You cannot afford the old flip phones and chips for this baby

The life of Barbiemania: How Louis Vuitton launched the TV show Tiktok Sponsorship Is Consuming Our Culture

Creative directors are no longer hired to work for fashion houses if they do not have an effective marketing strategy. “The marketing guys frankly have invaded the companies,” Sidney Toledano, the former chief executive of Dior, said recently. The most high-profile appointment in fashion last year was the rapper and music producer, Dr. Williams, and he was the most creative on the runway. In June, Mr. Williams presented his first men’s wear collection for Louis Vuitton, which, while confident and commercial, lacked “any new shapes, or ways of addressing the body, or thinking about luxury,” as the fashion critic Cathy Horyn put it. For Louis Vuitton, however, the show was an unqualified success: The star-studded spectacle attracted over a billion online views.

The top grossing movie of all time, with over one billion dollars in ticket revenues, was a sensation before it opened. The marketing campaign cost $150 million more than the production budget. (In comparison, marketing across sectors averaged 10.6 percent of company budgets in 2023, according to a major industry survey.) The life of Barbiemania took off, as hundreds of items of pink merchandise were on sale. “It stopped becoming a marketing campaign and took on the quality of a movement,” explained the Warner Bros. president of global marketing, Josh Goldstine.

Source: ‘Barbie,’ ‘Saltburn,’ Vuitton: TikTok Sponsorship Is Consuming Our Culture – The New York Times

How Do We Live? What Happens When You Drop a Baby? Why We End up Rediscovering Old Tech in the Age of 2024

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The photos on my family’s old Canon digital camera are not better than my iPhone, and it’s more cumbersome to use. I dug it out of storage and brought it to a party, snapping pictures of friends and strangers. It wasn’t the same as being a kid taking selfies after school that were never posted to any type of feed. But it was fun to remember and to remind others that there was a time all of this was different, and that I was there.

Every time there’s a renewed interest in — and market for — something previously forgotten and discarded, I think about what we’ll be trying to claw back in 20 years’ time. Our rediscoveries tend to be more about cultural and social signals than the item’s practical utility. What will be the main marker of 2020s tech new generations when they peruse resale sites? Maybe this orange box has cute buttons and a cute name.

Old junk has been valued and sought after before. In fact, Roseberry’s work comes at a time when the Y2K nostalgia hype cycle is in full swing. The trend isn’t just for fashion, either. Young people are buying old digital cameras, drawn to the Myspace digicam aesthetic they didn’t get to live through. In a wonderful TikTok video a person takes two iPods and clips them into her hair. The person is covered in keyboards on a wall. A dress that looks like it was in the early 2000s. I Spy page is just the trend’s natural progression.

The technology that Roseberry grew up with is outdated and difficult to find, moreso than vintage fabrics and adornments.

The baby — and the dress, nicknamed “The Mother” — are part human and part object, rising from the past and haunting the future. Assembled using materials from a pre-iPhone era, the pieces seem to warn of an inhuman robot-powered existence. The tech waste is re contextualized at the same time.

Roseberry, the creative director of French fashion house Schiaparelli, showed the brand’s 2024 couture show in Paris on Monday. Under Roseberry, Schiaparelli shows have become a buzzy event for fashion fans, not just because of the A-list front row filled with celebrity clients, but also for the unforgettable Wearable sculptures that are reposted in each show’s wake. Even those who aren’t into high fashion might know that Lady Gaga wore a Hunger Games-esque ensemble to President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

When normal people think of couture garments — the extravagant custom designs using all but extinct techniques, materials, and craftsmanship — they probably dream of pieces made with luxurious silks, supple leathers, crystals, and tulle. Daniel Roseberry thinks of your old flip phone.