Sure your product works, but is it fun to play with?
Advice to high school seniors: major in packaging design.
Good morning everyone. Today’s newsletter is about:
Beauty retail, and why drugstore beauty aisles and Sephora are starting to feel like toy stores.
The New York Times Cooking team wants to replicate Hot Ones’ success. Who doesn’t?
We’re entering a New York clubbing renaissance.
Customers are shopping for products they can fidget with.
Hair accessories have increasingly become taste signalers. In 2023, I interviewed Alec Ginsberg, the COO of West Village pharmacy C.O. Bigelow, about the pharmacy’s explosive headband sales (5x the year prior!!!) after a few viral TikToks. The selling point of these videos was that Carolyn Bessette used to buy her signature headbands there. This morning, I texted Ginsberg to see what’s changed since that conversation:
I often revisit
’s first newsletter, in which she tracked the prevalence of the claw clip over the course of a summer. I was on a shoot last week and I saw a stylist on set wearing her hair up in a twist, held in place by two Crown Affair clips, and I’ve started copying the method myself. According to Moda Operandi’s site, they’re almost sold out of Miu Miu’s $420 hair clips. I’ve also been seeing colorful claw clips attached to Balenciaga bags, scattered around people’s desks, and included as an essential step in Get Ready with Me videos.
This is all to say that, Emi Jay, a hair accessories brand that has been around for almost two decades, announced this morning that they’re entering Sephora. This is not the first hair accessory brand to be sold at Sephora, but it’s one of the few brands in the category that will be both online and in-store.
I really like that last line of Alec’s text: “It’s another toy for the customer to play with and an experience they can’t have at home.” We see that playful, toy-like creativity with rhode’s phone case and Isamaya’s cheeky syringe-shaped lip gloss applicator and Sidia’s recent solid perfume launch — we’re betting on the products not only working, but also keeping us entertained as something to fidget with. I think this move by Sephora is a signal that there’s probably a new haircare accessory brand (or several) that we will get introduced to this year.
Almost 1,000 of you have responded to Feed Me’s relationship survey. We’ll be diving into those answers later this week, but I wanted to tease some standout results in case you need a Monday morning laugh at your desk. There’s a bit of everything,
The bizarre date story:
“My date was taking me to a movie, however we didn't go in the front door, we went up some back stairs, and when we got to the top he found? a crow bar, and proceeded to jam open the door, I was stunned! When he asked if I wanted popcorn I declined — (I really didn't want to know what he would do for that corn). He laughed and said, "bet you never broke into a movie theatre, right?" That answer was a never, and I got home safely.”
The surprising statistic: 10% of my readers never have sex, that’s higher than I expected.
Post-affair catharsis gone wrong:
“Not my story personally— had a coworker find out his wife cheated. Went to burn wedding photos and burned a hard drive full of hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto. Gone for good.”
And we have to make a drinking game out of the wedding responses: Several people are insistent on renting out Balthazar or The Odeon, where the minimum spend starts off at $150k. One person doesn’t regret her wedding debt, “Our wedding was SO expensive. It’s not hyperbole to say it set us back from buying an apartment by 3 years. That said, 10/10, would totally recommend and do again.”
14 brave adults came forward and told New York magazine about how their parents financially dominate them.
Last week, The New York Times Cooking team celebrated one million subscribers on YouTube. This week, they’re going full Hollywood on us. The team is hiring a talent booker and video producer to work on videos, “with high-profile celebrity guests for Cooking, YouTube and other emerging platforms.” This feels like a super intentional pivot to match the cultural relevance of a show like Hot Ones, which has turned into the most coveted real estate for celebrity press tours — the show has generated countless viral, unscripted moments which is refreshing in the wider landscape of media trained late-night shows. Yeah, I want to watch the cast of White Lotus S3 make Thai food in the NYT kitchen. No, I don’t think anyone is going to be able to recreate the lightening in a bottle that was the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen. A friend who works in media reminded me this morning that the Cooking subscription business is clearly a success, so now they’re under pressure to grow more revenue… so the team will probably lean into advertising-based video plays featuring celebrities to grow another piece of the pie.
Get this heroic Tribeca golden retriever his own movie series.
On Friday I went dancing until 3am. And you probably would too if your business was in The New York Times. It went like this: Brass → Hillstone → Borgo → The Twenty Two → Acme → Jean’s. I haven’t had a night like this (in New York) in years. I have a lot of hope for New York’s club scene. As I reported last week, David Lynch-designed night club Silencio is moving down from 57th St. to below 14th St. I also learned that the Ella Funt team is finishing up their multi-million dollar three-story nightclub project (as shown in the photo below, some people have been partying in their basement for years). I saw the investor deck for the club/restaurant/theater, and it’s making a big push towards the idea that, “After two long years of sweatpants and socializing through screens people want to dress up, be seen and really experience life in 3D.” Last piece of intel that fits into this topic is that the Golden Age Hospitality Group (Le Dive, Acme, Elvis) is opening a few new places this year including an “Italian bar.”
We’re finally getting a replacement to tacky Assouline and Fashion Label coffee table books provided by… a fashion label. Ottessa Moshfegh, author of the hit book ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ partnered with Prada for their Spring/Summer 25 Runway. It’s titled ‘Ten Protagonists’, and features Carey Mulligan wearing ten different looks, each of which Moshfegh wrote a story about. I like this, and her voice is great for this kind of partnership. Feed Me doesn’t usually cover NYFW, but I’m betting on this book being featured on 95% of this week’s recap carousels on Instagram. It does look pretty, but it’s kind of lame that Ottessa’s name is printed in a smaller font than the Prada logo…
A sex-crazed poker star and a Supreme Court lawyer make for a perfect Air Mail story this morning. Speaking of which, I’m going to Vegas in two weeks if anyone has suggestions.
Keep running that meme page, and maybe you too will get a collab collection with Zara.
Kendrick Lamar’s bootcut jeans had a moment. Serena Williams crip walked. Samuel L Jackson wore a custom bode Uncle Sam look, sneakerheads raced to identify Kendrick’s sneakers, and Tom Brady wore a $740k Jacob & Co. watch. Speaking of Tom, I don’t think his face is capable of displaying emotion, probably due to the Botox and possibly Ozempic (it doesn't help that his ex-wife, Gisele Bundchen, just had a baby with her jiu-jitsu instructor). We discussed all this in the Feed Me chat yesterday.
📱 Reminder that the Feed Me Tip Hotline is open for (anonymous) texts and voicemails: (646) 494-3916 📱
Great article in NYMag for someone like me who writes and thinks a lot about wealth among generations. A lot of wincing as i read it.
I guess I can freely admit here that I am a Vegas Adult the way other people are Disney Adults (but without the crying when they see the castle) so here are my opinions:
1)97% of the time we stay in the Wynn Tower Suites. This is less important this time of the year because you won't be going to the pool but in the summer it is crucial because the private Tower Suites pool is substantially better than the regular hotel pool. I do want to try the Fountainbleu this summer, though.
2)Delilah remains a very hard reservation that is worth it. The room is beautiful and the food is pretty good. My favorite is the caesar that comes as little individual endive leaves so you can share. Plus the cocktails are a lot of fun.
3)My favorite places for dinner are Sinatra, Bardot, Milos and Carbone but you have 2 out of 4 f those in NY so...not super relevant for you. Sinatra is great, though. We also swapped out our usual steak night at SW for Don's Prime last time and highly enjoyed it. Bardot at Aria has a very good happy hour and so does STK at Cosmopolitan. Also at Cosmopolitan is a hidden bar called the Ski Lodge that is...80s ski lodge themed and is pretty fun for about two drinks.
4)I highly recommend getting a car from the airport. The cab and uber lines can be obscene and black car service gets a special parking zone right outside the baggage claim doors. I use Kaptyn but there's plenty of options.
5)My favorite spas are the Encore spa (the Wynn spa is landlocked due to the plumbing set up and is much smaller and has less amenities than the one on the Encore side) and the Qua Spa at Caesars. Fountainbleu spa looks really great, too, and would be worth checking out.
6)I was going to tell you to try to go to the "secret" James Turrell installation above the Louis Vuitton at Crystals but it closed a few years ago, sadly. That was a lot of fun and then it spits you out, totally disoriented, right onto the small leather goods floor at LV and if you're me you will find yourself buying a pink epi wallet you don't need but really love.
7)clubs - i have no idea. We went to Tao Beach this past summer and it was 118 that day and I thought I was going to gently roast to death. I am not cut out for day clubs or for night clubs at this point. I mostly just float from bar to bar.