The entire world is discussing Matt Shumer's essay "Something Big Is Happening" — apparently 50 million people have read it. If you also read it and it made you feel not at ease, you're not alone.

And despite the somewhat unsettling outlook on an individual level, there's something exciting about watching AI develop from a somewhat useless assistant into an instance with its own judgment, that is knowing what's right before you can explain why. If AI is developing real aesthetic judgment — not just pattern-matching — then the society might need to rethink what makes human creativity valuable. For now, I think the only thing we can do is take Shumer seriously, follow his advice and pay attention.

Caught my eye

Giorgio Armani designed the costumes for the 2026 Opening Ballet at the Vienna Opera Ball — one of his final creations.

Trends — what’s bubbling underneath the headlines

• Erewhon is now doing lip flips and brow lifts. Erewhon the LA grocery chain — which has somehow become a cultural signal for a certain type of wellness-forward consumer — is partnering with Ject, a med spa. 

  I find this interesting because Erewhon has basically become the platform for launching wellness-adjacent brands to a very specific demographic. Med spa partnerships are a logical extension of that. If you're already spending $20 on an adaptogenic smoothie, you're probably also the person dropping $400 on a lip flip. Ject is hosting a week of community events in LA including a "Hype Girl Walk" featuring matcha and ear seeding, which is very much the vibe.

• If you're a fashion brand still optimizing for Instagram, this might be your wake-up call. Shopping-related searches on generative AI platforms grew 4,700% between 2024 and 2025, OpenAI just launched Instant Checkout in ChatGPT with Etsy and over a million Shopify merchants — Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, Vuori. Walmart and Target have similar deals. Analysts believe 2026 will be an "inflection point" for agentic AI.

  Interestingly: around 95% of searches on AI fashion platform Daydream don't include brand names. People aren't typing "show me the red Lemaire jacket" — they're typing "I need a cool jacket that'll make me look chic." If the AI doesn't put your brand on its shortlist, you don't exist. This has kicked off a race for "generative engine optimization" (GEO) — essentially, creating content for bots instead of humans. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the brands who figure out how to encode their storytelling into structured, machine-readable data will win this next era. The ones who don't will simply become irrelevant to an entire generation of shoppers who never learned to scroll through a list of links.

• Starbucks is getting into fashion. The coffee chain is providing financial support to five emerging designers — Area, Collina Strada, Eckhaus Latta, Sergio Hudson, and Zankov — to show their fall 2026 collections at New York Fashion Week. Each designer will create coffee "sleeves" for Starbucks, with more limited-edition merch collaborations to come.

  This is part of the company's "Back to Starbucks" turnaround strategy — and it's not their first fashion play. Last September, Zac Posen and stylist Erin Walsh designed a couture gown in Starbucks' signature Siren green for NYFW.

  Starbucks wants to be a lifestyle brand, not just a coffee chain. And fashion week sponsorships are a faster route to cultural cachet than another pumpkin spice latte.

Business moves, big numbers & “wait, what?”

• Cardi B is launching a hair brand. Grow-Good Beauty drops this spring as part of her joint venture with Revolve — three years in the making.

  If you've followed Cardi online, this checks out. She's been posting wash days, hair growth updates, and DIY hair masks for years. The avocado-mayo concoctions. The castor oil. The onion water.

  The brand pitch, per her teaser: "We want b*tches hair to grow." She enters an increasingly crowded celebrity haircare space — Beyoncé's Cécred, Tracee Ellis Ross's Pattern, Rihanna's Fenty Hair, Blake Lively's Blake Brown. But Cardi's spent years building the receipts in public, which is more than most celebrity founders can say.

• Hermes keeps winning. Q4 sales grew 9.8% organically. Leather goods up 14.6%. Americas up 12.1%. Operating margin: 41%.

  The interesting bit from Axel Dumas: "The appetite for spending on luxury items has got nothing to do with GDP but rather has a lot to do with the stock exchange". Apparently, Hermès' customer isn't checking economic indicators, they're checking their portfolio. Hermès' ultra-high-end positioning has insulated it from headwinds hitting aspirational brands.

• Kering keeps losing. Kering shares surged nearly 14% this week—their biggest jump in nearly two decades thanks to "De Meo effect." Despite reporting a 10th consecutive quarterly sales slide for Gucci, the numbers were slightly "less bad" than feared, coming in at a 10% decline versus the 12% analysts had braced for.

  The math shows a company being lean-manufactured into a comeback. Under the former Renault boss, Kering slashed debt by €2.5 billion, shut down 75 underperforming boutiques, and sold its beauty division to L’Oréal for €4 billion. De Meo is betting everything on a return to "brand desirability," signaling that the era of over-expansion and price-hike bonanzas is over. I’ll be watching the April 16 Capital Markets Day for the full roadmap, but for now, the market is rewarding the transparency of a leader who admits the house was "on its knees" but is finally standing back up.

Wish I were there - pop-ups,  collabs, etc.

Pencil in, book the ticket, or just follow on social media — choose your option and let’s discuss afterwards!

• 19.02.26 | Paris - Bonhams Chanel: A private collection auction

• 19.02.-21.02.26 | Paris - Gaudi Collection exhibition

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