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These lipsticks celebrate the Made in China label

Palace Museum lipsticks, China

Beijing – The Palace Museum has launched a range of six lipsticks that pay homage to China’s cultural and artistic heritage.

Unveiled on WeChat, each lipstick in the collection is inspired by an object in the Beijing-based Palace Museum, taking cues from ancient Chinese artworks. On the day of the collection’s launch, the museum received more than 1,000 orders for the locally made lipsticks and 100,000 WeChat page views. According to JingDaily, the collection’s popularity is down to its refined and sensitive interpretation of the aesthetics of Chinese history, something Western brands often fail to achieve.

Luxury brands such as Dolce & Gabbana have been twice accused of misappropriating oriental culture, driving consumers towards homegrown labels. ‘Today Chinese consumers seem to reward local brands for interpreting its [national culture],’ Tanguy Chen Laurent, managing partner at Creative Capital, tells JingDaily.

As explored in our Emerging Youth: China market, young consumers are losing interest in Western products and instead responding to the nuances of local brands.

Starbucks serves craft cocktails at new roastery

Starbucks Roastery, New York

New York – The brand’s latest, 23,000-square-feet roastery in New York’s Meatpacking district boasts an aperitivo bar serving unique coffee and tea cocktails.

The location is the fourth Starbucks Reserve Roastery, but is the first in the US to feature its Arriviamo Bar, featuring a menu of specialist cocktails created by mixologist Julia Momose. Drinks include the Nocino Notte, made with cold brew coffee, barrel-aged gin and black truffle salt, and the Triomphe, which combines Darjeeling tea, gin, dry Riesling, passionfruit sparkling water and orange saffron bitters.

Starbucks’ elevated alcohol offering, which sits alongside two craft coffee bars and an outpost of Milanese bakery Princi, reflects a growing trend for premium, experience-driven spaces from fast food and drink chains. The introduction of the Arriviamo Bar also builds on Starbucks’ previous efforts to expand into the evening category – something we explore in our High-low Dining microtrend.

L’Oréal’s latest shampoo tackles the water crisis

Paris – The beauty brand has teamed up with technology start-up Gjosa to create a shampoo for salons that is applied directly through a shower head.

Delivering L’Oréal’s specially created rinse shampoo, the low-flow shower head uses just two litres of water a minute, reducing the water and energy consumption required by nearly 70%. According to a statement from the brand, worldwide consumption of water is growing twice as fast as the global population, and by 2025 two-thirds of citizens could experience water scarcity (source: UN).

‘Initial results offer great perspectives for an innovation that visibly reduces the water consumption in our daily hygiene practices,’ says Laurent Attal, executive vice-president of research and innovation at L’Oréal. ‘This breakthrough technology is perfectly in line with our commitments to sustainable innovation.’

As well as offering an eco-conscious alternative to traditional shampoo, L’Oréal is tapping into rising demand for beauty and personal care products with multisensory methods of application.

Rinse shampoo by L’Oréal and Gjosa

Polarize is an app for debate and disagreement

Polarize

San Francisco – The new app has been created to connect people with opposing opinions, encouraging healthy debate on a range of topical issues.

Polarize is a response to the online echo chambers and ever-growing gap between social media users with different points of view. The chat application will present one topic a day, from headline news to public discussions on gun control, immigration and the legalisation of marijuana. After choosing one side of a debate, users will be connected to someone who disagrees with them.

Co-founder Morten Halvorsen says: ‘Social media has become highly curated. You’re served things you like and agree with from friends you [also] like and agree with. If we want the world to be less polarised, we need healthy conversations between people with different mindsets.’

As public awareness of algorithmic bias and filtering grows – particularly in the news sphere – peer-to-peer platforms like QallOut and Polarize are helping people break free of filter bubbles.

Stat: Generation X are the most phone-addicted media users

Young American adults are spending less time consuming media than Generation X, making the stereotype of the phone-addicted Millennial defunct, according to a new report by Nielsen.

The company’s Total Audience Report Q2 2018 reports that, as well as having the smallest media diet of any generation, 18–34-year-olds spend on average 20 minutes less on their smartphone each day than 35–49-year-olds, who are the heaviest phone users. In total, the average adult spends 10 hours 24 minutes consuming media each day – 33 minutes fewer than in the first quarter of 2018.

Although stereotyped as smartphone addicts, younger generations are beginning to shun their digital devices. In our new youth macrotrend Anxiety Rebellion, we introduce the concept of the Internet Diet, and how it may gain popularity among young adults in the coming years.

Thought-starter: Was investing in Monzo a bad idea?

Monzo has deftly leveraged its customer base into capital funding, but Moneywise deputy editor Edmund Greaves asks whether the habit of serious saving and investing is being ignored?

On 5 December, challenger bank Monzo achieved its goal of raising £20m ($25m, €22m) in under three days – one of the biggest and fastest rounds of fintech crowdfunding in the UK ever.

Getting Millennials to engage with finance is a bit of a holy grail for financial firms, but Monzo has an ace up its sleeve when it comes to engaging young people. At only three years old, the provider has grown astronomically, increasing its customer base from under half a million to more than 1.2m in less than a year. Dare some call it the Apple of banking? It is certainly tempting. But could Monzo really prove to be a similar golden egg-laying goose?

Read Edmund Greaves’ full Opinion here.