Last month, clothing brand Universal Standard announced that it would start carrying all of its items in sizes 00 to 40, officially making it the most size-inclusive retailer for women across the world.
Today the Harry Potter franchise once again proved its commercial longevity with the release of a Vans collaboration. The shoe brand, best known for its grunge-y skate sneakers, designed the footwear and apparel collection to represent the Hogwarts houses and various other magical objects from JK Rowling’s beloved fantasy series.
A recent directive from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealed a summer project for soldiers near the country’s border with Mexico: a makeover for Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” border wall.
Pop music, a genre largely known for its easy, upbeat melodies, is becoming increasingly dark. While a surprising number of songs with reaper-friendly lyrics have topped the charts in recent years, lately pop music seems preoccupied with another heavy topic: mental health, and specifically experiences with anxiety and depression.
This post contains spoilers for season 8 episode 6 of Game of Thrones.
Shoe giant Nike is reportedly reworking its sponsorship policies for female athletes, with contract language that protects their pay if they get pregnant. The move, reported by The Wall Street Journal, follows a recent video op-ed in the New York Times by one of Nike’s former sponsored runners, Alysia Montaño, who criticized the company and several of its competitors for penalizing women for getting pregnant.
Game of Thrones was a tough sell when HBO first began developing it a decade ago. Getting the green light on an intense fantasy series was fraught, in no small part because replicating the genre’s more magical elements requires a budget that would make most executives balk. Indeed, GoT is now the most expensive television show in history; each episode in season 8 cost HBO $15 million.
HBO’s Game of Thrones is the biggest show on television, so it’s no surprise that the whole industry is hoping to replicate its success. In fact, 2019 will see a full slate of prestige fantasy epics from traditional networks, as well as Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.
I.M. Pei, the prolific Chinese-born American architect best known for the glass pyramid he designed for the Paris Louvre, has died at 102, per his son’s statement to the New York Times (paywall).
Retail stocks are being hit hard in the US-China trade war, which escalated on Monday after China announced plans to retaliate against the US increasing tariffs on certain Chinese goods to 25%. China plans to implement its own tariff hikes on US imports next month.
Kylie Jenner’s new skincare line, “Kylie Skin,” is set to launch online later this month. The brand is an offshoot of the 21-year-old billionaire‘s Kylie Cosmetics company, and will start by selling six products, all under $30.
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Lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret is “rethinking” its annual fashion show, according to a note sent by L Brands CEO Les Wexner to employees today. The company will focus on creating a “new kind of event” and has found that network television is no longer the “right fit” for its PR extravaganza, which has run on ABC and CBS for nearly 20 years.
Toxic masculinity, but make it makeup. This is the marketing angle for men’s makeup startup “War Paint” (tagline: “Make Up Design By Men, For Men”) seems to be banking on with its brand debut. It officially launched yesterday (May 8) with a video showing a Herculean, tattooed bro showering, à la Old Spice commercial. He then applies concealer before slipping on a skull ring.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, aka the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, debuted their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, today at Windsor Castle. The couple had previously announced that they would be forgoing the traditional royal baby unveiling—a maternity-ward photo opp—and instead introduced him two days after his birth.
Another Met Gala has come and gone. Last night’s affair brought hordes of celebrities to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s flamingo pink carpet. Some of them embraced the event’s “camp” theme, others eschewed it, and many simply wore loud prom dresses and retroactively claimed a camp-y inspiration.
In his 1971 State of the Union address, president Richard Nixon promised to kick off what would soon come to be known as the War on Cancer, asking congress for a $100 million appropriation to launch a campaign for finding a cure. “The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease,” he said. “Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal.”
The annual Met Gala is in full swing at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this year, fashion’s biggest night is all about “camp”—a niche, slippery “sensibility” that most people just pretend to understand.
This pool has closed. You can make your predictions for the final episode of the season, here.
Experience-economy darling Meow Wolf, recently hailed by the New York Times as a sort of Disneyland for the Instagram age (paywall), counts Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin among its key backers.
George R.R. Martin, author of A Game of Thrones and executive producer of the HBO series based on the fantasy novels, wrote in his official blog yesterday that three GoT “successor shows”—he dislikes the term “spinoffs”—are “moving forward nicely.”
Halima Aden, a Somali-American model who has been on the cover of British Vogue and walked New York Fashion Week runways, will be the first to wear a hijab and burkini in Sports Illustrated’s annual Swimsuit Issue.
This post contains spoilers for many seasons and episodes of Game of Thrones.
This pool has closed. You can make your predictions for episode five, here.
