People are turning their homes into cafes
while coffee shops are hosting raves. Plus the latest Gen Z vs millennials debate
🗞️News
Salone del Mobile 2025 highlights: Loewe’s teapots, Jil Sander’s take on Thonet chairs, and The Row homeware debut.
Coachella is on, but rather than Lady Gaga’s dazzling show, most people are talking about the fact that 60% of ticket holders paid in instalments. Gen Broke < Gen FOMO.
Ilze’s students’ favorite brand, Nude Project, might be heading to Amsterdam—its creative director dropped a not-so-subtle hint on IG.
4chan hacked - mod IDs and IPs allegedly leaked. People worry where users of this controversial fringe site will go... babe, they’re already all over.
Go babygirl! Harris Dickinson will make his directorial debut at Cannes 2025 festival in May, along with Scar-Jo directoral debut (hopefully better than Zoe Krawitz’s) and Wes Anderson’s newest flick
The new season of Black Mirror just dropped on Netflix.
Netflix’s docuseries Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Influencing is going viral for spotlighting the grim reality of child influencers. #SavePiperRockelle
BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs announced to return in May after ~25 years due to the 1999 series’s impact on Gen Z paleo-enthusiasts.
🧂Trends
ChatGPT Action figure doll
Everyone’s using ChatGPT to create action figure toys of themselves. To do this upload a photo to ChatGPT, ask it to make an action figure of the person in the image, specify you want a full-body figure in its original blister pack, and include the line “my figure always has…” with your chosen objects.
Pickle Era: Extended Cut
You’re probably thinking that is this so late 2024 - guys, sometimes mainland Europe is a little slow on taking on the internet trends to the physical marketplace.
We’d gotten pickle flavored chips and pickle flavored ketchup, but now - courtesy of Kesbeke, a pickle company - we’ve got pickle vodka, pickle juice popsicles, and even pickle chocolate in the Netherlands. There’s even an upcoming…*ehm* pickle adult toy.
Gimmicky? Sure. But sour is the new sweet baby - so pucker up.
Flat-to-Table Dining
A cozy underground economy is brewing, with matcha lattes, homemade syrups, and baked goods at "home cafés" popping up on social media - totally just friends hanging out and not unlicensed businesses. Tricky part is finding these… friends.
Of course, some of these are strictly friends only. Others have a more loose definition of friends. No officer, we just like to split the costs of the food - it’s not a business.
It’s not just espresso; think supperclubs in living rooms, brunch in balconies, and lunches on IKEA tables. For Tikkie-loving Dutchies among us? Just another Tuesday.
Coffee shop raves
Meanwhile, coffee spots are hosting morning raves. It started with Della Faile in Antwerp last fall, then we spotted a boogie at Yusu in Amsterdam (great matcha, btw), and Kalve Coffee in Riga hosting a 6am dance sesh. Even Le Pain Quotidien got in on it—also in Antwerp.
reported on similar picture in Montreal, tying it to the sober curious movement.
Direct from China
Chinese manufacturers are going main character on TikTok; showing off their role behind your fave luxury goods with factory tours and “we made your $30,000 bag”.
It’s trade war meets marketing: Gucci, Chanel, Lululemon, Sephora - allegedly all made (mostly) in China, then slapped with Western tags and a 600% markup. Now, the manufacturers are flipping the “Made in China = low quality” script.
Ethical transparency or just elite PR? Either way, the tags may not be telling the full story.
Baggy gym wear
NYT might be stretching it calling it a Gen Z vs. millennial war over tight vs. oversized gym wear (remember the great sock length debate? Always. ALWAYS above the ankle), but the shift to baggy tees and sweatpants aligns with what we’re seeing in the gym too. Brands like Nike and Gymshark are taking stock.
Skipping
On the topic of working out—forget ankle weights. Skipping ropes are the hot new exercise item, popping up in gyms and parks.
📝 Blue Origin’s Space Tourism: Girlboss Edition
Hey, it’s Ashe on the… outro. Yeah. We’re trying something new.
Blue Origin (yes, Bezos’s space company) just did a “girlboss space flight” with its first all-female tourist crew. They’re calling it a historic feminist moment - “an all-female ‘crew’”, but most of the internet disagrees. One aerospace engineer, one NASA-linked entrepreneur - but most the talk about glam in zero gravity.
Technically, they barely visited space - the 10-minute joyride skimmed just above the Kármán line (aka the edge of space, around 100km up).
Apparently ‘real feminism’ is rich women taking selfies in zero gravity, not, y’know, the actual female astronauts. There wasn’t close to this much coverage for Sunita Williams, one of the most experienced spacewalkers, who was stranded in space by all the agencies for over nine months.
Now we’ve got Katy Perry saying her 10-minute rocket ride made her “care more about the environment.” Even Emily Ratajkowski and Olivia Munn are calling out the performative nonsense.
For a sharper take, read Moira Donegan’s piece in The Guardian.
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