what even is 'brand' now?

searching for Sporty & Rich's "it factor", picking apart influencer brands, and venting about being misunderstood

This started with my slight obsession with Sporty & Rich. I walked by the newly opened Soho store. I skimmed through the article titled something like “Goop for Gen Z.” I saw a couple of TikToks about the mood board to a clothing line pipeline. I didn’t go too far down the $165 sweatpants rabbit hole until a clip from a podcast interview with the founder Emily Oberg showed up on my fyp. From what I learned about the brand in the past couple of weeks, there are people who buy it (80% of which are located abroad?), people who absolutely can’t stomach it, people who don’t quite understand it but respect the hustle, and people who either don’t care enough to have an opinion or just keep their mouth shut. Going into the Emily Oberg interview, I decided to be neutral - I didn’t quite understand it but thirty million in revenue is thirty million in revenue, and after all I am obsessed with goop and Gwyneth, and any day now I am about to book a tennis lesson just to feel something. 

I scrolled through Emily’s IG grid as I was listening to her talking about the store and interviewing sales associates as it’s been much busier than expected. I don’t know what I expected to see. Tracy Anderson’s abs? Sophia Richie’s Chanel outfits? Bella Hadid’s horseback riding photo dumps? But it was mostly mirror selfies, jeans and crewnecks. Emily’s death row meal would include frozen hot chocolate from Serendipidy3 (the place that has a minimum spend per person and chunks of ice in the frozen desserts) and the Soho store’s playlist is all the songs she loves, including Tame Impala. She was happy with the NYT article and upset about the GQ guy being really nice in person and getting her to be vulnerable and then taking a jab after jab at her in the final piece. 

“sporty and rich gq,” I typed into my search bar in the middle of the F train on the way home.

After recapping some of the problematic statements Emily made in the past and throwing in a couple of borderline misogynistic details, like “in her Chanel ballet flats” and “tightened up her ponytail”, the writer spends a good chunk of the piece trying to figure out, just like me after scrolling her IG and listening to her talk for an hour, what is it that made Emily and Sporty & Rich so successful. He asks her to specify what exactly the Sporty & Rich lifestyle is and why it is special a couple of times throughout the story to which Emily never gives an answer more specific than “we’re projecting a really healthy positive image of, like, take care of yourself.”

I never get to satisfy my week-long obsession of figuring out Sporty & Rich’s “it factor” - maybe I needed to know Emily back in her Complex era to understand it, or maybe it’s only meant to be understood by its target audience (“one well-intentioned but not-so-serious 29-year-old with a taste for Rolexes and box seats at Roland Garros”). In any case, she is not the only influencer with a business venture that’s built to be an extension of her personality and Sporty & Rich is not the only brand built on top of a mood board, capitalizing on the American middle class aesthetics and selling simple products powered by a “brand” that seems so intangible that even the founder can’t quite articulate it. 

The word “brand” in general is being used so loosely these days, especially when it comes to brands attached to a celebrity or an influencer. When I think about modern OG brands, like Glossier or Outdoor Voices, I can clearly explain what made them special - at least to me. My introduction to Glossier products and the “Glossier girl” came about after I spent the first couple of years of college eating In-N-Out, chugging venti cups of Starbucks, and using full coverage foundation every day. My limited understanding of makeup at the time was heavily influenced by the makeup YouTube and most of the products you found at Sephora at the time were made for that full face makeup look YouTube popularized. Glossier stood out if you were the type of person who didn’t really know your way around an eyeshadow pallet but wanted to have fun with makeup every once in a while. So did Outdoor Voices - an activewear brand that spoke directly to the girls who enjoyed being active for fun without serious athletic inspirations focused on performance. 

Glossier’s and Outdoor Voices IGs may have looked like moodboards but they were so much more than that. They had great products, like mascara that will stay on through a car crush and a breakup and the iconic exercise dress (both still sell these products except my mascara keeps chipping off throughout the day and the exercise dress is no longer “the” exercise dress as it comes in 20 different styles). From original packaging and signature reusable bubble pouches to stores designed to be a destination and sales associates in pink industrial wear, Glossier’s brand was a power machine. All the little details came together like a puzzle and drove insane loyalty and growth. 

“got broken up with in a skate park” can you believe it??

Today, Glossier has the same light pink clean girl aesthetic on IG but their posts are taken over negative comments that start with “I LOVE Glossier but” from girls who have been loyal to the brand for years about new formulas, archived tints, and greenwashing. I am sure the sales are higher than ever and sometimes there is still a line outside of the Soho store but my Glossier makeup bag is overflowing with non-Glossier “clean girl” products. 

If “brand” was just about the color scheme, the “you look good” tagline on the mirrors or Emily Weiss’ girlboss starpower, wouldn’t it still have the same appeal to its loyal community? Maybe I grew up and don’t fall for the brand anymore or maybe it’s the fact that every makeup company has come out with a “your skin but better” foundation and glossy lip oils. But maybe it’s because the intricate puzzle of Glossier’s brand that was glued together at its peak is being moved from the living room to the guest room by people in different corporate departments who didn’t put it together in the first place. 

Besides being confused for aesthetics and vibes, “brand” has also been getting mixed up with popularity. Girls buy Rhode products to recreate Hailey Bieber’s glossy lips and skin but what does the “brand” with its famously weird copy stand for? Looking hot? Eating fruit and laying in the sun? There is no philosophy to buy into. When girls buy Set Active matching sets, is it because they are looking for staple pieces they can wear to run errands, to work, and to the club or because they can’t escape hot LA influencers wearing gifted sets on their fyp? If you look at Lonely Ghost’s and Dairy Boy’s hoodies and tees without knowing who Indy Blue or Paige Lorenze are, would you put them in your cart? Yet, all of the above, just like Sporty & Rich, are considered successful “brands.”

Celebrity and influencers rarely work on their own, especially in the world where people are jaded by creator merch printed on Fanjoy blanks, dropshipping, and fast-fading TikTok trends. Today, Hailey Bieber is selling out Rhode’s peptide treatment and sets beauty trends. Tomorrow, the internet is spinning crazy conspiracy theories about her and when I pull out the peptide treatment in front of my friends, their eyes get a little bigger and heads are jokingly shaking in disapproval: “Are you not team Selena?” 

The definition of what “brand” is these days is so elusive, and yet so many people throw it around with so much confidence. Like “social media” it’s something most people think they just get. They pay thousands of dollars to a brand agency to create a pretty deck just to never get past the pages with a color scheme and brand logos. They make Pinterest boards out of similar-looking images suggested by the algorithm. They get the hottest influencers do an ad read that’s not even remotely believable. They hire a Brand Director and task them with a rebrand but never fully commit to getting the rest of the team to adopt it. They want what they call “brand” without fully understanding its ever evolving art of sweating the details, connecting literally every dot on the board - no matter how small - together, hustling, and from time to time, getting a little lucky.