I’ve wanted to write something about It Girls for a while and last month, my best friend Bella Hadid gave me just the angle to make that happen. Not exactly synonymous with celebrity or influencer, the concept of the It Girl is a fascinating one to me, especially because it touches many of the points that we discuss often in High Noon: taste communities, social media behavior, style, the sociology influence, and the brand-consumer-trend matrix.
Before we get into the It Girls, though, this week’s roundup has several key reads on the evoloving modes of shopping and how brands continue to adjust their self-definitions. As always, I hope you enjoy and keep an eye out next week for a special gift guide issue. Until then, happy sailing! 🌞
xxSCREMES (Shawn)
The Roundup
Links to the stories you should be reading this week
We’re seeing DTC brands that start with only one or a few products invariably diversify and expand their footprint. ✺ Buy Nothing Facebook communities make everything — from antique lamps to dirty fishtank water — into communal commodities. ✺ The conceptual artist Sandra Mujinga makes improbable, etheral textiles. ✺ Why we are in the golden age of vintage and where to shop the best of it in NYC. ✺ And, luxury fashion houses are stepping outside of the boundaries of clothing, crafting entire galaxies out of their brand identities.
The Long Read
The week’s keynote story
Only going to read one thing? Read me.
The It-Girl-Bosses | Shawn Cremer | High Noon Original
What makes an It Girl? She is not necessarily the same thing as a cool girl. It is, of course, a prerequisite that she is known, but she need not be known for something in particular. Honestly, an It Girl doesn’t have a ‘real job’. She might act or model or host or write or all of the above, but an It Girl is not a multi-hyphenate. She is It not for what she does, but for who she is.
Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner are a classic It Girl duo — the Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton of the past half decade. They both come from wealthy families, both documented extensively in reality television during their adolescence. They have become two of the most bankable models, walking for nearly every It brand under the sun, projecting their glamorous lives on Instagram, nabbing all sorts of brand deals, getting snapped by poparazzi in head-to-toe The Row or reading a trendy artist self-help book.
In Kendall’s case, she also followed in her super-influencer sisters’ footsteps when she started her own company this year. (I’m not even going to touch the many layers of 818’s public reception, but suffice it to say, Kendall starting a tequila brand was a foreseeable Kardashian/Jenner move.) But I found it noteworthy when these two It Girl besties each revealed new career trajectories on Instagram on September 1st of this year. Kendall announced that she is now the Creative Director of FWRD, an online retailer of designer fashion and beauty. And Bella, in a THREE PART POST, announced her involvement as “Co-Founder, Partner and COO” of alternative beverage company Kin Euphorics.
The celebrity creative director is nothing new — think Rihanna for Puma or Lady Gaga for Polaroid (if you can comunicate the product you can make money off of the product!!) — and is an extension of the even less new concept of the celebrity spokesperson. In the month and a half since Kendall’s post about FWRD, it’s become clear that this is a nominal relationship. She does an edit for their website and occassionally posts a story, but she doesn’t even mention the brand in her bio.
Bella on the other hand seems to be fully committed to the role. I can only draw this conclusion from the observations I can gather from her Instagram, but listen, that girl is posting. And she posts a fair bit about Kin and seems to be an active part of the brand’s new initiatives. Also, a key point is her title. Bella is not holding a vanity role like Creative Director of Chief Brand Officer. No, she is the COO, a role that is generally second or third on the totem pole in most major companies.
This interlude signals to me a shift in the popular thinking around social prestige, AKA clout. In some circles, we want our It Girls to make a perfume or talk about how they felt out of place at the Met Gala or make an appearance in a popular HBO show. But now that we have an It Girl in the boardroom and on the cap table (as co-founder no less!) of a semi-well-known startup, our It Girls are turning into It Girlbosses.
Where this goes next could tell us a lot about the priorities of our culture. Will other It Girls follow suit? Will the hedonistic, glam, jetset lifestyle we know Bella for recede as the corporate-startup style of the 2010s become the in-thing? Or will the two styles merge in a new way of being it for the 2020s?
Watch
In Scamdalous, a new series for Bullish Studio’s TikTok, Serena Shahidi (@glamdemon2004) takes us through the lives of some of recent histories most nefarious scammers. Watch on TikTok.
Cheers
You might think, ‘oh I bet he’s going to give us a cocktail using Kin this week.’ Well I’m not. This isn’t sponcon and listen, I’m not here to lie to y’all. Kin is fecking disgusting. So, if you’re in the mood to hang with your it girlies at the local spot but you don’t want to drink, keep it simple and classy and order a bitters in sparkling water, on the rocks. Have a lemon twist or a cherry for garnish, depending on your mood. It’s classic, refined, chic, lowkey — all the hallmarks of a drink fit for an It Girl and/or a High Noon Hottie — and with barely-there ABV. Quelle classe !
I want to talk about the it boysssss////it gncs