alice smith

We don’t tell stories anymore.

We sell them.

Wrapped in rhythm. Dressed in sincerity. Built for reach.

And if you listen closely enough, you can hear the moan of the algorithm.

Because brands are only as old as the people who direct them. That’s why you’re now seeing a deterioration of people following brands, as opposed to designers and stylists.

So it’s going to be about celebrity?

It’s going to be about visionaries.

Brands are just tools for consumers to describe their personality. If your personality is flat, then you wear obvious things.

Curators slow down the unending scroll and provide their followers with a way of savoring culture, rather than just inhaling it, developing a sense of appreciation.

In the last ten years, pattern recognition has become a cultural activity. You see that on the bad end, like QAnon, and on the more fun end with the pervasiveness of trend forecasting.

Computers can see us as large groups, but they’re glum and only aggregate us to sell us stuff. In reality, the computers give great insight into the power of common identity between groups. No one’s using that. What’s sitting with the computers is a way of seeing new groups, new common identities between people.

“We’re moving away from the need to say, ‘These items put together are an aesthetic,’ and moving towards a more fluid state,” Panzoni says. Instead of “grabbing” an aesthetic as a whole, consumers can take elements and incorporate them into their own style. “This shift is why we haven’t seen a micro-trend pop in a little bit,” she says.