousands of followers, all people who look vaguely familiar and you don’t know why until you’re two blocks away and remember something they posted a few weeks back. This induces a wooziness, as offline and online blur together, mostly in that everything becomes parasocial. What’s real? What’s not? In a place like NYC, everyone “is someone” which makes the case for all of us to log off and just live in the city.
Building from this, on three separate instances I saw creators with full camera setups creating content. This is a modern trope that I’ve experienced in every city, but the props were united and of-a-kind: each of them had a fancy camera (DSLR type something.) along with a handheld softbox, turning any place or space into a photo shoot. It’s funny that so many photo based creators still exist, none of whom did I think were that fashionable as far as novelty but more as expressions of a decade passed. Our most divinely basic are running around the city feeling very good performing for an internet that no longer exists!
Our apartment search has been plagued by AI “stagings” that ruin apartment, putting us on a game show where we’re trying to figure out what’s AI and what isn’t while trying to understand the actual dimensions of the room because the AI always warps perception by putting in not-to-scale items that make spaces look bigger than they are or generally putting furniture in nonsensical places (like in front of a door, fridge, oven, etc.). Truth no longer matters in real estate and that’s a very bad thing as it wastes everyone’s time!
This was definitely happening in LA, but young people love playing spikeball/roundnet in parks. I get that it’s more contained than volleyball, and much easier to lug around, but damn does it look dorky. And good for them! I can’t hate on people playing games offline in parks. Aspirational, really.
I heard about the Skyrizi ads and they’re starting to infiltrate my life, opening a portal of (American) humor you have to see to believe.
