Despite the rise of online storefronts, high schoolers still want to buy their prom dresses in-person. The opportunity is bigger than ever.

The spiraling drama between Alex Cooper and Alix Earle has underscored a new opportunity: brands getting stuck into online discourse. Does it pay dividends or divide followers?

Join us for our next BoF Professional Masterclass on Wednesday, May 20, at 17:00 BST / 12:00 EDT as case study author Lei Takanashi and a panel of experts exploring how brands cultivate hype through community-based storytelling, the role of hero products, and intimate retail experiences that turn customers into believers.

Hype is often misunderstood as fleeting or superficial, but it’s ultimately about getting consumers excited and offers brands a powerful means to cut through noise and capture attention. With shoppers tiring of viral marketing stunts, however, brands need a new playbook that can deliver sustained cultural momentum.

Ahead of the season-three finale of “The Comeback”—which is now streaming on HBO Max—Kudrow sat down with Vogue to chat about saying goodbye to Valerie Cherish, for good this time.

The episode opens with Cassie licking her toes. Within 24 hours of Brandon Fontaine tagging her, you see, she’s gained 17,000 new subscribers and counting. Maddy, her manager, has been “working her to the bone,” Rue narrates. Cue the montage of Maddy waking Cassie up early every morning to make content: ASMR of her breasts rubbing together, personalized videos doing small penis humiliation, whispering the names of men from every race and creed imaginable into a microphone—your basic OnlyFans stuff.

As hard as Cassie’s working, Maddy’s working too, mailing off Cassie’s used underwear to fans and even offering to perform the “fart in a jar” request that one such user has made for $700. Cassie points out that no one will know the difference. It’s all part of Cassie’s big plan to get rich and famous, and also to help Nate pay back his debts. Yes, Cassie is still in contact with Nate, who, it turns out, is totally supportive of what she’s doing. He has to be, anyway—she’s been wiring him $35,000 here and there, though it’s still not anywhere near enough to get him out of trouble. Even though Cassie’s the one “bringing home the bacon,” with Nate fully cucked at home, encouraging her to make erotic videos with Brandon Fontaine, Cassie goes on a series of podcasts to promote edgy manosphere talking points.

“American men are treated like second-class citizens,” she says on one podcast, before telling a stunned Trisha Paytas, putting on her best vocal fry for her cameo, “If a man says he wants a girl who can cook or clean, he might as well be screaming the N-word.” It’s especially ironic given Cassie’s breakdown at her wedding reception when she told Nate she wasn’t going to be a cooking-and-cleaning kind of housewife after all. It’s also clearly a meta-commentary on Sydney Sweeney’s ongoing MAGA allegations. “You sound like a Democrat,” a male podcast host says at one point. Cassie looks at the camera, giggling, and says, “I’m not retarded.”

"You know what's funny?" Maddy says. "The angrier these idiots get, the more money you make." Are we the idiots?

Maddy clearly doesn’t think her client is the smartest, either. She tells Cassie to put “her big sweet heart and stick it in the fucking freezer,” because Nate is going to be entitled to 50% of all her earnings, and he’s already leeching off her. There’s one thing Maddy and Cassie can definitely agree on: Cassie is going to be huge.

This belief gets played out in a surreal sequence, where Cassie grows into an Attack of the 50 Foot Woman-style giantess, bursting out of her catsuit and stomping all over downtown Los Angeles while helicopters try and fail to stop her. Massive Cassie shows up outside the office of a man pleasuring himself to one of her videos—a fetish video of her sticking a tiny male figurine in between her breasts—and literalizes the moment, taking her top off and pressing her building-size chest against the office windows until they burst.

"Big lady, get on your knees,” a military helicopter pilot orders Cassie. “Back away from the building and get on your knees. Lethal force will be used if you do not comply.” She brushes past him and “Jesus Saves” written in neon lights, before stomping off to the Hollywood sign, dropping to the ground and thanking God while Los Angeles burns behind her.

"She knew this was her destiny—to triumph, to conquer, to win,” Rue narrates. "The world was hers. She had finally been unleashed."

Back at Alamo’s ranch, we revisit the events of the last episode, where Rue became an informant for the DEA, and Big Eddy let the safe get robbed. So far, it’s only Big Eddy taking the heat. He’s still in the hospital after being shot in the stomach, and Alamo threatens to finish the job himself as Rue listens on. They vow again to get back at Laurie’s crew, raiding her farm and “taking back what’s theirs.” When Kidd (Asante Blackk), one of Alamo’s workers, accidentally buys him pants that don’t fit, Alamo flips out, offended that Kidd thought of him as being a smaller man than he is. Size is a theme here, and Alamo nearly kills Kidd, holding him down and stabbing the desk next to his head with an ice pick.

There’s more violence to come, though. Later, Alamo asks to see Rue alone, “for the first time since the robbery,” in what will surely be the most nerve-wracking 1:1 an employee can have with their boss. As Rue waits, she watches Bishop put on a plastic Tyvek-style suit and gather duct tape, rope, and an electric handsaw. He tells Rue he thinks she’s brought bad luck to Alamo’s crew: "I'm of the belief that certain people are cursed," he tells her. "Ever since you came around, there's been a cascade of trouble. I'm not saying you got a 666 inscribed on the back of your skull, but something about you gives me the heebie jeebies." He plugs the saw in and sends Rue on her way. We cut to Bishop, the heebie-jeebiest character since Laurie, for what it’s worth, entering a plastic-covered bathroom with his saw where Big Eddy is bound and gagged, screaming for his life.

Rue has a conversation with Alamo, who seems to have TCM on in the background with Rita Hayworth doing her famous Gilda hair flip. There’s a redhead strewn out on Alamo’s couch, too. He tells Rue he’s “no monkey” of Laurie’s as he plays a small trumpet. He also questions Rue about Laurie’s farm, since she used to live there, and whether she can draw a map of the place. Rue says that Laurie is probably keeping the money they stole in her basement, but Alamo says, "What she got is a whole lot fucking more valuable than money."

In the next scene, Bishop is standing over a pig trough, watching the pigs eat—and presumably, they are eating Big Eddy.

In case you forgot about Rue’s DEA situation, she has a meeting with the agents under a bridge in a sketchy part of town. Rue tries and fails to get Laurie to incriminate herself over the phone so that the DEA can start a wiretap, but she finds success with Wayne, who’s lying on the couch watching Pretty Woman with Faye, and immediately references Rue being their “drug mule.” Bingo.

Cassie and Maddy have some things to clear up. Brandon has been in Cassie’s ear, trying to convince her to sign with him and his TikTok house—where he has an entire content team employed—rather than Maddy, who is an assistant and “just another Hollywood leech.” Pot, meet kettle. Cassie visits Maddy at her apartment to break the news that she’s leaving her for Brandon, catching Maddy in her lie that she lives in a doorman building. Maddy plays it cool and says she doesn’t care, then fakes a phone call canceling Cassie’s audition for LA Nights. Cassie breaks immediately, agreeing to sign a contract with Maddy instead.

There was no audition, but Maddy strong-arms Lexi into getting Cassie a chance to be on the show. Cassie shows up to the studio in a Blumarine butterfly top, playing the part of a bubbly, ditzy, bouncy blonde, reading off her measurements—37, 25, 37—and blowing kisses for the camera. But then, she breaks out a scene from Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra—Cleopatra’s “monologue of defiance.” It’s kind of…good? Lexi sees her bosses watching it on the monitors, and though they seem to be laughing at Cassie, they’re also impressed. "That's your sister?" Patti Lance asks. "If she can do Shakespeare, she can do LA Nights." Even though she’s the one who put Cassie up for the audition, Lexi is horrified and furious that Cassie used her name.

Lexi tells an ecstatic Cassie that she got the part. "I'm gonna be on TV!” Cassie screams. “This is just the beginning. You, me, LA Nights. I'm gonna be fucking famous. I'm not even gonna be able to walk down the street. I'm gonna be a household name!”

"You are literally the most selfish, narcissistic person I have ever met," Lexi tells her, preparing to walk out the door.

"But that's what it takes to make it in this town," Cassie squeals. As she stuffs more used underwear into bubble envelope mailers, she starts crying with joy.

We check in with Jules and are confronted with the limitations of her seemingly glamorous life. She and Rue are hanging out in the daytime, drinking wine and talking about high school. Jules brings up Rue’s former intimacy issues—in past seasons, you might recall, the main issue in their relationship was that Rue never wanted to have sex. Jules presses Rue on what she wants from her. "You come over here, you lie around, you look at me like you have something to say, but you never say it. I feel like I'm back in high school." She dares Rue to kiss her. "You want me? Make me yours."

The scene cuts to later at night, where Jules is moaning during sex, but it’s not with Rue. It's been a while since we've seen Ellis, or Jules’s “landlord,” as Rue called him, and unfortunately, he's back. He finds one of Rue’s shirts on the floor, which is, for some reason, monogrammed with her initials, and he’s angry. "You're bringing guys to my apartment and fucking them when I'm not here?"

"I give you a lot of freedom, but I got kids," he tells Jules. "I got a wife. I cannot be coming home with a fucking STD." She tells him it's not like that, but he’s livid. "I like you, but I love my family, and I will not put them at risk," he says, coldly throwing Rue's shirt at Jules, who has tears in her eyes.

We also get a quick Nate check-in. For a moment, he’s doing well. Cassie has just transferred him another $30,000, and he’s day-drinking in his pajamas, dancing to old records on vinyl. His busted-up face even looks kind of healed. But it doesn’t last long. One of Nas’s goons breaks into the house with a golf club and chases Nate up the stairs, ripping off his toe again and cutting off a finger for good measure. Outside, a little girl rides by on a tricycle down their idyllic suburban street, as Nate can be heard faintly screaming in the background. He really just can’t win.

Back at the Silver Slipper, Rosalía’s Magick finds a bag of coke in her locker and brings it to Alamo, telling him that Rue framed her. She reiterates what she was telling Big Eddy right before the robbery—that Rue was questioning Kitty about whether she was being trafficked, and that Rue can’t be trusted. It’s news to Alamo that Magick was present that night, and he gets more details from her, including a damning one for Rue: that she didn’t seem to immediately recognize the voices of Laurie’s crew.

Rue, meanwhile, is having dinner with Maddy at a diner. Maddy explains that she's removed all emotion from her dealings with Cassie. It's all business now. "Equanimity," Maddy explains. "Everything is as it should be. It's all equal." She adds that she’s “reached a state of pure harmony." Rue doesn't buy it, but Maddy says, "It all goes back to Jesus,” and reminds Rue to keep reading her Bible. "Jesus teaches us to be in the world, but not of the world, right? That's basically what I'm saying."

As they’re talking, Alamo approaches the table, spurs clinking on his boots. We’re fully in the Western noir territory promised this season. He introduces himself to Maddy and compliments her nails, joining them at the table. Maddy knows that Alamo is Rue’s boss and that he owns strip clubs, but clearly has no idea just how dangerous he is. She asks where he’s from, and he explains: “I didn't have the fortune of growing up in a safe place like Rue. Nice suburban street. Cute little house. The American dream didn't really factor for me."

"My boss knows literally nothing about me or my family," Maddy says. Alamo replies that it's important to know about your employees, "or you won't know who's working for you or against you." He’s obviously on to Rue, and he tells her that G and Bishop are waiting for her outside and are going to give her a ride somewhere vague. Rue is worried about leaving Maddy alone with Alamo, although she really should be worried about herself. Maddy can hold her own.

Rue gets in the car with G and Bishop. She asks where they're going, and G says, "to another place." Not exactly comforting, and even worse, they take her phone.

Back at the diner, Maddy is opening up to Alamo. "That's what I didn't respect about my dad," she says. "He just accepted his fate." Maddy tells Alamo that the one thing missing from her life is money, and about her plan to manage more OnlyFans stars. Hollywood made $8 billion last year, and OnlyFans made $7 billion, she says. "A lot of money is being left on the table.” Alamo agrees that people are afraid of the stigma of sex work and are too caught up in being seen as "good people” to cash in. "I'm not," Maddy says. "I'm not either," he replies. Maddy and Alamo are a truly diabolical combo.

"Within six months, my top girl, Cassie, could be bringing in a million a month," Maddy tells Alamo. She shows him a picture of Cassie, and he says he has girls just like her that they could make money off of together. Maddy says she wants to “see the inventory first,” adding, "You might have some busted-ass girls." They drive off to the Silver Slipper together, where Maddy surveys the dancers like cattle at an auction. She chooses #7 and #15—Kitty and Magick, of course.

At the ranch, Bishop, G, and Kidd make Rue dig a hole “up to her throat.” It’s not looking good for Rue, and once she’s finished digging, they immediately start burying her up to her head. "I don't know what I did to deserve this, but this is extreme," she says. "Who even thinks of this shit?" Indeed. Having brokered a deal with Maddy, Alamo is back home, saddling up his horse and talking about trust. "Some people don't even deserve to be trusted," he tells the horse. It's morning now, and Rue is begging the guys to get her out of the hole she’s buried in. Alamo picks up a riding crop with a mallet on the end and comes galloping down the hill on his horse, swinging the crop toward her head. She screams for her life, and as Alamo descends on Rue, the scene cuts to black.

Is Rue really dead? It seems unlikely, given that we still have three episodes left, including a finale that’s HBO’s longest ever episode, but anything can happen in Euphorialand. Stay tuned for next week, when we’ll find out if Maddy is an even better pimp than Alamo, and if Nate got his toe and finger on ice quick enough this time to get them both sewn back on.

Just outside of Venice in the former industrial port of Marghera, Golden Goose once again transformed its creative headquarters into one of Biennale week’s more unexpected destinations. This year, for the third installment of Haus—Golden Goose’s ongoing cultural platform dedicated to art, craft, and community—the brand handed the keys over to Los Angeles creative studio Playlab, Inc., whose founders Archie Lee Coates IV and Jeff Franklin are best known for building immersive worlds that sit somewhere between installation, fashion spectacle, and childhood fantasy.

Over the past two decades, Playlab has been shaping unforgettable visual moments in fashion and pop culture. The duo worked closely with Virgil Abloh for years, crafting some of his most ambitious runway sets for Louis Vuitton along with multidiscplinary projects, installations and campaigns for the likes of Marc Jacobs and Nike. Their work often feels playful, surreal, and slightly absurd—think: oversized inflatable objects, hidden jokes, and cartoonish color palettes filtered through a distinctly emotional lens. That sensibility made them a natural fit for Golden Goose, which collaborated with Abloh and Off-White back in 2016 on one of the designer’s earliest sneaker partnerships.

This year’s Haus installation, titled The Forest For The Trees, transformed the massive warehouse space into an interactive storybook inspired, in part, by the hand-drawn animation of Disney’s Bambi (1942). Guests began by tossing a leaf into water before wandering through a sequence of theatrical environments: painting miniature wooden trees, walking through sensory tunnels of woodland sounds and light projections, and eventually arriving inside a sprawling handcrafted forest built by Italian artisans. The evening concluded with a vegan dinner in which hors d’oeuvres—cheese bon bons, crispy edible leaves, and a “basket” of asparagus dip—were “planted” within seemingly endless moss-covered tablescapes, only furthering the interactive affair.

Speaking to press before the night unfolded, Golden Goose CEO Silvio Campara explained that he considers himself the “Chief Emotion Officer”, noting that, in an era increasingly shaped by the neverending, impersonal scroll of digital consumption, the most successful luxury brands must offer something tactile and human in order to thrive. “It isn’t about the brand,” he explained, emphasizing the importance of experiences and collaboration over just product. “People need to feel something.”

Just days after the Met Gala, it looks like Rihanna took some cues from the exhibition celebrating the body as art, with a chaotic scribble by her three children inked on her leg.

Calling it discourse would be too kind.

A certain mega pop star is being mentioned...

© Monica Schipper

© Dustin Satloff

Italian daily la Repubblica reported, ‌without citing sources, that Armani ​CEO Giuseppe Marsocci is preparing a business plan ⁠as he moves to appoint two advisers to oversee ‌the sale.

© Alessandro Garofalo