Outdoor Voices is back…
… with rhinestones. ✨💎
Hello everyone. Hope your sunset is as beautiful as this one:
Today’s letter includes: Ty Haney’s new chapter, Substack drama, and Dimes Square fast fashion!
Today’s letter is free thanks to David, America’s best protein bar. And also the sponsor of Feed Me job board (which includes EA to the CEO of The Atlantic! Brand director at Bumble!).
Tyler Haney is heading back to Outdoor Voices. “The only good news of 2025 so far,” read a comment on the brand’s Instagram post this morning announcing her return. The nostalgic video features clips of Haney (who started the “recreation brand” when she was 23) talking about launching the business after she graduated college, along with jump cuts of joyous customers dancing, hiking, and working out in the way OV hoped they would: by “doing things.”
Haney left the brand abruptly in 2020, telling The Cut in a 2023 interview that she was “pushed out.” Haney told The Cut that her ousting began when Mickey Drexler, the former Gap CEO, came on as chairman in 2017.
On Friday morning, I had a phone call with Haney about the exciting news. She told me that the breadth of products that OV would be coming out with would be expanding — think button-up shirts and zip-up hoodies. In addition to more products, there will drops of new items every 5-6 weeks. When I heard that, I immediately thought of endless opportunities for collaborations.
I haven’t seen much in the news today about the new logo, but I’m a fan. Emmett Shine of Little Plains, who designed it, posted a great caption about the re-imagined OV symbol which appears to be an excited figure raising their arms. “We used the geometry of the O & the V to create a dynamic logomark designed for movement, recreation …and doing things,” Shine wrote. In addition to Little Plains, Outdoor Voices has brought back Tiffany Wilkinson (“We’re keeping it in the family,” Ty told me on the phone) who led creative at the company for four years.
My summer house has basically been a bed and breakfast this past month, with me as the innkeeper. As I’ve done everyone’s laundry, it’s been surprising to see how many friends still work out in their original Outdoor Voices sports bras and shorts. It was always a bit of a bummer to see the brand taper off mid-stride when Ty left, and I think that’s why the response to this news on social media has been accompanied by so much curiosity and enthusiasm. And the new collection feels energetic. It has rhinestones, neon fabrics, and girl-of-the-moment Alice McNally (daughter of Keith).
LVMH might be offloading Marc Jacobs. According to WSJ, the brand could be valued at around $1B. And I am totally interested in this, but where is the relaunch of Marc Jacobs Beauty that I’ve been promised?
Alexis Ohanian is leaving the grifter founders of Miami behind and opening an office for his fund, 776, in Soho. Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI, and Thrive Capital all have offices close by.
Today’s Substack drama is a story about plagiarism. Last week, a writer named
wrote an essay about “compression culture” or how we are compressing all of our valuable content into summaries, blurbs, and hyperlinks. We aren’t appreciating or spending time with the work in front of us. It was all over my feed, and the story now has 11k likes and 4k re-posts — as a result, she was listed as the #1 new bestseller on Substack. A few hours after that ranking was given, published a newsletter claiming that Maalvika plagiarized one of her essays last year (which was eventually taken down after Katie reported her to Substack).“How are we then supposed to tell the good from the rotten, the authentic from the fake voices?
How can we even know what we truly think or feel if we never give ourselves time to chew on what we just consumed?
And how are we meant to generate anything genuinely new, anything that might bring humanity a step closer to a better, more just world, if all we see, and all we are, are copies of copies, reheated over and over again, stripped of nuance, soul, and humanness?”
The top comment reads, “She ought to be banned from Substack.” I reached out to both Maalvika and Katie for comment, but haven’t heard back yet.
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I kinda feel so old I just want to talk to all of gen z and explain the OV drama w a whiteboard. “Girlboss era 101” it’s a webinar and the zoom recording is sent after
I’m all over the plagiarism drama