Emilia Patrick
@milliepatrick
Emilia Patrick
In 2024 and into 2025, bag charms entered the zeitgeist and fast became a handbag staple. In 2025, people took things up a notch, fastening Labubus
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Personalisation signals 2023-2026
As superfandom balloons in 2026, there’s opportunity for these moments to help build up the year’s big moments of cultural spectacle.
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As uncertain times persist, technology accelerates and parasocial relationships deepen, superfandom will continue to soar in 2026.
“Merch is having a moment, and it’s bigger, broader and more culturally potent than ever,”
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Merch’s resurgence
Though nobody’s asking to go and chase Pokémon around the city in 2026, there are lessons to be learned about the value of big, flashy moments for cultivating communal experiences. “Fashion can learn from 2016’s embrace of spectacle as a uniting force,” Cummins says.
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culture and Consumer - brand//brand-consumer
2016 > 2026
We’re listening in on drama and tracking emerging storylines, but that’s all secondary to the larger mission at hand. We’re making a scene . We’re creating a new world where, together, we can belong.
Patrick Kho • Stop Looking for “Community”; Start Searching for a “Scene”
maybe ‘looking’ for community isn’t the right response to the belonging crisis - we should be making a ‘scene’ together
Scenes are extended universes. They are localized hotspots of activity that aggregate loose networks of people. Scenes can be a subculture, a network of artists and creatives in a city, but they can also describe interconnected religious youth groups, university student life, an industry with a surplus of networking events, or your extremely... See more
Patrick Kho • Stop Looking for “Community”; Start Searching for a “Scene”
Scene > community
Research as a form of pattern recognition