Hello to friends old and new.

Can you believe we only have 4 months left in 2026? I have no real proof of this, but I feel like the rest of this year is going to be crazy. Between bonds tanking, Nike stock at a 12 year low, Robotic centaurs — who knows what’s in store.

Here’s what is in today’s issue:

This is a sneak peek into an upcoming video that talks about this moment in time as an inflection point — specifically with society’s relationship to power (and really lack thereof).

I recently watched a pretty insane crossover interview with Theo Von and Professor Jiang. It’s overall a bit doomer, but one piece that stuck out to me was Professor Jiang’s comment on how to respond to what seems like a barrage of horrible world events — which was more agency — and framed another way: resistance.

We’re starting to see more acts of resistance in our culture. From “adversarial fashion” to the destruction of Flock Safety Cameras — small groups of people are pushing back against these seemingly immovable forces: politics, AI, climate, housing, banks.

While anti-surveillance products are the most visible version of “fashion as resistance”, I believe we’ll see “resistancewear” show up in other areas as well, namely responding to climate change via “cooling tech” and “anti-heat” fashion.

This is an area I’m watching because while it feels apolitical and benign, it’s revealing of how everyday people respond to policy and power.

I’m coming from the consumer angle because it’s most visible, but I’m confident the most effective forms of this kind of resistancewear will appear in the shadows.

Some of the brands I cover in the future episode are:

This is the “Net-a-Porter” for kids (and now tweens). I find kids and especially infant luxury fashion and retail especially interesting because how quickly kids grow out of clothes. Spending $665 on a dress a child will wear a handful of times? Maybe that is real luxury. When I see companies like this popup (and start to scale), it suggests to me that we’ve not even scratched the surface of consumer demand. As certain verticals and categories decline, that money doesn’t stop being spent, it gets redirected. In addition to kid-friendly luxury, I also think we’ll see luxury pet brands pop up.

Nerdmaxxing? It’s interesting how political fashion really is. As China has cracked down on people posting outlandish and extreme luxury lifestyle content, the wealthy are looking for more surreptitious ways to signal their money. Apparently it’s by cosplaying “intelligence”? Maybe it’s more like librarian-maxxing.

I loved this essay by Ray Masaki on why Japanese chip brand, Calbee, had to remove the color from the packaging and really how design is geopolitical. Fascinating story.

This week, a friend of mine asked me for local, Korean-American musicians. I was stumped. I really couldn’t think of many. In a moment of meta-cognition, I realized how insane it is that in the age of AI, there’s still no good way for me to discover local artists digitally. The only real way is to go to shows… And maybe for good reason. Spotify. Tiktok. Instagram. Are all helpful, but they don’t scratch the itch in the way I need it to be scratched.

Who’s working on local artist discoverability? or should we leave this one alone?