Collab City 🤝

AI goes shoppable, Gap x Sandy Liang, Crown Affair + a clean girl goes couture

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Some Housekeeping

It’s my favorite time of year in beauty!! When a lot of free money starts rolling around 💰👀

Here are some upcoming deadlines for October with links inside the Slutty Founder Grant Database (free download).

Sephora Accelerate will roll around soon—here for you when that day comes…

It is Collab CITY on my social feeds!

There’s something happening where brands seem to need each other more than they used to. Churning things out and leveraging their way to the top through constant collaboration and the sheer volume of “moments” has become critical to avoiding Chapter 11, have them tell it.

To me this all of this movement suggests economic survival brought on by the attention economy more than it does creative exercise. These brands can’t possibly think that consumers expect constant newness more than we actually do.

In a world where the success of a marketing campaign has become the marketing itself, I will say, this has led to some really insightful collaboration as of late.

My Latest

• Rhode’s Peptide Eye Patches are a little late and no one’s saying it. I don’t understand how a brand that has found a way to merchify every little thing has taken so long to produce such an economically feasible SKU. Topicals has been to the club, the Caribbean, and back in bed by now. Cute entry point to the Rhode brand, but just late.

• Speaking of Rhode, I’ve learned our guy Ron Robinson is also the formulator behind Yes Day, the teen brand founded by 13-year old Coco Granderson and supported by her mom Danielle. Covering tween brands was not on my 2025 bingo card. At least we know the formulation is going to be good.

  Not that I’m a t(w)een, but I actually think this brand is positioned more strongly than Sincerely Your’s, although the funding and distribution contrast will guarantee a different kind of success picture.

• Crown Affair is partnering with Hill House. Chic, although we don’t yet know what’s inside the bags. It arrives Oct. 9th.

  

• I love this Iconic Never Gets Old campaign from Refy, but I almost wish they found a way to spotlight the age thing without calling it out. If we’re gonna normalize it, normalize it. You know? I can’t wait until beauty is there entirely.

• The Tower28 x Poppi Cranberry Fizz campaign may take the cake for earliest holiday push. It was actually out by mid-September.

  Christmas in July will become a normalized marketing ploy in a few short years, mark my words.

  

  

• ChatGPT is becoming shoppable which means they’re more desperate than ever to justify their $500B valuation. This feature will integrate with Etsy sellers and merchants like Glossier, SKIMS and Vuori. I mean, I guess if there’s capability to find me a good Etsy witch I could be curious. Why was I almost enticed to purchase a permanent money spell the other day until I realized at checkout that the girl works with demons.

  Mark more of my words — they’ll be rolling out ads in a minute. Brand founders will become stressed trying to keep up with yet another marketing channel, the Plus features will become Standard, and there will be a new payment tier on top of that just for you to avoid them.

• Not me getting the Merit x Brandon Maxwell Signature Bag collab mixed up with Brandon Blackwood?! Girl! 😭. I’m thinking Merit really has their ear to the streets! I was a little impressed! Sigh. The collab I wish it was, sadly, was just a misread. Look at me out here just creating my own reality.

  merit

  

  A post shared by @merit

• Saie partnered with Chloe this fashion week. Our clean girl has gone couture.

• In today’s episode of: brands confused about what they should sell to survive, Coperni is making “probiotic athleisure” clothing with their new C+ line.

  Imagine pitching a VC with this concept and your friends asking you about how it went.

• The Gap x Sandy Liang promo cannot be any better. Gap has also announced that they too, are launching their own creator affiliate platform.

gap

A post shared by @gap

• Still not sold on the Alo bag and not even Rosie HW can influence me to think better of it. Sorrows, prayers.

  rosiehw

  

  A post shared by @rosiehw

  This may be too niche, but this is also how I’m learning Rose Inc. is back in business. It was stealthily one of my favorite skinnified makeup brands until their venture partner went bankrupt in 2023 and their products were snatched out of Sephora with no heed! The brand was auctioned off to a Hong-Kong based asset management firm and she has no affiliation with the brand despite its name-stay. I do love her Youtube channel I wish she’d post more.

That’s all for today, Substack is warning me that my post is too long for email.

Ta-ta!

xox,

SF