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stereotypical ideals have long been found not just in advertising, but in commerce at large: For most of American consumer history, makeup brands made few dark shades, and most clothing brands didn’t make any adjustments in their designs for different body sizes, gender presentations, or disabilities, among other things. Hemmed in by limited mall options, women had little choice but to make their best effort to work within whatever physical standards brands set, and brands were free to be as strict with their expectations as they wanted to be.

The internet, and particularly social media, has changed that. Suddenly, the hierarchy of who speaks and to whom in the brand-consumer relationship has shifted beneath the feet of corporate behemoths such as L Brands, and now frustrated women can launch negative mainstream press cycles on their own. For generations, clothing and personal-care marketing could dictate how American women should look without any pretense of kindness. Now, faced with the unfiltered reactions of their customers for the first time, most of those same brands have decided to make nice. Where they could once profit by making women feel worse, the money now is in promising them a way to feel better.

Victoria’s Secret took the old strategy to its logical extreme. It made superstars out of an army of wing-clad Angels, all perfectly thin, busty, and long-legged in the same impossible way. For years, Victoria’s Secret has been the brand equivalent of the stereotypical cool-girls’ table in a high-school cafeteria: hot, unfriendly, and definitely not interested in bolstering your self-worth. And as in a teen movie, the less popular brands took as many cues as possible from the queen bee.

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The right has all the advantages, just as the devil has all the best tunes. Conservatism appeals to our selfishness and fear, our desire and self-interest; they neatly nurture and then harvest the inherent and incubating individualism. I imagine that neurologically the pathway travelled by a fearful or selfish impulse is more expedient and well travelled than the route of the altruistic pang. In simple terms of circuitry I suspect it is easier to connect these selfish inclinations.

This natural, neurological tendency has been overstimulated and acculturated. Materialism and individualism do in moderation make sense.

The luxury business is changing. As consumers have experienced what Bain & Company calls “logo fatigue,” growth for brands including Gucci, Prada and Vuitton has slowed.

The conventional wisdom was that consumers cared about obvious aspirational signifiers like name and price; the new view is that they now care about the less apparent marks of connoisseurship: handwork and craft

“If the 20th century was about manufacturing,” said Michael Burke, the chief executive of Louis Vuitton, “the 21st century will be about intangibles” — concern for preservation, heritage, the environment.

Study: 25% of Americans Say Politics Drove Them to Boycott Brands

Think there's more hoopla about brand boycotts than actual boycotting? Maybe not. A new Ipsos survey found that 25% of Americans said they had stopped using a brand's goods or services in the previous three months because of protests, boycotts or the brand's perceived political leanings.

Socially conscientious consumerism has been on the rise for years," said Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5W Public Relations. "Given the combination of that trend and the current politically charged climate, it's not surprising to see that such a significant number of Americans have changed their shopping habits due to politics."

Surveys of Latinos conducted by the Gallup Organization, NBC News and CNN all show that the party’s brand has been hurt by the language of the 2016 contest. Data from ImpreMedia and Latino Decisions that spans the three years after Mitt Romney’s loss detail the magnitude and depth of the reaction to the 2016 campaign.

In 2012, only 18 percent of Latino voters thought Mr. Romney was “hostile” toward Hispanic voters. By November 2015, the number who thought that had jumped to 45 percent. The largest shift was among those 18 to 35. More than three times as many young Latino respondents think the party is hostile toward them compared with 2012 results (a move to 65 percent from 18 percent in 2012).

After Mr. Romney’s 2012 defeat, the party convened a task force to examine its recent presidential losses. The result was a report on the party’s growth and opportunities among the electorate. In the Growth and Opportunity Project, the task force wrote: “It is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our party. If Hispanic Americans hear that the G.O.P. doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence.”

Forever 21 has been among the quickest and dirtiest participants in the quick and dirty “fast fashion” business that has come to dominate the American apparel market.

Fast fashion is what it sounds like: Global behemoths such as Zara and H&M have built massive, highly efficient supply chains in which low-wage garment workers turn cheap textiles into of-the-moment clothing that’s distributed around the world as quickly as possible and sold for next to nothing.

At Forever 21, a tank top costs as little as $2.90. The brand’s average store has grown to nearly 40,000 square feet—more than 30 percent bigger than the average Best Buy. That’s a lot of cheap tank tops.

The strength of the younger generation is the willingness to see more clearly certain truths that have been hidden and concealed. The courage to step forward. The willingness to be critical of charismatic models and be open to a variety of different people.

The weaknesses of the younger generation, of course, is that they grew up in the most commodified culture in the history of the world. So there's something always very superficial about spectacle in a commodified culture. It's all about what's visible. What is projected. What your image is and so forth

you can find a lot of the young brothers and sisters always talking about what they brand is. I say, I ain't got no god-dang brand. I got a cause. You know what I mean? They put a brand on enslaved Africans when they came here and kept that brand on them. But that language, that market language, is built into the culture. That's the mentality of a spectacle. So you've got to shatter the superficial to get at the substantial.

Two US-based groups, the Center for Global Workers’ Rights (CGWR) and the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), used previously unpublished import databases to calculate that garment factories and suppliers from across the world lost at least $16.2bn in revenue between April and June this year as brands cancelled orders or refused to pay for clothing orders they had placed before the coronavirus outbreak.

This has left suppliers in countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia and Myanmar with little choice but to slim down their operations or close altogether, leaving millions of workers facing reduced hours and unemployment, according to the report.

“In the Covid-19 crisis, this skewed payment system allowed western brands to shore up their financial position by essentially robbing their developing country suppliers,

Nxivm sex-cult founder Keith Raniere faces up to life behind bars Tuesday when he is set to be sentenced in the horrific abuse of scores of young women.

running a twisted secret group out of Albany that sexually, physically and mentally abused followers.

“a massive manipulator, a con man and the crime boss of a cult-like organization involving sex trafficking, child pornography, extortion-compelled abortions, branding, degradation and humiliation,” t

One of the most important realizations she made was that Abercrombie needed to graduate from high school and target a new consumer — the young millennial. Horowitz wanted Abercrombie to be the place to shop for everything you’d throw in a carry-on for an ideal four days away. (You may notice A&F is not selling anything to wear to the office.)

Horowitz also prioritized the unsexy but critical work of just making the clothes nicer. The company invested in better fabrics, zippers and buttons. They expanded sizing; women’s denim now comes in sizes 23-37, extra-short to long.

And when it came to jeans — one of the products Abercrombie was best known for back in the day, and the item that can turn a doubter into a devotee — they went into research and development mode with a focus on fit. For Curve Love, the goal was twofold: eliminate the waist gap in jeans that are snug in the hips, and come up with a fabric with enough stretch to flatter without sacrificing the “design character” that makes jeans feel like denim and not leggings.

The way people post on Twitter is different from the way people post on LinkedIn which is different than how people post Facebook which is different from the way people post on Instagram, no matter how much Facebook keeps telling you to cross-post your IG stories

Some people whose job relies on onlineness (like me) have to refine their voices, their ways of being, across several platforms. But most normal people have found their lane — the medium that fits their message — and have stuck with it.

People post where they feel public speech “belongs.”

. Virtual and human social-media influencers can be equally effective for certain types of posts, the research suggests.

Why would consumers look even somewhat favorably upon virtual influencers that make comments about real products?

The thinking is that virtual influencers can be fun and entertaining and make a brand seem innovative and tech savvy,

Video doorbells are supposed to help keep your home safe from strangers. Thanks to poor software security, however, they could be letting strangers in.

Researchers at Consumer Reports found vulnerabilities in popular video doorbells on major online retail sites including Amazon, Walmart and Temu, according to a report released Thursday. Hackers could use a companion app to take over the devices and view camera footage, the report found.

The doorbells were sold under a variety of brand names, mainly Eken and Tuck, on Amazon, Walmart, Sears, Shein and Temu. All the doorbells paired with the app Aiwit and were manufactured by the Chinese company Eken Group Ltd., Consumer Reports said. Some doorbells were also missing a registration code required by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The contrast summed up the state of American retailing. One by one, iconic brands like Gap, J. Crew, American Apparel and Abercrombie & Fitch have reported slumping sales, while chic and cheap foreign fast-fashion brands like H&M, Uniqlo and Zara are opening bustling stores and luring away customers once devoted to a more basic American style.

Once the master of casual, supplying Americans with staple khakis, denims and button-down shirts, the company is finding that its once-stable American customer base has splintered. Luxury is booming; at the other end of the market, discount retailers like T. J. Maxx and Burlington Stores are seeing robust gains. Gap, Abercrombie and their peers are stuck in the middle.

“Back in the ’80s and ’90s, there wasn’t real access to higher-level fashion,” said Kate Davidson Hudson, co-founder and chief executive of Editorialist, an online fashion magazine. “It was the heyday of business casual, and stores did well selling core staples.”“But now, everybody sees what’s on the runways on social media and on blogs, and everybody’s a critic, and shoppers want it as soon as they see it,” she said. “Brands like Gap just feel very dated.”

an important part of the story is Trump’s positive allure — the way the candidate taps into, and projects, the most fundamental outlines of the American Dream.

Understood correctly, glamour is not a particular style — different styles seem glamorous to different people — but, like humor, a form of communication that creates a specific emotional response. Glamour generates a feeling of projection and longing: “if only.”

one definition of “vulgar” is “of or relating to the common people,” and a lot of folks find Trump their kind of tycoon: a totem of success in whom they can imagine their ideal selves.

Everything about Ms. Sousa, better known as Lil Miquela, is manufactured: the straight-cut bangs, the Brazilian-Spanish heritage, the bevy of beautiful friends

Lil Miquela, who has 1.6 million Instagram followers, is a computer-generated character. Introduced in 2016 by a Los Angeles company backed by Silicon Valley money, she belongs to a growing cadre of social media marketers known as virtual influencers

Each month, more than 80,000 people stream Lil Miquela’s songs on Spotify. She has worked with the Italian fashion label Prada, given interviews from Coachella and flaunted a tattoo designed by an artist who inked Miley Cyrus.

After weeks of dithering, Trump all but excused the federal government of much responsibility. Instead, he turned to the only the real power left in the land: America’s brands.

it’s worth focusing on the initial embarrassment — on the sorry fact that in order to provide its citizens tests for a pandemic disease, the wealthiest and most powerful nation had to desperately finagle the services of volunteer coders at Google.

During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt assembled a mighty federal apparatus to rebuild a broken economy. Lyndon Johnson used federal power to bring civil rights to the South. Ours was the sort of government that promised unprecedented achievement, and delivered.

Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard said Thursday that she will not run for re-election for her U.S. representative seat, saying she wants to focus on trying to secure her party’s nomination to challenge President Donald Trump.

"I believe that I can best serve the people of Hawaii and our country as your president and commander-in-chief,"

An Iowa Democratic caucus poll out this week put Gabbard at 3 percent, with former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the top three spots.

For generations, American shoppers have been trained to be nightmares. The pandemic has shown just how desperately the consumer class clings to the feeling of being served.

The most immediate culprit is decades of cost-cutting; by increasing surveillance and pressure on workers during shifts, reducing their hours and benefits, and not replacing those who quit, executives can shine up a business’s balance sheet in a hurry.

Wages and resources dwindle, and more expensive and experienced workers get replaced with fewer and more poorly trained new hires. When customers can’t find anyone to help them or have to wait too long in line, they take it out on whichever overburdened employee they eventually hunt down.

U.S. regulators on Wednesday signed off on extending COVID-19 boosters to Americans who got the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine and said anyone eligible for an extra dose can get a brand different from the one they received initially.

before more people roll up their sleeves, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will consult an expert panel Thursday before finalizing official recommendations for who should get boosters and when.

The latest moves would expand by tens of millions the number of Americans eligible for boosters and formally allow “mixing and matching” of shots — making it simpler to get another dose, especially for people who had a side effect from one brand but still want the proven protection of vaccination.