Cultural Experts on the New Cool: Insights from Dazed Studio's NYC Summit

Last week, Dazed Studio hosted our first ever Brand Summit at the WSA building in NYC. Across three events, what constituted the "new cool" in the digital age was discussed, with opinions shared from both seasoned professionals to Gen Z creatives.

On Thursday evening, Izzy Farmiloe was joined by four culture shapers to discuss Taste, Tension & Trust in the Age of Anxiety. Here is a recap of their conversation:

Dazed's Culture Shapers: The Brand Summit Thursday Panel

Emily Sundberg, Founder & Editor, Feed Me

Emily Sundberg is the writer of Feed Me, a newsletter that combines business news, media gossip, and New York culture with over 100k subscribers. She also directed a documentary about a private island in the Hamptons called THE END, and writes for GQ, New York Magazine, and ELLE. Her daily texts are on business and culture, with New York City treated as "an epicenter of culture"; she describes herself as observing and writing about "how different groups of people spend money" and consumer behavioural patterns.

Whitney Mallett, The Whitney Review of New Writing

Whitney Mallett is a writer, editor, and publisher. In 2023, she founded The Whitney Review of New Writing, a magazine of literary criticism which engages an expansive definition of writing, bridging the worlds of books, performance, visual art, and design. She regularly contributes to many other magazines as well as writing commissioned texts for artist catalogs. Her larger creative practice spans video, spoken word, performance curation, and contributing to the critical discourse as a guest panelist, speaker, and interlocutor. She co-edited the book, Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey.

Fran Tirado, Editor-in-Chief, Them

Fran Tirado is the first trans editor-in-chief of Them, Condé Nast's LGBTQ+ publication, and the founder of Doll Invasion, an organisation that galvanises trans people to experience Fire Island. They are currently fundraising for their annual initiative.

Bunny Kinney, ECD of Dazed Studio

Bunny Kinney is the Global Executive Creative Director of Dazed Studio, based in London. A multidisciplinary creative, he works as a filmmaker, writer, and curator, with extensive experience across beauty and luxury fashion brands. For the past decade, Kinney served as Creative Director of NOWNESS, and the Founding Editor of Dazed Beauty. His exhibition, "Virtual Beauty," is currently on show at Somerset House, examining the impact of digital media and technology on contemporary notions of identity.

Can a brand really be cool?

Our panelists covered a vital topic for brands - how they can be culturally relevant. Responses from our panel were divided, but having a point of view was a unanimous consideration regarding brand cultural relevance.

"Cool in its purest form is the antithesis of mass consumption... if you want to be cool, you should resist the urge to [create] mass movement, mass consumption, mass appeal."

- Fran Tirado

"Does a brand have a point of view? We know we can be patrons of things, and we're signaling our own awareness of a lot of stuff , and know that we can put it in something valuable. "

- Whitney Mallett

"I think that consumers are so much smarter and more aware than ever. We are writing about brand campaigns with the same enthusiasm that we were writing tabloids, 15 years ago. Everybody is so aware of it - you see the comments - people are saying 'give the social media manager a raise'... I think it's a little bit harder to be cool because people aren't just accepting what they're being sold."

- Emily Sundberg

The death of authenticity

Amidst the demands of virality and the attention economy, brand authenticity has lost its meaning.

"There's this thing that happens with authenticity, or vibe, that is a kind of bankruptcy of language. I think that more and more in the democratisation of the internet and information on the internet people are really waking up to that. Everybody's allergic to the brand, and allergic to things that feel they're packaged too well. They're too clean, they're too crisp, they're too...varnished, if that makes sense."

- Fran Tirado

"I do think authenticity has obviously become this buzzword that is used and it sort of makes my eyes roll... But when I think about it on a personal level, I'm like, well, you know, how am I authentic? I feel like I am authentic when my insides are kind of like my outsides, for lack of a better term... I'm not hiding or concealing some part of my myself or I'm not saying one thing and doing another."

- Bunny Kinney

Anxiety and nostalgia are driving consumer behaviour...

"Do all these people actually miss going into the office and having a briefcase... Or do you miss a different version of New York where there was a bit more privacy and maybe a bit more breaks between when you're on and when you're off of work?... Everything being sold to us is supposed to mediate your anxiety... all of that is done with the keen awareness of feelings of anxiety and seeking comfort through spending money on things."

- Emily Sundberg

... and ragebait, too

From Sabrina Carpenter's Manchild cover to the new American Eagle "Good Jeans" ad, chaos was described as cutting through the attention economy:

"I think we have so much noise in our media matrix that a lot of brands are turning to chaos branding. I do think sometimes they very intentionally throw stuff out there to be like, why did they really do that? It's just to get your attention because it's a fight for attention."

- Whitney Mallett

"I can't fathom for a second that there wasn't [someone] in that boardroom looking at those advertisements of a blonde, buxom white girl who is sort of the ideal of a different era, and they're saying, cool, we're going to have this geneticist, eugenics pun or whatever. Maybe they weren't thinking that deeply about it, but they were certainly anticipating that it would get a negative reaction or provoke a reaction."

- Bunny Kinney

"We're experiencing a very clear death of the truth...And I'm here because I want to write the truth. I believe in the truth and ragebait isn't the truth. It's just not. But sometimes realities really makes you mad. And I think sometimes there's that overlap with them..."

- Fran Tirado

Why physical media matters

Following along from the insights we shared with you last Friday from our Wednesday SenseMakers panel, Izzy probed the culture shapers on their thoughts on physical media, and why they thought it was having a renaissance.

"For me, [physical media] is very important. I chose not to have a digital thing. I think it slows down the cycle of consumption, and that was intentional. It is a different way that people engage with it. I think that I let people be a little spicier because I don't think it's immediately going to get screenshotted... if you're publishing in a daily cycle versus a six month cycle. It's just a different conversation you're having."

- Whitney Mallett

"I'm massively into going to the theatre. I go to the movies all the time, I go to readings, I go to things like that... they're the only sacred spaces where you aren't allowed to use your phone. It's like a taboo... I want more places like that where you can't - if you look at your phone, you're that guy, and I don't want to be that guy."

- Bunny Kinney

Thank you to our brilliant participants across our public events, and to everyone who joined us in the audience. Until next time!