Pickles & Cherries. Sudsy Life Preservers. Camp Humor.
We're back to our usual hometown programming.
From London
M&S is giving your grey matter a glow-up. The retailer is diving into functional health and wellness with Brain Food, a new line of British Nutrition Foundation-backed products tailored to today’s informed consumer. Made with “brain health supporting nutrients” like omega-3, zinc, iodine, and folate—and buzzy ingredients like mushrooms with functional benefits—the range aims to boost cognitive care. I tried the Brain Ball, a snack developed with North Wales-based B Corp Wholebake, which was pretty tasty (though that’s likely thanks to its natural sugar hit). According to Sharry Cramond, Marketing & Loyalty Director at M&S Food, “80% of our customers say they are concerned about their cognitive/brain health.” Still, it’s a bold move for such a mainstream retailer to stake its claim in the functional food space with a whole new line. They’ve put a lot of budget towards marketing the range with top influencers. But judging by some consumer comments like “processed, full of sugar, all in plastic 👎”), many wellness skeptics aren’t quite buying into it. Interested to see how this one plays out.
M&S wants to keep us sharp—and snacking. Images courtesy of Marks & Spencer. “Oui!” to this very ‘on brand’ extension. Luxury French fragrance maison Diptyque has stepped into the bathroom with its Beauty Alcoves—a collection of sculptural, swoon-worthy storage and grooming essentials. From soap dishes and candle stands to terrazzo mirrors made with upcycled seashells, the range channels Diptyque’s signature oval design with serious savoir-faire. Crafted by French porcelain pros, Italian glassmakers and eco-design innovators, each piece is a masterclass in artistry and sustainability. Très Diptyque, très chic.
Bathroom goals– and images– courtesy of Diptyque. Two flavours, colours and scents I’m seeing everywhere: pickle and cherry. Pickle is having a tangy renaissance, adding bold, briny notes to everything from cookies to cocktails– proof that flavour trends continue to be driven by balancing nostalgia with unexpected twists. Meanwhile, cherry is stepping out of its sweet comfort zone, starring in smoky sauces, tart sodas and complex desserts. And it’s not just about flavour– Pinterest dubbed Cherry Coded as the colour trend for 2025 and we’re seeing its scent cues all over the newest beauty launches, from Rhianna’s Cherry Dub Cleanser to Glossier’s Black Cherry Balm Dotcom.
I recently worked on naming a new pick-up truck for Sinotruck, so the Chinese automotive industry has been on my mind. Chinese car brands are revving up for a big 2025, with a third of Brits ready to buy one. Producing over 30 million vehicles in 2023, China’s massive car industry—though young—has already become the world's largest. Innovation, affordability, Brexit and China’s global ambitions are clearly steering this next wave of growth in the UK.
From Chicago
Mia, remember when pickles & cherries were hot in the exercise recovery space? I agree, it’s fun to see them come back around as a flavor and fragrance profile (in addition to a functional ingredient). Pickles are popping here too. I spotted Donna’s during my shop the other day, not to mention an entire section of “snacking pickles.” In all honesty, I’d take cherry over pickle as a flavor profile any day, but I think we might still be stuck in our strawberry days here in America. From vinegar to “Healthy Soda,” it’s all about strawberries (strawberries + rose, strawberries + vanilla, strawberries + hibiscus, strawberries + basil).
Did you catch that last link? “Healthy Soda.” It’s a Capital-Letter thing now. And it’s Slice 😬. Yes, that’s right— one of the most hoodwinky healthy sodas of the 80s and 90s is back with a new look that resembles Olipop (or is it Poppi?) and a new recipe that— I guess— gives the brand the street cred and confidence to call itself “Healthy Soda.” In recent years, we’ve seen many low-sugar, low-cal, all-natural, functional sodas launch with near-healthy claims like “Soda With Benefits” and “A New Kind of Soda™,” but none that have outrightly used the “H”-word. The story I tell myself is that they all originated as “Healthy Soda” on concept boards, and then corporate was like, “Oh, no, no, no— we’re not dying on that sword.” But apparently, the new Slice team is feeling bold in the brand’s third-time-around comeback. Slice had two failed re-launch attempts in 2018 and 2022 under different ownership and different positioning (“natural soda”). We’ll see if “Healthy Soda” does it for them. But, in the end, we all know it will come down to taste. If people love the new Slice taste, they’ll convince themselves it’s healthy, and the brand will have a fighting chance. If they hate the taste— because they’re comparing it to 80s and 90s Slice— well, “good-bye” again.
Here’s how new Slice stacks up vs. Olipop and Poppi. You tell me. Is Slice really a stand-out and worthy of the claim “Healthy”? That’s it— I’m going back to bars. Many of the new, exciting launches in body, skin, and hair care these days seem to be in bar form. It all started with Pharrell Williams’ body bar in 2021 under his Humanrace line. Then along came Flamingo Estate’s soap bricks, JŌDE’s aromatherapy bars, and Topicals’ cleansing bar. I’ll admit, I clung to the convenience of gels and balms in pumps and squeeze bottles a little too long. My hang-up with bars was always, “Where am I going to put that thing when it’s wet?” and “How do I travel with it?” Well, here you go. This oh-so-stinking-cute brand has it all: bars for every occasion in the most magnetic scents plus travel cases and “life preservers” for draining and drying. I’m obsessed!
Dip black “life preservers” and bars; image courtesy of Dip website. For brands, self-deprecating humor is risky. But when it works, it works. For all of you non-parents out there, let me briefly paint the picture of one very annoying and stressful parental task: signing up for summer camps. It starts in October, mere weeks after your children have gone back to school, with a sudden flurry of emails (usually from moms) about finding camps, coordinating dates, and the obligatory “I can’t believe we’re talking about summer already” complaint. Come November and December, pre-registration for the most popular camps is in full swing, and most parents have had at least one mental breakdown while navigating through the series of uploads, downloads, checkboxes and short-answer questions about their child’s temperament and coping skills only to have the website shut-down. By the time February rolls around and parents are looking to fill that tenth week of summer with yet another camp, they’ll literally take anything— knife throwing… race car driving… so long as their kid is out of the house and not glued to a screen, it’ll do. Recognizing the irony in this and parents’ end-of-their-rope need for a laugh, one local Chicago camp owner positions himself and his camp as a complete trainwreck… and it’s hugely successful. From his FAQs:
Real FAQs from a real camp that has a waitlist of parents and kids eager for a chance to attend. In case you’re wondering, our links are never sponsored.
