Need to Know
10 : 05 : 23

Portugal – Underwear expert Maison Pixel has joined forces with creative agency Atlantic New York to create undies that turn bums into screens. The technology consists of a specially designed Instagram filter compatible with all iOS and Android devices that can activate the undergarment’s chroma-key colour. Any content can then be projected on a green screen derrière.

A study from the General Social Survey claiming that 26% of American adults did not have sex at all in 2021 inspired the project. With rising phone usage and binge-watching in bed reducing couples’ libido, Maison Pixel wanted to create a new kind of watching experience by bringing partners closer together. The campaign shows how simple it could be to watch a baseball game, a western or the Moon landing on a partner’s backside.

In Isolated Intimacy, we previously analysed how new services similar to Maison Pixel’s tongue-in-cheek green screen underwear redefine the meaning of intimacy in a post-pandemic world.

Japan – Spanish luxury house Loewe has opened a ReCraft store in Osaka, Japan, with the aim of repairing and restoring bags. ReCraft is part of Loewe’s commitment to the long-term viability of its hand-crafted bags.

The store offers repair services as well as a range of woven leather baskets and pockets made from repurposed surplus materials from previous seasons. Loewe said the company is still in the early stages of its regenerative journey, which began in 2019 with the launch of its first Eye/Loewe/Nature collection. This served as an experimental laboratory for more sustainable practices and has allowed the brand to lower its overall CO2 emissions by 25%.

According to the brand’s press release, ‘Loewe ReCraft is about the joy of craft beyond the new. It is a commitment to breathing fresh life into long-cherished possessions.' We address the growing demand for right-to-repair products in our Six Tech Brands Developing DIY Repairable Devices report. It is a trend accelerating across industries – especially in fashion, which is known for its unsustainable practices.

US – Rents across New York have reached historic highs, making them unaffordable for most city residents. A new report published by real estate search company StreetEasy found that between January and March 2023, more than one in three city-wide market-rate rental listings (37%) were affordable for a typical household earning New York’s median income of £56,063 ($70,663, €64,479).

These figures are more shocking when affordability for Black and Hispanic residents is taken into account. The report, along with data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, reveals that a typical white household can afford five times as many market-rate rental listings in New York as a typical Black household and seven times as many as a Hispanic one.

At present, a third of New York households already spend more than half of their income on just rent. Affordable homes are defined in the report as rentals that cost less than 50% of a household’s combined income. This reinforces how the housing crisis in New York is getting worse.