Welcome to Crowd Source.

Issue seven, The Good Enough To Eat Issue.

CrowdDNA's monthly digest.

Ozempic - the word on everybody’s lips. And since the weight-loss drug first started appearing on our cultural radar, we’ve noticed a curious trend bubbling up: brands and designers are turning to food as inspiration.

As Ozempic brings weight-loss back to the forefront of (pop) culture, a gastronomic zeitgeist is emerging. Culture is treating food as adornment: to be looked at, admired, but not consumed.

We all know that food is culturally charged, a vehicle upon which we project our needs and desires, so perhaps this is no surprise that as Ozempic-fever runs riot, we're wearing our appetites instead of sating them.

After all, whether it's food or fashion, it's still consumption, right?

1. Food Face

Glazed doughnut skin, tomato girl summer, strawberry shortcake makeup, latte makeup, blueberry milk nails, dewy dumpling skin… food-inspired beauty trends reveal something particularly telling about current cultural discourse. We’re seeing our desire to eat and to indulge being redirected onto our faces via the likes of ‘dewy dumpling skin’: food is being gradually re-contextualised as a vanity object, as a performance, as a marker of status.

Or as beauty reporter, Jessica DeFino puts it: "Perhaps the pushed-down desire to stuff one’s face - discouraged by society, damped by Ozempic - is sublimated into the performance of a gleaming Krispy Kreme?"

Read more here .

2. Designer Tomatoes

I see your glazed doughnut skin, Hailey Bieber, and raise you the Loewe tomato. Following a viral tweet about a heirloom tomato that looked 'so Loewe', the brand’s creative director unveiled a tomato-shaped clutch bag.

From 'Loewe meme to reality', Loewe proves once again how it has an ability to capitalise on social media trends and make precious the mundane: the brand has turned the humble tomato into a coveted object, accelerating a trend which sees food becoming a symbol of status, aspiration and - ultimately - luxury indulgence.

Read more here .

3. Croissant-core

French patissier Cédric Grolet’s mesmeric videos have earned him a cult following on Instagram and a sold out collaboration with High Snobiety. Already an internet sensation, Grolet is fast becoming a style icon in his own right with a line of merch featuring pastry motifs, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘tastemaker’.

Read more here .

4. Snack chic

The catwalks of FW24 were united by a common thread of the gastronomic variety: just as art imitates life, now accessories imitate food. Moschino and UNDERCOVER both debuted bread-themed bags; Bottega Veneta and Loewe similarly turned to food as inspiration on the runway; while Israeli designer Tal Maslavi released a range of accessories designed to resemble cake as Paris Fashion Week was in full swing.?

It seems that brands and designers alike are encouraging us to wear these objects of forbidden indulgence if we can’t eat them.

Read more here .

5. Performative Smoothies

The celebrity sighting du jour: the food run - nonchalant, off-duty, casual. The key ingredient: the little treat. Be that an Erewhon Smoothie - the ultimate status symbol - à la Lily Rose Depp or a McDonalds, Kim Kardashian’s food weapon of choice, celebrities are taking the food-as-accessory trend to the next level and brands are taking note. Put simply, “food is the hottest prop right now”, and a slew of brand collaborations are making the grocery run both lucrative and aspirational.

Read more here .

Meanwhile, we asked the Crowd team:

It would be great if clothes were made out of food because …?

Charlotte, Associate Director

“Remember those candy necklaces we used to wear as kids? Always a convenient way of keeping the sugar high going when you’re out and about.”

Kara, Senior Consultant

“If we have wearables, why can’t we have eatables? If we’ve become so obsessed with tracking our every move, shouldn’t we be wearing our food as well?”

Benji, Associate Director?

“You wouldn’t have to go to the shop when you’re hungry.”