The Digi Diary: Icy-spicy PR stunts and anti-AI knitwear

Welcome to the Digi Diary – your twice-monthly download into the best bits of tech and life online. We’re bringing back our byte-sized column to cover digital culture across fashion, beauty, lifestyle, and more. We’ll let you know what’s stood out in our permascrolls this week and help you sprinkle some sparkle over your socials. So set your mind to DND and settle down with this week’s instalment of our digital download. This week, we’re looking at the iciest, spiciest PR stunts, the creator putting a très relatable spin on the American-in-Paris trope, knitwear that blocks facial recognition, and fashion week's snooziest moments.

Faved

Ice Spice is viral by design — she’s funny, cute and unpredictable, not to mention her b*tchy bars are perfect for TikTok sounds and captions. We eat it up any time she’s on our feeds and like the rest of the internet, we had a lol watching her (nepo)babysit North West this week. HOWEVER, it was Ice Spice’s less wholesome behaviour this week that had us screaming. We’re hooked on her viral promo moment with PinkPantheress — the two vengeful girlies were spotted graffiti-ng LIAR on a building in North London. In reality, it was two mannequins dressed and posed as the TikTok-topping duo to promote their track Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2 (another Digi fave) but still, it was the iciest, spiciest PR stunt we’ve seen in a while.

Followed

We’re loving watching awkward American cutie @enbe navigate life since moving to Paris. We know, *moving to Paris* sounds glam and boujee, but Enbe’s content feels a little more authentique. Our fave vids include Enbe teaching their French mate American phrases like ‘giving c*nty', experiencing imposter syndrome before a PFW show and giving a parody Vogue house tour. Enbe’s content is a refreshing balance between goofy, relatable and très touching  — described by their followers as Emma Chamberlain adjacent. J’agree. 

Hacked

Italian fashion startup Cap_able dropped a collection of knits that camouflage your identity and protect your biometric data without hiding or obscuring your face. Let’s unravel this… the clashing patterns and prints of the knits, which Cap_able calls adversarial patches, deceive AI facial recognition tech in real-time. Wearers are either not recognised by software, or identified as an animal whose print is embedded in the adversarial patch. In an interesting twist of tech fate, the patterns were actually designed using AI, but ultimately fight against surveillance by AI. Pretty meta tbh. Some commenters have pointed out that the pieces are pretty spenny, making the argument that the right to privacy is only a form of protection for those who can afford it.

Blocked 

We need to talk about fashion week fatigue — according to Word Wide Opinion, this season’s shows felt a little snoozy. Fashion writer and creator Alexandra Hildreth predicted a lull in high fashion’s ability to provide cutting cultural commentary based on the intentionally bland Balenciaga comeback show, which saw black suit after black suit slink down the runway. She also made a prediction that feels p spot on, about how Miu Miu’s buzzy biz-casz runway ensembles will eventually evolve into monotonous and stale high street lewks. 

Likewise, many have called the Coperni show anti-climatic after last season’s Bella x bot bop — claiming this season’s robodog stunt was simultaneously clickbaity and underwhelming. In other REM cycle x fashion news, rapper Tommy Cash literally got caught sleepin’ in the front row of Y/Project, bundled in a duvet and seemingly ready for some R&R wearing a green (matcha?) face mask and cuke slices on his eyes. Bit rude? Desp for attention? Sleeping on the job? Or a larger comment on a sleepy industry?

For more content like this, explore the rest of the Digiverse, or connect with us on TikTok or Instagram. If you’re a brand or business and want to inspire your audience in innovative ways, reach out to our strategic & creative lab eve@thedigitalfairy.co.uk