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Aquaphor has become this summers hottest accessory. The no-frills beauty stapleonce relegated to the bottom of your bag, the glove box, or a bedside draweris now dangling from key chains and bedazzled with tiny rhinestones. Over on Etsy, you can even buy Aquaphor bag charms and custom caps. TikToks 114 million Aquaphor-tagged videos have thrust the old-school salve back into the spotlight. I dont know how many times I have to explain this to people, but there is nothing that Aquaphor will not fix, one TikTok creator explains. Do you have a scrape? Aquaphor. Do you have a burn? Aquaphor? Broken heart? Aquaphor. Severed leg? Aquaphor!!! @caffeinatedbutchill aquaphor sponsor me original sound – caffeinatedbutchill Another TikToker rubs the ointment on her eyelashes and eyebrows, smears it across her lips, dabs it on the bridge of her nose and cheekbones, and uses the excess to slick back her hair. Aquaphor = summer makeup routine, the closed-captioning on the video reads. @itz_justlola The best thing ever to exist original sound – pl8ylistt Aquaphor has leaned into the hype, frequently reposting TikToks from its legion of Gen Z fans. When my daughter Aquaphora asks how she got her name, one repost reads. Fans are setting up Aquaphor charcuterie boards and sharing Aquaphor-themed promposals. Meanwhile, the brands parent company, Beiersdorf, beat Q1 earnings expectations by $40 million. @aquaphorus watch party essentials #Aquaphor #awards The Warm Lounge – Cassiopeia How did a bathroom cabinet staple earn this kind of cultural cachet? Aquaphor hooked Extremely Online shoppers through a riff on the high-low model beloved by luxury fashion brands, Faran Krentcil recently wrote for The Business of Fashion. A tactic that combines ultra-prestigious products with a breezy, common message to assuage the guilt of the wealthy and to charm the cynicism of the working class (TL;DR: by making everyone feel seen, regardless of their bank balance). Weve heard of the “lipstick effect,” in which affordable luxuries like lip products see an uptick in sales during economic downturns. Now, lip balms are more than just cheap, everyday essentialstheyve evolved into miniature status symbols. Sales of lip treatments are up 179% year over year at Space NK. Beauty mogul Hailey Bieber sells phone cases that double as lip balm holders and recently sported a custom belly chain designed to carry her viral Rhode Peptide Lip Tint. On TikTok, there are lip balm vlogs, lip balm collection tours, and what lip balms are in my bag videos. @rachelalexandra lip balm vlog from a lip balm addict #lipbalmaddict #lipbalmcollection #lipbalm Yacht Club – MusicBox Aquaphor may have the staying power to outlive TikToks trend cycle. But as one TikTok creator asked: Do you guys ever worry about how much lip balm we are actually consuming.
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E-Commerce
Bentley has updated its emblem for just the fifth time since its founding in 1919, and without breaking hard from 106 years of branding tradition, it still manages to be the most radical redesign in company history. A Jaguar-style rebrand this is not. The British luxury automaker’s “Bentley Wings” are a chrome winged monogram showing a white B for founder Walter Owen Bentley’s last name inside a black oval. Originally designed by British automotive illustrator F. Gordon Crosby, updates were made in 1931, the 1990s, and 2002, according to the company, but the changes were small and subtle. A tweak in the angle of the wings here, changes to the decorative elements on the metallic seal there, but the form has stayed the same. The company’s latest logo redesign of its “Winged B” logo still keeps most of the basic elements in place, but it’s the sleekest, most minimalist version yet. Designed in-house by a creative team led by Bentley director of design Robin Page and based on a concept by Young Nam, a member of the company’s interior design team, the new wings have been reshaped and abstracted with the feathers turned into a radial diamond design. The B mark, which Bentley calls the emblem’s center jewel, was redesigned to be able to stand on its own as a mark without wings, and the feathers below it were removed to look cleaner. The details, like a bevelled glass edge, were inspired by luxury watch design. [Photo: Bentley] Look at Bentley’s logo evolve, and like a Transformer or Animorph book cover, it slowly changes one frame at a time from bird to machine as the wings go from soft to sharp. Bentley says its new shape was inspired by the the angled wings of a peregrine falcon, but it also looks more high tech. “The mission in designing the new emblem was to capture some of the beautiful details from the previous designs for example, the diamond pattern of the inner wings and the B centre jewel but create a more modern and progressive design,” the company said in a statement. Their attempt at a modern and progressive rebrand stands in contrast to Jaguar, which retired its jaguar logo last year for a controversial all-lowercase sans-serif logo. Rather than build off the brand’s legacy and heritage like Bentley, Jaguar started from scratch, and so far, it hasn’t paid off, as production, and thus sales, are down. Still, the rebrands for both British luxury automakers are signs of a larger shift as companies adapt for a future that’s more electric. There’s an industry-wide trend towards lighter, rounder, simpler logos. Whereas car logos once resembled the physical car badges, brands like Audi, Toyota, and Volkswagen have in recent years flattened and de-chromed their logos. For Bentley, the rebrand signals a new era. The company plans to debut its first fully electric vehicle next year and promised a new line-up of products to come. Next Tuesday, it will unveil a still-under-wraps concept car and new design studio at its headquarters in Crewe, England. Reimagining a legacy brand for the future can be challenging, but Bentley’s finished product delivers on the mission it set out to accomplish. Without jettisoning the core visual elements of it’s long-running brand, designers found a way to make heritage look modern and new.
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E-Commerce
President Trumps tax and spending bill just passed in the House of Representatives and is now on its way to his desk to become law. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the legislation (aka the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) will cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their health insurance by 2034, thanks to $1.1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare. Which Americans will lose access to these entitlement programs? When it comes to Medicaid at least, several GOP politicians have offered a suspiciously similar answer: It will be adults between the ages of 29 and 35 who choose to live in their mothers basement to avoid working. Hinson on Medicaid benefits: "They shouldn't be going to a 29-year-old guy who's living in his mom's basement choosing not to work." pic.twitter.com/Sj0LvuICTI— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 3, 2025 My message to Illinois Democrats crying about @realDonaldTrump kicking able bodied men and Illegals off Medicaid:Young men, GET A JOB. Get out of Mommys basement. We cant Make America Great when we have able bodied Americans completely out of the workforce and on the pic.twitter.com/h1gdhIkD6b— Blaine Wilhour (@BlaineWilhour) May 30, 2025 As Trumps stated July 4 weekend deadline approached, Republican senators and representatives have talked in interviews and on the House floor about why proposed Medicaid cuts are meant to target this extremely specific subset. The idea of making cuts to Medicaid has historically been unpopular, with a recent poll finding that even 54% of Trump voters are opposed to it. This unpopularity is why Trump has falsely claimed, again and again, that his tax bill would not touch Medicaid. In order to make those cuts palatable, the politicians in favor of them needed a bogeyman. They needed the modern-day equivalent of the 1980s mythic creature “The Welfare Queen”who, pundits at the time contended, strategically gave birth to more children in order to enjoy free handouts from the government. Now we have a new version of the old stereotype: the 29- to 35-year-old loser who lives in his moms basementoften while playing video games. Rep. Steve Scalise says of proposed Medicaid cuts: "35-year-olds sitting at home playing video games, they're gonna now have to go get a job." "And by the way, that's a good thing for them their mom doesn't want them sitting in the basement playing video games anyway." pic.twitter.com/xrUegCsdeN— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) July 3, 2025 Ogles: "The people that are getting off Medicaid are people that shouldn't be on Medicaid to begin with … it's the loser in his mama's basement playing video games instead of going out and getting a job." pic.twitter.com/hr2Ltfhfwl— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 3, 2025 The more GOP politicians have gone on about this supposed drain on society (House Majority Leader Steve Scalise alone has mentioned it at least three times in the past six weeks), the more rank-and-file social media users have seemed to absorb it. Kicking millions of basement dwellers off of welfare, foods stamps and Medicaid is not cruel or wrong. Its called a life lesson. Get off your lazy ass and get a job!!!!!— John Gilbertson (@TJandCasper) April 30, 2025 A stereotype that doesn’t pass the smell test But how many such basement dwellers could actually be out there, enjoying the taxpayers largesse without contributing anything to society? According to the Peoples Policy Project, in December 2022, only 4 million able- bodied adults without dependents (ABAWD) were persistently enrolled in Medicaid and working fewer than 80 hours a month. Of those 4 million, its anyones guess how many were simply choosing to play video games all day, as Scalise and his cohort suggest, rather than struggling to find work in a harsh job climate; finding it, but not being able to work the full 80 hours a month; dealing with mental health problems that still leave them technically able-bodied; taking care of other family members; or matriculating at a university. A generous estimate might be that one in four within/em> the ABAWD cohort fit the stereotype, which would mean that approximately 1 million of the more than 70 million people currently on Medicaid fall within the narrow parameters of fraud, waste, and abuse that these politicians claim to be targeting exclusively. Considering that over 11 million people are set to lose their health insurance now that this bill has passed, it seems extremely unlikely that Medicaid cuts will only affect basement dwellers. Ironically, though, they might actually cause a lot of people to move into their moms basement.
Category:
E-Commerce
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