Gen Z Founders, Silver Influencers & Other Brand Moves This Week

Sézane x Aki & Koichi, Aimee Song's home decor collab, Ganni's next it shoe, and are brands pivoting from TikTok to YouTube?

The generational dynamics of influence are shifting in fascinating ways: silver influencers are landing major luxury campaigns while Gen Z founders are building tools to change how we consume.

This week’s roundup is diverse, ranging from new collabs, product drops, a new-to-me brand, and a few new trend reports.

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Hi brand nerds ;-)

I'm Arriane, a brand strategist (former community organizer, user researcher, facilitator/teacher, policy gal), and this is The Stories We Sell Ourselves, a newsletter dissecting brand strategy, consumer behavior, and why we buy what we buy.

Think of it as cultural criticism through the lens of brand, or brand analysis through the lens of culture - whichever makes more sense to you.

If you’re new here, I deliver a link roundup of brand moves each week and one deep dive per month. For paid subscribers (thank you for supporting my work!), you get access to more tactical analysis, trend forecasts, and brand strategy breakdowns—to be paywalled in each delivery.

The next deep dive is Part 2 of The Attention Crisis—diving into user research and its role in brand strategy. These deep dives are a labor of love, from the research rabbit holes, to organizing the information in a way that feels valuable and digestible, to wordsmithing it in a way that is engaging and thought-provoking—so your support means everything!

Without further ado, here's what caught my eye this week:

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Collaborations & Product Launches

• Loved this Sezane x Aki and Koichi content. Great way to get more traction for Octobre Editions, Sezane’s men’s line. Also, if you follow Aki and Koichi at all (they’ve now done editorials for Loewe, Zara Kids, Net-a-Porter and Mr. Porter, Sweetgreen, etc), you KNOW that my 2025 for the trend prediction for the silver economy is true (and is a big brand opportunity).

• The Fashion-Home Pipeline Continues: Word on the grapevine is, OG fashion influencer Aimee Song is dropping a collection with Lulu and Georgia. (Corroborate if it’s true!) Think made-to-order upholstered furniture, lighting, and decor. L&G's designer collaboration strategy fascinates me—they’ve collabed with established interior designers like Sarah Sherman Samuel, Jake Arnold, and more experimental voices like Disc Interiors and artists Eny Lee Parker and Élan Byrd. It reads like a carefully curated dinner party guest list—each collaborator bringing their own cultural cachet (and in Aimee’s case, 7M Instagram audience) to the table.

• A Bala x Emilio Pucci Moment: Their signature Bala bangles just went from $55 for signature colors to $129 for the Pucci version. What do you think about the price jump? They could've swung for the fences with the design PLUS made it extremely limited edition, and really leaned into that luxury price point. But maybe they're just testing the waters to see if the girlies will bite? Would be curious to know the insights/data that led them to decide on $129. Other than that, digging the campaign images below.

  

• Ganni's Next Viral Shoe?: Their quirky new lace-up ballerinas just hit pre-order. After watching their buckle ballerinas become the unofficial uniform of influencers everywhere last year, I'm watching this space. Mostly curious about their product seeding strategy and if they'll get creative with it this year.

  

  I wonder how Ganni will approach product seeding strategy for this shoe?

• A Gen Z Power Move: Keep an eye on Phia, the new Chrome extension from Phoebe Gates, Bill Gates' 22-year-old (very well-spoken) daughter, and 23-year-old climate activist Sophia Kianni. Launched in beta last November, it shows you potential resale values before you buy, as well as finds secondhand alternatives across 150+ resale sites. As someone who's long been an invested participant in the secondhand market, I'm genuinely excited to see where this could take consumers as a whole. The resale space has so much potential to shift how we think about consumption, and tools like this could help make it mainstream. But will Gen Z's commitment to conscious consumption weather the cynicism that comes with age? Hope springs eternal - and honestly, I'm absolutely rooting for it.

It’s giving Honey, but for secondhand luxury items.

• The Protein Industrial Complex Expands + Prebiotics, Too: The protein trend keeps flexing with David protein bars, Goodles (mac and cheese with 7g protein + prebiotics), and Coconut Cult's "Bro-biotic Chocolate Mousse" protein yogurt, among many, many others. Keep an eye out - prebiotics can be the next wellness buzzword, with Coca-Cola already queuing up a prebiotic drink release in Feb. Speaking of protein plays, Emily Sundberg from Feed Me pointed out something interesting: the job market is following the protein, citing job openings for content/social/marketing in Good Culture, Fairlife, and Chobani.

• Valentine's Sneaker Face-Off: Choose your fighter in this year's commodification of love - Nike's heart-covered Cortez, Adidas's red suede Sambas, or Converse's rosette-adorned Chucks. Nothing groundbreaking brand-wise, but I’m a sucker for red shoes, sorry.

  

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Under-The-Radar: New Brands I Discovered This Week

I spend way too much time in corners of the internet hunting for emerging brands because I'm always fascinated by how new, smaller companies carve out their space in this attention arena.

Here’s what got on my radar this week:

Lunge - think, if Ganni decided to make dog accessories. They're bringing that understated cool-girl aesthetic to pet gear (designed in Brooklyn, made in Brazil). Amazing photography, crazy price point. Can maybe see this becoming a hit with NYC/Cali DINKWADS (double income, no kids, with a dog).

Lunge has a very cool website—look at the insanely visually-arresting creative direction on these landing page images. That image above is AMAZING.

On that note, would love to hear what's catching your eye beyond the algorithm-approved US brands.

Drop your finds—from Spain to Nigeria to Colombia to Mexico to the Philippines—down in the comments. I love discovering new brands with a distinct brand voice or visuals.

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What’s beyond the paywall this week?

Below, I’m linking two interesting 2025 trend forecasts I read this week (in the retail and website space), as well as some notes I took down while researching YouTube strategies (since there’s been lots of chatter about brands moving to/trying YouTube ever since that TikTok debacle).

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