Americans Are Suiting Up Again & Ferrari’s Mocked First EV is Selling Fast

marketers tell us if this sounds familiar you invest in something that seems incredible like millions of views but then don't see any revenue instead invest in what looks good to your cfo linkedin ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks spend $250 on your first campaign on linkedin ads and get a $250 credit just go to linkedin.com slash mbd that's linkedin.com slash mbd terms and conditions apply good morning for daily show i'm neil freiman and i'm kayla lopez today abc pants are out and suits are back in and would you pay a professional to design your dorm room it's monday august 17th let's ride you might know toby hell as a pretty good podcast host well i'm pleased to report he is an even better wedding host it was spectacular the venue and the people stunning the speeches left not a single dry eye including my own and the party honestly didn't know toby had moves like that one of the best weekends ever for sure and made even more special by having our whole podcast squad to celebrate our favorite toby and his wife that also means he's out until friday so i'm excited to bring you all the news with excellent guest hosts including kayla lopez today through wednesday kayla thanks for being here yeah so excited i have definitely watched the the instagram stories of toby's wedding and it seemed amazing i also need you to confirm on some like hard-hitting journalism here i heard toby paid an etsy witch to make sure the weather was good is that real and it worked perfectly he did and the i think it was the best weather day of the year like it was absolutely beautiful no humidity and you never know with an outside wedding and in the summer so the etsy which i mean we will be using your services for more weddings to come in if he was going to do the podcast today i don't think toby could do it because i called him yesterday morning after the wedding and he just goes i mean i couldn't hear him he was just whispering his voice was completely gone so if you think mine's a little raspy toby was just like we were like that was such a fun one he goes it was outrageous it was so funny so toby congratulations uh again on your wedding was so much fun kayla i'm excited to do the the podcast with you this week and now a word from our sponsor rubric kayla what do you know about cyber security well just that chris from it says i'm considered a monumental risk that too but the truth is the old model of cyber security was built on protection safety nets recovery plans systems designed to withstand the last era and maintain the status quo it can't hold up in the present day the ai era demands confidence that you can secure and accelerate your business operations so nothing stops your momentum rubric can give you that confidence their platform helps you keep going by securing your data controlling your ai and protecting your identity built one architecture not stitched together after the fact to learn more about how rubric rewrote the industry rulebook head to rubric.com slash mb that's r-u-b-r-i-k.com slash mb step aside don draper this new era of mad men comes with a little more linen suits are making a comeback as people start dressing up again the pandemic era of work from home brought sweats and athleisure and more formal wear companies definitely felt the pain but that trend seems to be reversing while some of the resurgence is due to employees returning to office a large part of it is simply because people want to wear more suits brooks brothers ceo ken ohashi said they're seeing double digit growth in suits this year largely due to fashion suiting or more fun and colorful fabrics than your average gray three-piece other tailors are also seeing an increase in experimentation and personalization and this is playing out in the numbers last week ralph lorenne reported that he's been seeing an increase in the number of suits that he's seen in the last week ralph lorenne reported a 13 revenue increase for q2 in part due to strong performance from its inclusive luxury products another success tailored brands parent company of men's warehouse actually files for bank actually filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and closed over 400 stores but since then the company has grown as interest in suits has increased with the company filing to go public in july and reaching sales of 2.5 billion dollars last year neil it sounds like now might be the right time to invest in a pocket square i could have used one before this weekend certainly i'm interested in why people are dressing up again because we're seeing all these companies like ralph lorenne and men's warehouse just report booming sales double digit growth and seems to be a few factors one of them is people are going back to the office more i know it's 2026 and the pandemic seems in the rear view but every year that number inches up from 2025 to 2024 the average number of days required in office nationwide was up nine percent we had big employers like amazon and jp morgan call workers back to the office last year and another factor that some people are pointing to i know this doesn't sound so exciting but it might be a recession indicator because everything's a recession indicator these days but dressing up is seen as maybe the job market isn't as strong as you want so you have to really show put out your best self to the labor market to future employees and to the job market and to the employers to other people you're networking with to as as jobs are more scarce than typically maybe people dress up more that's one particular theory yeah you know they always say dress for the job you want so it makes sense another driver of this formal wear resurgence could be the use of glp-1 drugs for weight loss so about 11 of americans use glp-1s for weight loss specifically and more than two-thirds of those consumers using glp-1s say that sizing changes have made them more likely to shop in store according to writers so that could be another boon for these custom clothing providers as people perhaps want to either tailor their existing clothes or refresh their wardrobes as their appearance maybe shifts it's crazy to think about the boom and the bust of athleisure too so as we're seeing the rise in more formal wear and i can speak to this i mean i had three different out my soup bag this weekend was so heavy and i was like i'm and i was like i'm holding together this industry uh by myself athleisure has just gone it went parabolic in 2020 to 2023 and then it's fallen completely back down to earth like i don't even know if it's acceptable to wear uh lululemons out of the door anymore you have to put on actual tailored pants athleisure the entire industry was up 40 percent in terms of sales from 2022 to 2023 but then it has the bottom has completely fallen out from 2023 to 2025 growth in active wear was down seven percent i just looked at the lululemon and i was like oh my god that's a lululemon stock chart i mean yes it goes way up at the beginning of the pandemic but then it falls way back down starting in 2024 the stock is down 75 percent we're right now basically at baseline before the pandemic happened so even as we're seeing the rise in formal wear and people starting to dress up the the uh era of athleisure and people wearing sweatpants to work i am guilty of this uh has maybe fallen off as people go back to work uh people go to more weddings and events because that is the number one driver of the formal wear industry is weddings is number one back to work number two so it looks very interesting trend it's benefiting a lot of companies like coach like ralph loren but it's pretty interesting to see the bifurcation because not all the preppy retailers are doing that well j crew is not having a good year gap shares are down 18 so people as they go shop for nicer clothes aren't exactly doing it at all the places they're being picky picky and choosy and maybe that has to do with the fact that there's so much more to do with some of the marketing and the inventory that these brands are laying out moving on as ai companies and their employees get hella rich from surging valuations everyone else is going wait what about us a growing number of cities states and federal lawmakers are making a push this summer to force the ai industry to distribute some of its outside profits with the broader american population the epicenter is northern virginia home to data center alley the world's biggest collection of data centers as the new york times reports virginia in june became the first state to slap a small tax on data centers based on their electricity consumption because of how many data centers there are that small tax translates to 600 million dollars in revenue for the upcoming year others have floated more extreme ideas like senator bernie sanders proposing the u.s government take a big stake in the major ai firms and distribute the profits to americans in the form of one thousand dollar checks and it's not just democrats floating more radical concepts president trump a republican has also been a big part of the pandemic and is also mused about the government buying a stake in open ai chief among the concerns is that ai companies are not paying their fair share when building data centers critics say they burden small communities with higher power bills due to their electricity guzzling ways without providing sufficient economic benefits that's led some cities and states to reevaluate or pause entirely tax incentive schemes that lured big tech companies into town kayla the pie is growing but like me with a pizza cutter it's not being divvied up into equal slices yeah there's definitely a lot anxiety that's driving this and at the heart there are really two potential outcomes the first outcome is that ai creates a huge economic boom it supercharges valuations for companies and has an estimated 15 trillion dollars of economic output the flip side of that argument is that if ai doesn't live up to these super high expectations you could see another dot com style bubble burst that could have ripple effects across the global economy or it does live up to its high expectations but at the expense of potentially millions of jobs and industries that are inevitably going to be replaced by the technology so while we've seen a lot of hype about ai's potential it really feels like the full impacts of the tech may not be felt for some time but We're still definitely going to be anxious about it while we're waiting. Yeah, I think the main concern here is what you're seeing politicians respond to is that a ton of people, not a ton of people, a small amount of people are getting very rich off of this in Silicon Valley. These are the employees of OpenAI and Anthropic and Google and these places that are just, the valuations are soaring because of AI. But then when it comes to the normal people who fear that their jobs might be taken, that data centers are coming into their communities, they're saying, everyone, people are getting so rich, but what about us? And this has precedent, actually, many times over. I'm thinking one example is Alaska. So a few decades ago, they struck oil riches in Alaska, and that made the state extremely wealthy. And then they decided, OK, let's actually create a wealth fund that will actually pay out a dividend to the entire. population of Alaska because we just had dumb luck here and found oil, and we think we wanted to redistribute the profits of this oil wealth to Alaskans. And so they do have this thing called an Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend. It pays $1,200 for an eligible resident in Alaska. So there is precedent. There is history. There are examples of states and communities seeing huge revenues like they are, some of them with AI, and distributing it back to the people. Not everyone thinks it's a good idea, but proponents of more redistributive mechanisms can point to certain examples in history and say, look, when we found huge wealth, when we generated huge wealth, there is a precedent of us divvying it up to the people. Yes, and although that feels like maybe a very far-fetched or long process to create something like a sovereign wealth fund, there have been more smaller efforts to potentially impact regulation, specifically of data centers. So over the past two years, about 120 communities have considered or adopted data center moratoriums, including New York, which in July was the first U.S. state to enact a one-year pause on permits for facilities that consume more than 50 megawatts of power, specifically for AI data centers. So it does seem like although there are these big, you know, idealistic solutions that are on the table, there are also smaller things that companies or that communities are doing now. to try and be a little bit more in control of where and how AI is developed. Right. Well, there's one thing to tax a data center and generate $600 million, as Virginia did, or it's to pause it entirely. And some proponents of AI and economic development say, guys, what are we doing here? Like, this is a huge economic boon to your region. Why don't you recruit tech companies, build data centers, create jobs, and then tax them, and then you will get rich, and then you can redistribute it to your population. There was a very funny exchange on Twitter that I saw. So the former DNC co-vice chair, David Hogg, said, and against data centers, he said, if data centers are so essential to our national security and economy and have such amazing benefits, they should prove it by building them in the richest zip codes in America first. There was a community note on this by saying the richest county in the U.S. by median household income is Loudoun County, Virginia, which is also the home to the world's largest concentration of data centers. So a little pushback to the criticism of data centers there. And some states have done certain things, like Louisiana, a parish there, gave a big bonus to public teachers in a particular parish. They don't have counties there. And a parish where there was a lot of data center riches. So this is a complex issue that's going to be only more relevant as we head into the midterm elections. It's not just at the federal level, but it's mostly at the local and community level about how do we extract more wealth? How do we extract more wealth from data centers? And all the AI companies that are getting rich from putting data centers in our communities to uncertain economic benefits. Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Kayla and I pick two things that would have torn up the dance floor at Toby's wedding. My winner is Ferrari, whose electric vehicle everyone made fun of is getting the last laugh. Over the weekend, a bespoke model of Ferrari's Luce, its first foray into EVs, sold for $40 million at a charity auction event, making it the most expensive vehicle ever sold. The ultra-wealthy buyer, identified as billionaire investor Herbie Wertheim, isn't the only one who wants this car in their driveway. A few weeks ago, Ferrari said that it had already hit its sales goal for the Luce this year, selling 500 of the cars in less than a month. Maybe these snarky Italians do know what they're doing. In May, Ferrari announced its first EV, the $640,000 Luce, which was the brainchild of Johnny Ive, the former head designer at Apple. Excitement quickly turned to horror when it was revealed, bearing little resemblance to other cars. The final EV, the $640,000 Luce, which was the brainchild of Johnny Ive, the former head designer at Apple. are comparing products, evaluating inventory, and completing purchases for customers. An IDC study sponsored by WooCommerce found that open source platforms give e-commerce brands more freedom than SaaS to optimize for agentic commerce. That can mean more sales, whether the buyer is a person or a bot. Check out the study at WooCommerce.com slash trends. That's WooCommerce.com slash trends. My winner of the weekend is Dorm Room Designers, who are charging parents as much as $20,000 to turn shabby dorm rooms into personalized havens. If you've ever stepped into a college dorm, you know that there's room for improvement. But these over-the-top interiors range from monogrammed bedding and wallpaper to chandeliers and custom wardrobe build-outs. While this trend may feel like it's right out of the Bama Rush documentary, this is hitting all across the country. One dorm designer in the Northeast said that almost all of her clients are from out of state, preferring to pay their team to outfit a room instead of shipping items to campus or figuring where to park their rented van on cramped streets. While some say this is a great way to show new college students a place that they feel is their own, others feel like this is capitalizing on the emotional moment when parents drop kids off at college and that roughing it is actually a part of the college experience. Neil, my dorm had a framed photo of a shirtless George Costanza, so I'm not exactly the arbiter of taste here, but would you spend $20,000 to get the dorm room? I'm not exactly the arbiter of taste here, but would you spend $20,000 to get the dorm room? I will say, thinking back on it now, I probably could have used a professional. Yeah, I didn't have a shirtless George Costanza, but I did have that, you know, John Belushi in a college sweatshirt drinking whiskey, like a Jimi Hendrix poster, Dave Matthews poster, Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston. So, I mean, you're 18 years old, you're going to college for the first time. The part of this is understandable, but there was a lot of backlash to this online. Not backlash, but some haters got going. One said, the best business model going on in this country, in any industry, is convincing people with disposable income that they need something that is completely unnecessary. And then another said, if you aren't sending your kids to college with a used futon, a hamper, and a few posters, then you aren't preparing them for real life. So, that's maybe the more salient criticism, is that you got to go to college, you got to figure things out for yourself, and one of them is designing your dorm, and even if it looks bad when you're 18 or 19, that's okay, because perhaps you're learning something. Obviously, there is a market for this. So, you see a lot of moms, especially, who went through this with their own children, saying, whoa, my stuff got a lot of buzz online when I posted it on Instagram. Why don't I become a dorm influencer, start selling packages for $25 that you can download, and here's a blueprint. Or you can be like Shelly Gates, who was in this viral TikTok that went all over the internet, saying, okay, actually, I will do everything for you. You want more of the upscale version, I'm going to charge up to $20,000. She has about 35 dormers, and she's this fall going on. So, just do the math, 20K times 35 dorm rooms, that's a lot of money for just designing someone's college dorm. Honestly, not a bad business model. And when you think about this in the context of the actual price of university, the average public in-state tuition last year hit a little over $11,000, and out of state for public universities, 25K, and private universities are nearly $45,000. And this is even before factoring in, and housing, food, and other costs. So, adding a ton of costs on top of an already costly experience, I think, is pretty mind-boggling to me. Also important to note, trends change, and I cannot imagine that the people that are spending $20,000, even though Shelly Gates of this design firm does say it's a four-year investment, I have a hard time believing that these kids are going to use all of this stuff for all four years. But it is a trend that is only increasing. We had TaskRabbit, reported by Axios, that dorm room move bookings were up 36% in May nationwide. And I know you said this is happening nationwide, and it is, but it is hard not to think of Rush Talk at Alabama and dorm room designs in the same sentence. It feels like this is really concentrated in the South, in those SEC schools, who with their Rush Talk videos and with their fancy dorm designs are kind of driving a lot of the college culture. Right now, which has been pretty interesting to watch a lot, like the center of gravity of what is the quintessential college experience in America has maybe moved from the Northeast to the Southeast. All right, it's Monday, so here's what you need to know to stay ahead in the week ahead. The United States and Canada are locked in tense negotiations to avoid a tariff deadline early Wednesday. At midnight, the U.S. will impose 50% tariffs on Canadian goods like hockey sticks, wine, and cement unless a deal is reached. It looks like a deal could be reached, with Canada reportedly saying that the U.S. will impose a tariff deadline on United States. The U.S. is set to offer trade concessions in exchange for Trump not going through with the tariffs, which he said was in retaliation for Canada's unfair treatment of American goods. Yeah, and if this sounds familiar, it's because it is. In the past 18 months, there have been many rounds of tariff negotiations between the U.S. and Canada, with the U.S. imposing tariffs on industries like auto, timber, semiconductors, steel, and then Canada imposing retaliatory tariffs back on the U.S. But, I mean, hockey sticks and wine, it sounds like this is a pretty good opportunity to binge heated rivalry between the U.S. and Canada, but it's a little more expensive. Yeah, I actually haven't seen it. I need a person to watch it with. I don't think I'm going to watch it with myself. Fair enough. I have seen it. Okay, so maybe you're not the best. Okay, moving on. The stars of this week's earnings slate are retailers. The biggest big boxers in the country, Home Depot, Target, Lowe's, Walmart, will step up to the plate to deliver highly anticipated reports on the health of the American consumer, who's been dealing with inflation above target for more than five years now. A bad omen might have come Friday when a report showed retail sales falling 0.6% last month, which is the biggest drop in over a year. Yeah, and hopefully some of that drop in July sales can be explained by Amazon moving Prime Day from July to June. So we'll see how those retailers fared in Q2, but maybe mixed results. In sports, we've got NFL preseason action kicking off, and far more importantly, the Little League World Series begins in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which has always been an indicator to me that the summer is slowly but surely winding up. I have to admit, it was a sad day in my household on Saturday when I realized that the Jags game was on and that football is back, but I do love that it means we're one step closer to fall. And finally, got to save the most important event of the week for last. My birthday is on Friday. Yeah, your boy is turning 35. In lieu of gifts, please make a donation to the Human Fund. Happy birthday. Thank you, Kayla. Well, we still have a few more days. I'm not like one of those birthday week kind of guys, even though I kind of just announced my birthday for you on Monday. I'm not like one of those birthday week kind of guys, even though I kind of just announced my birthday for Friday, but it just felt a part of the week ahead, and I want everyone to know that, but thank you. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful start to the week. To share your thoughts on the episode or anything else, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at mbdailyshow. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our supervising producer. Raymond Liu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham, and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup is loving this new dressing up era. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Kroger has everything you need to get back to it. Keep busy routines running smoothly with proven quality at affordable prices from our exclusive brands. Creamy Kroger brand protein yogurt makes a satisfying breakfast, while sweet Simple Truth organic baked energy bars keep midday bites exciting. And classic Kroger brand crustless sandwiches are sure to please with their rich peanut butter and juicy grape jelly. Visit Kroger and get set for a fresh start. Kroger, fresh for everyone.