Kylie Jenner’s questionable partnership

0:07This episode of Stylish is brought to you by Prime Video's addictive new series Elle, based on Elle Wood's bougie teenage life in 90s Bel-Air before she became that Harvard Law student. Watch it now exclusively on Prime Video. Hello, happy Friday. This is Stylish, the podcast for all things fashion, brand, beauty and lifestyle. But because it is a Friday, it's the episode where we get to focus on brand, campaign, those how did they get their career stories. One of my personal favourite corners of Stylish. And I'm very excited because I am your host, Madison Sullivan Thorpe, and I am joined by Naima Fatima.

0:46Naima, hi. Hi, how are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm good. I was just saying to Maddie that every time I come in here, I've got a random hair accessory on that I then have to take off in them just before recording because it doesn't fit with the headphones. Today was a cap. Yeah. The other week was a headband. Yeah. And they really make the outfit. I love the cap. It was, is that a shameless media cap? No, it wasn't. Next time. Maybe that's why it didn't work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like the cap wouldn't allow it. Yeah. Well, you know, you've come in without a hair accessory. I've come on with like mascara and a touch of blush because I had a facial feeling a little overexposed.

1:21So I'm hoping that people are listening in audio, not watching via Instagram. You look great. What are we talking about today? Today we are talking about Kylie Jenner and the Metaglasses. There is so much to unpack in that, but before we do, it is your turn to do Word of the Week. Yes, it is Word of the Week and I've got one word so proud of myself. My word is quizzes. Quizmaster? No, just quizzes. Just quizzes. No, I have been trying to nail down a Saturday morning routine at the moment, one where I don't instantly get up and scroll and, you know, just like resetting my nervous system from the week, I would say.

2:01I think I've nailed it down. So it's a wake up, make a coffee, make breakfast and do this run of quizzes. Great. So I'm obsessed with doing a quiz. I've gotten like my entire a friendship group onto them. You'll often see us if we're at a pub on a Friday night, we're doing the weekly 50. On my 30th birthday, I made every single person do the quiz with me. I just love doing them. I think it's like such a fun group activity. But I wanted to share with everyone my run of the perfect quizzes for a Saturday morning. So you start with the weekly 50. You do the Saturday quiz time, which is 25 questions.

2:39They also have a who am I, which is really fun. So you have to guess who the person is with clues. And then you go into the good weekend quiz, which is the one that I'm the worst at because that's a little bit more history and, you know, less pop culture based, let's just say. You're like, I know where I thrive. Yeah. So it's almost like you go from best or easiest to hardest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I start with high scores and then by the end, I don't care as much anymore. You're like, I've tasted victory. I'm good. Yeah, yeah. I've done good in one of them. I love that. I also love that you do it with your friends on the Friday at the pub.

3:08Yeah, it's so fun. Like one drink in, perfect amount. Perfect amount of courage. Yeah, perfect amount of courage. To say it with conviction. Yeah, I'm like that meme with like all the things spinning around. I'm like I've unlocked a part of my brain. I know these things. Is there a drink count where we must not do the quiz after? Yeah, three drinks is not an ideal place to be doing that anymore. No one's getting a high score. No, but it's still fun. We love fun and we love a quiz. Yeah, but I hope everyone tries it out this weekend. Do you think that you'll like graduate from quiz into trivia?

3:39I love trivia, but I like that I can do this in my own home, you know, or at the pub. With the coffee and scrambled eggs. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, let's get into what we're talking about. And as you mentioned, we are talking all things Kylie Jenner and Meta. And we're chatting about it because last week the news broke that Kylie Jenner has teamed up with Meta to launch the newest smart glasses called Starfire alongside two other sets of sunglass styles, the Fury and the Adventurer. Yeah. These kind of sound like, I don't know, superheroes that like setting up makeup. I was thinking WWE, like wrestlers.

4:16You know. Oh yeah, sorry, you're the expert. Well, no, I was UFC expert, WWE. You know, they're like cousins, they're not siblings. They are actually retailing for$629 AUD. Which I want to stop there and earmark that because when we're talking$629 AUD for a pair of sunglasses, like it's cheaper to go and buy a pair of like designer sunglasses from like Saint Laurent or Prada would offer a pair of sunglasses cheaper than that. I agree. And also I would say sunglasses are the most like lost item in my wardrobe. I always lose a pair of sunglasses. I'd be pretty annoyed if I lost a$629 pair of sunglasses.

4:561 ,000%. Kylie and Meta teamed up with Esalor Loxodica to design these glasses. She said, you know, pretty vocally that she's had quite an active part in designing the look and feel of these. This isn't the first time they've partnered as well. Esalor Loxodica actually owned Ray-Ban. So the first kind of iteration that we saw was also through them. Yes. And I feel like if you don't know, this is not the first time Meta had a sunglass. Yes. So when you're saying they teamed up with Ray-Ban, yes, they had a collaboration and it's not the first time they've used a celebrity. But we kind of want to dissect in this episode why we think they've tapped Kylie Jenner of all people on the shoulder and really dissect whether we think Kylie has influence and pull over a female demographic.

5:39Yeah. And there's kind of that's the first part. And the second part is like smart glasses as a total category. I think wearable technology is not a new concept to any of us. It kind of feels like we've been growing up with it and we've kind of watched it boom the last few years. I have also seen smart glasses all over my feed. I also saw a collaboration between Korean giants Gentle Monster and Google. So not the first one I've seen recently, but definitely the one that's made the biggest splash, I think, on social. Before we kind of go into it, I think we should answer what are the kind of the features of these glasses that Kylie has designed.

6:15They've got an array of AI features. They've got a built-in camera that can take photos and record. They also let you take calls. There's a speaker on them. And you can interact with an AI assistant, which is actually voiced by Kylie Jenner. I mean, it sounds more like an iPhone that you just put on your face. Yeah, literally. But you've got a new Siri, really. We've had Meta's rival Snapchat also launch smart glasses in the last month. Yeah. And price tag a lot more eye-watering. $2 ,200 a pair of sunglasses. Also lent on a whole host of celebrity names. NBA player Jimmy Butler, model Kaia Gerber.

6:57We had rapper Jack Harlow. Yeah, the asterisks on that. The term rapper loose. And look, as you can imagine with a$2 ,200 price point, shareholders were not exactly thrilled with the launch. Snapchat's share price plummeted 10 % on the day of the announcement. That's rough. I would not want to be a shareholder of Snapchat that day. No. We're going to get into all of this and dissect Kylie and the launch, but that will be right after a word from today's sponsor. There are some fictional characters who stay with us long after the movie has ended, and Elle Woods is absolutely one of them. Even though Legally Blonde was released 25 years ago, her character is still one of the most iconic to grace our screens.

7:40Whether you were around for the original movie or not, I'm going to guess you're familiar with Elle, her story and obviously her wardrobe. So you're going to love this news. Prime Video has just released a prequel TV series that explores Elle Wood's teenage years before she became that Harvard Law student. This time we meet her as a 16-year-old living her best life in Bel-Air in the 90s with a wardrobe full of glossy pink outfits and her future as a popular cheer captain all planned out. But then in true coming-of-age drama fashion, everything changes when her family moves to Seattle after a reputation-crushing social disaster.

8:18Cue grunge culture, rainy weather and plenty of teen angst. If Prime Video knows one thing, it's how to deliver a series that becomes a full cultural obsession. Elle definitely belongs on your list. Watch Elle now exclusively on Prime Video and thank you so much to Prime Video for making this episode of Stylish possible. to announce the launch and the debut of the glasses and collaboration with Kylie as the face of this particular style they shared an ad to social media and by they I mean meta now look any video with Kylie Jenner is going to garner attention but I did have to have a little bit of a giggle at this ad because it kind of felt like three ads brought into one at the start it felt very much King Kylie era.

9:05We had Kylie out in the desert with this big billboard. It opens with these spray painting hands. It honestly looked more like the intro of like a Coachella set of like, you know, when all the billboards are out in the desert. And then we kind of cut to like this footage of Kylie in a very luxe home, opening mail, playing with her cat. It's kind of as discombobulated as it sounds. And then in between each of these scenes is kind of this very AI looking pink backdrop of these glasses kind of hovering in the sphere and to be honest it kind of looked like one of those ads that like when your aunt gets hacked you know saying ray-bans $89 and you know she's lost her Instagram login yeah it was like all three of those brought together yeah we've got a little snippet of the ad that we're going to play for you now so you can listen to snippets of it hey meta take a picture

10:03hey meta turn it up

10:11oh thank you hey meta translate this

10:22yeah i'm not sure how much you got from that visually but we'll link it in our show notes so you can go have a look. This wasn't obviously the only piece of content that went out. There was quite a lot that dropped over the period of like a week. I agree with you. I found the ad quite stitched together, a bit hodgepodge. I'm sure it cost millions of dollars, but it did feel a bit like we've filmed multiple things and then we've attached them together. I think before we go into the glasses themselves, I want to ask you, Maddie, why Kylie? Look, it's an interesting question. I I guess it raises a lot of deeper questions because I think obviously this is a product that is trying to target the demographic of young females.

11:03And even when we were, you know, having our editorial meeting on this, we were discussing a lot of, is it Gen Z? Is it millennial? Look, I think it's a bit of column A, column B. I think the reality is Kylie is in her late 20s. She's very much in the cultural zeitgeist right now and has been for some time, thanks to the family that she is a part of. And I think, you know, the question is not why Kylie, because Kylie is, you know, I think the fifth or sixth most followed person on Instagram. So there's like, yes, we know why they've picked Kylie based on the following. I think the question is like, does Kylie influence us to buy these glasses?

11:39I think it's a good question to ask. I've kind of gone back and forth on this. If we look at, you know, what her influence is at the moment she's got 382 million Instagram followers, not, you know. Just a small little quantity. Yeah, nothing to laugh at. But I think in that for me is like how much of that is also an engaged community. If you look through her Instagram, the engagement rate is really high. But I would say that she has attached herself to multiple businesses, ones that she's, you know, created and built herself and also other businesses. Totally. And I think when people think Kylie Jenner, what comes to top of mind will ultimately be Kylie Cosmetics, her most successful brand without a doubt.

12:20But also at the moment, she has the brand Kai and the brand Sprinter, which is an alcoholic beverage drink that's now gone into electrolytes as well. But there kind of is, and I don't want to sound, you know, really snarky in this, but there is a graveyard of brands that have been before that. There was Kylie Baby, which was a baby's sort of bath care, skincare line. There was Kylie Swim, which I mean, pretty self-explanatory there. No, she was not building outdoor pools. She was in fact doing swimwear. And she was also a stakeholder in a vitamin water brand called Glow Beverages. So it's not the first time we've seen Kylie attach her name to something.

12:57In fact, we've seen Kylie quite literally put her name on a product and brand rather than just being the face of it. Yeah. And she's covered a lot of different categories in those as well. Two of those at the moment are actually going through a rebrand. You mentioned Sprinter, which I think is the strangest rebrand of all time to me, sorry, going from an alcoholic beverage to a skincare glow drink. It would literally be the equivalent of like Barry's or Recorder Leg going, we're actually about electrolytes. Yeah. Forget everything. It's not even living alongside. It's not like, take this after you've drank us.

13:31It's like, this is like cruisers going. Into boost juice. Like literally that's what it feels like. She's also going through a bit of a rebrand to my understanding for her clothing brand Kai. They've recently taken on a new CEO who is the ex-CEO of Ghani. Yes and she's also ex-deputy chief executive of Balenciaga. So I mean pretty great stable of brands to have come from but bringing on a new CEO definitely signals refreshed redirection. These are all pretty recent stories as well so there's a lot going on in the business land of Kylie. Yeah. And I think like, as I said up top, Kylie Cosmetics is probably the first brand you think of when you think Kylie Jenner.

14:14And, you know, we cannot deny the success of that brand and that sale for her. So Kylie sold a controlling stake of the business Kylie Cosmetics to Koty in 2019 for a cool$600 million. So I think it's safe to say this is not an unsuccessful businesswoman, despite the fact that I did mention a graveyard. The reality is I'm sure the losses on those have been far outweighed by the sale of Kylie Cosmetics. But Kodi's share price is also really struggling at the moment. And Kodi also invested in Kim Kardashian's line of beauty alongside Kylie's. And I think sentiment in the market is that Kylie Cosmetics is not the unicorn darling it once was in the beauty world.

14:51That is something I do think that this is such a sidebar, but I do think the Kardashians do very well is letting go of a product and like just moving on to another one of like they have so many brands but they're so willing to like give it a go and then go on to another one. Totally and I think you know they fail fast and they fail forward like they're happy to attach really quickly and detach just as quickly. I guess it raises a question though because you know at the start of this ep you asked what influence does Kylie have and who are we trying to influence with this. The million dollar question to come back to is like, you know, is she influential if these brands can't work?

15:29Yeah. And is she influential if she has attached herself to so many? Yeah. And it's funny because if we go inside the Kardashian, Jenner, you know, monstrosity that it is. Yeah. Kris Jenner's bio. The full list. Do you know what? Devil works hard. Kris Jenner works harder. But if we go into that and we look at Kim, Kim kind of created the blueprint, I guess, in the early noughties, tens of attaching her name to everything. This is a woman who was attached to sketches, waist trainers, detox teas, apps, Kimoji, you name it, and then launched Skims, which now sits at an over billion dollar valuation.

16:07And I think, you know, has made a really beautiful transition to attaching herself or detaching herself, shall I say, to a lot of what she previously did and is really single-minded in going after this. Like it is worth mentioning how much Kylie is reported to have gained from this deal because it's reported to be 25 to 30 million USD. It's not anything to laugh at is it? It's like it's so much money. It's so much money and so for me I think you know Kylie's relevance is not so much in product but in culture. Yeah. So for me I think about the episode that she did with Jake Shane on Therapist and the conversation around smoking and cigarettes and kind of getting wasted with her friends and talking about the Birkin.

16:51I think her currency is social currency, not product conversion. That's kind of where I came to when I was really critically evaluating it. Do I think that someone will subconsciously think it's okay to have a drunk cig now because Kylie Jenner said it? Yes. Yes, I agree with you. But I don't think that Kylie wearing a gloss is going to make you go out and buy the gloss. Yeah, I agree with the cultural currency thing. If you asked me this question a year ago, I would have said she doesn't have much. This run up with Tim, Tim, my friend Tim. This run up that we've seen with Timothy and Marty Supreme, the NYX photos that we see, they're like, I've just seen a lot more of her on my feed.

17:31And I think she does have the most cultural relevance out of all of the Kardashian Jenners, in my opinion. Yeah. And sorry to, you know, bring up Kylie's relevance in terms of a man. I do feel bad about that. But I do think that is one of the main reasons I've been seeing her back in my zeitgeist. Yeah. And it extends beyond just, you know, Tim, as you call him, your bestie Tim. It is, you know, the fact that 2026 is being dubbed the return of 2016, of which she was, you know, the girl of the hour and, you know, rekindled friendship with Jordan Woods. I think there is a triage of reasons that Kylie is back in the zeitgeist.

18:09I understand what Meta are doing, trying to attach themselves to Kylie. Before this, I think they had Mark Zuckerberg to model these glasses. You know what I mean? Do you know what? I have no shame in saying this on Mike. He's not the coolest man in the world, especially not from a fashion sense. And I don't think he has the best reputation, especially if we want to move these glasses away from, I think, what the like Ray-Ban narrative around it was, which was like very like tech bro. Yeah. And I think he just does not have the pizzazz to sell that into a fashion space, even though he was front row at Prada this year.

18:47I don't think even Prada could save him. Yeah. Well, I mean, it makes sense that they did plant that. And it's like, it's so clear the direction they're trying to go in, you know, fashion. I watched a video with him around the launch and he said, you know, fashion first, technology second. You need to integrate the technology into something that is a good pair of glasses first. So it's so clear that what they're trying to use Kylie for here is more of that cultural moment and maybe like acceptance around it. Totally. And I think at the end of the day, you know, these are sunglasses that kind of look like, you know, a modeled down Celine or a Shavoke or a Love Loo, like these kind of sunglasses that you would buy on ASOS or the Iconic.

19:27Like they're very much in vogue. I wouldn't be shocked if I saw someone wearing them, unbeknownst to me, obviously, the technology integrated behind them. I think that's a good point, actually. Like I wouldn't really pick up on them on a street. They're such a common shape of glasses. Totally. And if we contrast this with the pair of tech glasses that Snapchat launched, the Snapchat glasses I would be going, that is a very interesting, rather bulky frame. like the sides of them. Yeah, Quokkable. I like that. Yeah. There is a part of me as well, I wonder, you know, in the room where they've got, I'm imagining photos up of all the people they wanted to collaborate with.

20:04I do wonder if there's a bit of a middle ground where maybe Kylie isn't the first person you think of from like a fashion point of view, but I don't know how many celebrities necessarily want to attach their name to this either. Yeah, I think Meta is probably a name that you would be wanting a really high price for if you were going to get into bed with them. I think where Kylie kind of came in though is that she is someone who loves taking pictures and documenting her life. Like even if we go back to, you know, the King Kylie era, 2016 is very much back. She was big on Snapchat. She's always kind of been probably the Kardashian-Jenner that has shared the most kind of unfiltered.

20:45Like, you know if we were going to play like most likely to she is most likely to be drunk with her phone out yeah well she grew up in that era 1000 so I think this feels like the grown-up extension of that behavior and also back in the day I don't know if you remember the brand key the sunglasses yes key sunglasses yeah and I remember how viral they went because Kylie Jenner was wearing them so I guess you could throw it back to that but I do think that point you made around, you know, she is the most likely to film is interesting because she's also the person who's lived her life under like surveillance the most.

21:22Like she's grown up being filmed. Totally. I think she was like nine or 10 when the show started. This is a child who has lived her life in the spotlight and under immense scrutiny. I think, you know, there's probably a power in her owning the camera rather than being the one behind it. And look, there's so much to unpack because we do want to get into kind of the tech side of it rather than just focusing on Kylie and the ramifications around all of it because it is so multi-dimensional. But Naima, we were sort of saying when we were chatting about this episode, like, what celebrity could you imagine attaching themselves to this product or range that would resonate with the same audience that we think Meta are trying to target with Kylie?

22:02I think Alex Earl. I think Alex Earl is like what Kylie was 10 years ago, like in that zeitgeist, in, sorry, not even in the zeitgeist, in my phone because Kylie was on Snapchat like 24-7. I could watch everything about her whereas I think Alex Earl is that version for 20-year-olds now. I completely agree. We're going to get into why we think the tech industry are targeting women but that will be right after a word from today's sponsor. 25 years after Legally Blonde hit our movie screens, changing fashion culture forever, Prime Video have just released Elle, the prequel TV series based on Elle Wood's bougie teenage life in 90s Bel-Air.

22:41We may or may not have squealed in the shameless office when we heard this news. In the series, Elle is on her way to be a popular cheer captain when her family moves to grungy Seattle, where her collection of bubblegum pink looks don't exactly fit in. This is made for a girl's weekend in. Catch Elle exclusively on Prime Video and thank you so much to Prime Video for making this episode as stylish possible. So I guess the key difference in the launch of Meta's Starfire versus their previous launch with Ray-Ban is that they're very clearly going after women. Do you think that women actually care about smart glasses?

23:19No, that's just a gut reaction. Sorry. Like, I don't know who is buying this? I don't think we care yet. Yeah. That's kind of where I land. You know, 10 years ago, no one cared about monitoring sleep or having a health score of it or was worried about like, you know, what their resting heart rate was during like an intense meeting or that their body hadn't gone through extreme heat and ice like, you know, you know, I'm like, maybe this is just the early phase. Yeah. I feel like such a Luddite. Like, I'm like, I don't think I want this. But I'm sure people also felt that about TikTok. Yes. And there was a really interesting social post that our senior podcast producer Kate came across that came from Dr.

24:05Sarah Susker, who's a sociotechnologist. And she wrote on Instagram, big tech knows new technologies rarely go mainstream until women adopt them. That's why products that feel unfamiliar or invasive get repackaged through beauty, fashion and wellness. Yeah, well, I mean, they've essentially marketed the problems that we were having, that women were very specifically having with the Ray-Ban version or other smart glasses, which is, you know, being filmed in public or there was a lot of like pickup artist content that exists on TikTok. And they've kind of repackaged that and sold it back to us. One thousand percent.

24:42And I mean, the irony is we've said beauty, fashion and wellness. Kylie has a beauty brand, a fashion brand and now a wellness brand. You know, I mean, I don't think sitting on Jake Shane talking about how a security always carries cigarettes so she can have a drunk cig should the moment spur really screams wellness. But she has a wellness brand. Like, you know, I don't think it's a surprise that they've kind of gone after someone who we think beauty. I mean, I think of a lip liner and I still think of Kylie Jenner to this day. And I mean, ironically, none of my lip liners are Kylie lip liners.