TT Vol. 61

Prada Outdoor, Scarlett Johansson, Luxury H1 Results, House of Gucci Trailer & Blank Street Coffee

Tourist Trapp

Aug 01, 2021

Clockwise from Top.

Prada Outdoor

Brands are falling all over themselves to sell the great outdoors. Loewe, Gucci and now, Prada (for him, for her):

While there is a lot of good stuff (e.g., here, here, here), it feels like something the merchandisers created rather than a product of Raf & Miuccia’s imagination. The best stuff is really the absurdly expensive objects - like this frisbee holder, cutlery set and yoga mat.

Scarlett Johansson v Disney

New broke this week that Scarlett Johansson filed suit against Disney for releasing Black Widow direct to Disney+ alongside a theatrical release. As the star of the film, she had negotiated a percentage of ticket sales as part of her fee. With the digital release depressing theater sales, it’s no surprise that Johansson is pissed. It suffered an 80% drop in ticket sales after it release, something unheard of for a Marvel movie.

Expect the floodgates to open here, as other stars contemplate going to court against the studios and streaming services. Big names could traditionally rely on ticket sales to boost their take home pay. But in an era when a family of four can see a film at home for ~$20 vs $100 at a theater, the amount of money available for talent is going to shrink.

Luxury’s First Half of 2021 Results

The big European luxury houses are reporting 2021 H1 results, and in short, they all made buckets of money the past six months.

LVMH’s fashion division had an exceptionally strong first half of the year, and the PR team gave some love to creative minds behind the collections:

Celine’s ready-to-wear and leather goods collections created by Hedi Slimane were hugely successful. Loewe continues to surprise with its innovative digital concepts in connection with the new collections created by J.W. Anderson. Fendi presented a ready-to-wear capsule by Kim Jones, the first collections of which debuted in July. Marc Jacobs performed very well over the period.

Notably absent from the press release were Matthew M. Williams and Givenchy.

It was a similar story from Hermès and Kering, with Bottega Veneta outpacing Gucci and Saint Laurent in terms of growth.

You only get to comp a pandemic once, and the luxury sector clearly enjoyed H1 this year.

House of Gucci Trailer

The House of Gucci is trailer is out, and it looks, really good?

Jared Leto is in the cast, which we didn’t realize, but makes sense given his connection to Gucci. And he is damn near unrecognizable. And, the memes were out in full force:

Liv Marks @OliviaLilyMarks

Father, Son and House of Gucci

Suspect accents, problematic stereotypes, and lots and lots and lots of fur, but we’ll definitely be seeing this later this year.

Blank Street Coffee

We stopped by the newest location of Blank Street Coffee, which just landed in our neighborhood. We picked up free coffee and vegetarian tacos from King David Tacos - both were delish.

According to their press, they are more than just a coffee and breakfast taco spot. They are trying to disrupt the common coffee cart, of which there are 8,000 in NYC. They are focusing on renting space from landlords and the NYC Parks Department, rather than applying for licenses to locate on sidewalks.

All locations are battery powered - an extremely welcome idea, as the diesel generators powering hot dog carts and ice cream trucks around NYC are loud pet peeves of ours.

While healthy skepticism is warranted when someone claims to be a “Disrupter” we do think there is something here. We both have soft spots for street carts, but not soft enough to actually purchase their terrible coffee and stale bagels. Someone offering better food, without the overhead of a physical shop, could be a winning combination in a place that obsessed with both coffee and real estate.