You are cordially invited to this week’s brew of High Tea, your dispatch of 🔥 internet culture served piping hot. This week: our Snapchat moon rising exposes us, Balenciaga goes rogue and en vogue, and $YACHTY sells out.
Drink up 🐸☕️
👢ready slayer two
We’ll admit it – we weren’t ever going to be ready for this. Balenciaga pulled off a ✨ masterpiece ✨ this week in a presentation of its Fall 2021 line via Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow, a video game which creative director Demna Gvasalia confirmed was “the largest volumetric video project ever undertaken” 👀. For the nayslayers out there, we say: hold your slimline tonics; ‘Afterworld’ was the perfect combination of dystopia meets decadent design and provided a real peep into the fashion world of the future. Starting in a Balenciaga store with an alien-like figure who permits you ascend to the next level (not completely dissimilar from the real-life Sven from Berghain, remember him?), we walk through the most visually stunning scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in Blade Runner 2049. Let’s talk about the outfits...
With a focus on sustainability, we see many garments are repurposed: blankets are used as cloaks, large military coats as evening gowns, the list goes on. But the standout showpiece: reimagined steel knight’s armour in the form of thigh high boots (stiletto, ofc) was the icing on the cake.
And it’s not just the incumbents getting in on the action. This week Joshua Kane, independently owned British Luxury brand, also released the first look of its video game A Tailor’s Journey. The game is set in London in 1890, and will feature the story of three tailors, even the JK himself!
Managing Director Joshua Kane inside A Tailor’s Journey – uncanny!
We can’t wait to see just how far future collections will evolve and intertwine with storylines, and expansion packs of current games. With room for increased interactivity outside A/W + S/S seasons, we’re totally here for it.
👾 skin in the game
ICYMI, Among Us is still...well, among us. Despite reaching its peak in September and October (with the game being downloaded almost 42 million times the first half of September), the multiplayer game is still making waves, totalling an estimated 18M downloads on iOS for the month of November. Since skyrocketing in the charts, we’ve also 👀 a new art form emerging in the form of game mods and custom skins which friend of High Tea 🐸 ☕️, Jerry Lu touts: “a super fun way for game devs to leverage the creativity of their community”:
He ain’t wrong. Despite being fan-led, many of these developer mods are gaining mainstream traction, and fast. Other mods we’ve seen include: Proximity Chat (a chat mod that increases suspense by not allowing characters to communicate across the entire map and decreases the likelihood of cheating) and Black and White mod (which makes it near impossible and hilarious to play, WHO AM I?!?😂)
And it’s even trickling down into the app stores in the form of skins. Unofficial independent apps such as ‘Among Us Maker Skin’ and ‘Skins For Among Us’ are currently sitting at 400K and 700K iOS downloads in November, respectively. The latter even managed to secure a top 10 and maintain an average of 25 position on the store for free entertainment category in the U.S. 🙃 – something app marketers pay $$$ to access in an app’s lifetime.
Make no mistake, mods and skins are culture-defining and play a big role in maintaining relevance long term. Can we get a 🐸☕️ skin, pls?
🖤 putting the grime in cyberpunk
It’s been a big week for gaming as the much anticipated open world RPG Cyberpunk 2077 hit our PS4s (lol help). Not without glaring glitches – with #cyberbug trending this weekend on Twitter 🙃 – we finally got to see the character Johnny Silverhand, played by Keanu Reeves, in CD Projekt's sci-fi epic. The memes from this week’s release deserve a dispatch of their own, but the real talking point is the character of cyborg popstar Lizzy Wizzy, voiced by Grimes (arguably an IRL alien), who dropped a full DJ mix album titled: This story is dedicated to all those cyberpunks who fight against injustice and corruption every day of their lives!
“If you’ve ever wondered what a Kendrick Lamar verse sounds like on top of the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”, here’s where those two worlds collide.”
🌍 far from convention(al)
Since 2016, ComplexCon in Long Beach, California has been an essential annual event for hypebeasts looking to immerse themselves in the convention subculture (and leave with a new fit, ofc). This year, another casualty of the pandemic, ComplexCon was forced to rebrand as “ComplexLand”, switching lanes to create a free open-world virtual destination and satiate the appetites of devoted sneakerheads with IRL money to blow.
“In 2018, we did an activation with adidas Originals at ComplexCon, which was a huge hit,” he explains. “That's kind of how it started.” Thanks to AR and in-app notifications, attendees were able to virtually queue for sneaker drops in a mobile store, turning what would normally be two hours (or more) in line into a two-minute transaction. That experience, of using tech to help democratize drops, while discouraging resellers and fights, provided major inspiration for what would go on to become ComplexLand. – Steffen Christiansen, creative director for Jam3
Image via Complex Original
The five-day virtual event (7-11 Dec) was months in the making from Toronto-based Jam3, a design and experience agency that “partners with forward-thinking brands to solve problems in the space between people and technology”. Jam3 managed to pivot their strategy to incorporate major elements of the IRL ComplexCon experience into the virtual marketplace, including the concept of visitors hunting for exclusive drops within ComplexLand. The future of collective, shoppable experiences with a gamified social overlay? That’s the tea, sis.
Food trucks, shopping and the physical anchor of the stage, where panels and performances take place, were also written into the landscape. The space itself was heavily inspired by video games, including Assassin's Creed Odyssey with its game mechanic of exploring an area on a map, as well as Fortnite’s supply drops 🎁. TL;DR why wait for ComplexCon 2021 when we’re already immersed in the future of social commerce? Brands take note – more 👏 of 👏 this 👏 please.
the team decided to channel the lo-fi charm of ‘90s-era games once it quickly became clear that a slick, clean, modern look wasn’t the right direction to go. ComplexLand had to be way more chaotic. – Rick Mele, Complex Canada
ComplexLand included brand activations from Adobe Creativity Space (‘When I See Black’), exclusive releases from Pharrell x adidas NMD Hu and Atmos, as well as a virtual Gucci Sneaker Garage. Sustainability was also center stage this year with ‘Reconstruct’, a curation of upcycled products from brands such as Levi’s SecondHand and The North Face Renewed – using only existing products and materials. There were also performances and panels from the likes of Jaden Smith, Jack Harlow and the cast of North Hollywood, produced by Pharrell. 👀
Our fave ComplexLand partnership is a toss up between the Head & Shoulders (yep, you read that right) custom avatar hairstyles and the Perrier x Murakami drop 💦. What can we say, now we out in ComplexLand, we’re Perrier-in.
kettle’s on: ones to watch
Big money boat. No concerts? No problem. On Thursday, Lil Yachty launched his new Ethereum-based token $YACHTY on Swiss-based social money platform Fyooz, for $15 a pop. It sold out in 21 minutes, netting the rapper a cool $375k payday (well, pay half hour if u will). Cashing in on the $509 billion global crypto market, the YachtyCoin represents a very on-brand 2020 move as music fans seek digital alternatives to traditional investment vehicles, while copping some lil boat swag in the process. Did someone say digital assets going mainstream? 🐸☕️
Snapped in the stars. Astrology as a Service? Sign us up. Snap is the latest platform to put their money where the...stars are, as the $2.2 billion astrology industry continues to grow, with the top 10 astrology apps pulling in $40M in 2019, up 65% from 2018. The latest update from Snap allows users to add their astrology profile to their account and view astrological compatibility with friends. Described as “a way to bond with your friends in a whole new way...far beyond what you see in a daily horoscope”, Snap are no doubt hot on the heels of Co–Star, the 5M+ community still reeling from the platform’s controversial protest meme scandal this summer. If there’s one thing we do know, astrology *is* social and Snap are on track to win over Gen Z with this latest feature.
Plastic Hearts, extra guac. “If Miley Cyrus comments we’ll make a Miley burrito in our app”, captioned a TikTok from Chipotle earlier this week, capitalizing on our favorite meme of the year (and one that we REFUSE to let die). “Only if you name it ‘the guac is extra but so is Miley burrito”, replied Miley. The rest, tea gang, is *chef’s kiss* history. Miley announced the partnership with a tweet on Friday that read “Wear a mask. Eat burritos. (Not at the same time lol)”. To sweeten the deal, the first 10,000 Miley burritos were on the house from Chipotle, getting snapped up within 25 minutes. That’s certainly one way to celebrate securing a #1 rock album. Burrito in the USA, anyone? 🥑
Okay, you made it to the penultimate dispatch of 2020. Next week we’ll be dropping our final High Tea of the year…so put the kettle on, luv. We’ll see you there. 🐸 ☕️
ttyl,