TR.BIZ: 7.21.2026

Welcome to The Trend Report: Business Edition™, a midweek look at top stories, trends, and more of what’s happening online and off by Kyle of The Trend Report™. Today, we’re chatting a big astrological event, the rise of aesthetic jobslop, AI killing fashion, and a breakout Popeye’s song from seven years ago.

In these overly optimized and punishingly pretty times, what might the salve for a better future be? Ugliness — or at least that’s what I think! This was a big subject in the new Q2 Trend Report™, which I wrote an essay about for Creative Review. It’s behind a paywall, but here’s a peek into the story —

For those of us who cannot log off, who are stuck in the low-paying trenches of digital work, “ugliness” is appealing not because of any direct political associations but because it represents a counter-cultural framework that eschews sleep scores, panoptic lenses, and the widening maw of K-economic differences. To become ugly is to become unalgorithmicable and unmonitizable, to become pointless and tasteless as crass tech leaders seek to squeeze us from ourselves so we can become The Matrix-style financial batteries to their already bloated bank accounts.

Are you feeling that? Because I am. You can catch more thoughts about this specific subject at this point in a video walkthrough I did and, if you’re so moved, grab your copy of the Q2 Report™ here, which includes a quarter of ~free~ paid access to the Tuesday/Thursday dispatches. For those who are already paid subscribers? Send a note and I’ll pass along a copy of the Report™ for free. Happy July and almost Leo season eve!!!

If we’ve learned anything about the whole dumbass Phia “AI shopping” scammer drama, it is that fashion’s obsession with AI — like the wider AI obsession — is going to inspire a bigger backlash as shoppers and people with actual taste come to see this tech as not just declassé but as anti-luxurious. We know this, as evidenced by the sour taste of Demna’s Gucci and Prada’s Jordan Wolfson collab, among many others. Beyond Phia, the other fashionable AI scandal belongs to Levi’s, whose CEO — Michelle Gass — recently preached about her and Levi’s love of AI for NBC News, building on a line of thought she’s been pushing for months. “I’m a big believer in AI,” she said. “Our designers, for example, are using AI tools to help them broaden their innovation, improve their capacity, increase their creativity…We are a brand about authenticity, about craft. But if this can be a tool to help our teams think broader or lead to that next idea, then we absolutely should use it.” Oof. The backlash has seen big dude denim voices — Albert Muzquiz, Xander Torres, Jake Woolf — dissenting, largely pointing out a larger trend of brands like Levi’s abandoning their principles and “quality” (which they largely attribute to offshoring production which…every mega-corporation does that, sadly). While this has inspired a pile-on, it does reveal the obvious, which the Phia situation very much proves too: invoking AI in these ways is an invitation to expand and invite scrutiny, giving your loyalists and customers daggers to tear through the tapestry of your image. Will this ultimately kill Levi’s? No, not at all, as it’s a mega-corporation — but it will sour the mouth of the discerning, inspiring connections to other Levi’s AI dramas like their 2023 “diverse” generated model scandal. As conversations swirl about AI being akin to polyester and fashion’s technofascist connections, know that selling out the creative to tech will mean those in the splash zone will be harmed, hence a looming anti-AI backlash upon fashion.