Mike Litman

The Pattern

News EN ↓ 137 episodes

Before it's obvious. A daily briefing scanning 150+ sources across fashion, design, tech, brands, and music. Finding the patterns others miss, every morning at 8:30am UK time.

Author

Mike Litman

Episodes

No. 37: Legacy conglomerates are merging whilst their brands collapse separately 02.04.2026 5:02

Culture Pulse: 78. Legacy conglomerates merge whilst their brands collapse. L'Oréal/Kering partner on longevity. Google goes screenless. Calvin Klein gets a boost from 90s TV costumes. The Pattern, 2 April 2026. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-04-02.html

No. 36: AI funding reaches religion levels whilst AI products keep collapsing 01.04.2026 4:59

Culture Pulse: 78. OpenAI raises $3B from retail investors at $852B valuation whilst AI products keep shutting down. Allbirds sells for $39M after $1.7B peak. Funding hits fever pitch as products collapse. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-04-01.html

No. 35: The Phoebe Philo diaspora now runs half of luxury fashion 31.03.2026 4:56

Culture Pulse: 68. The Phoebe Philo diaspora now runs half of luxury fashion. Plus: why LVMH, Kering and Richemont are all recalibrating at once. The Pattern, 31 March 2026. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-31.html

No. 34: Big Tech wants fashion's cultural gravity while fashion rewires for survival 30.03.2026 4:31

Culture Pulse: 68. Tech wants fashion's cultural gravity. Luxury strips to essentials. Both respond to the same threat: AI abundance erodes scarcity. Whoever controls meaning wins. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-30.html

No. 33: Children are the battleground between tech's growth addiction and state protection 29.03.2026 5:31

Culture Pulse: 72. Italy prosecutes beauty brands for marketing to kids whilst OpenAI cancels products and AWS data centres get hit by drones. The era of invisible infrastructure just ended. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-29.html

No. 32: Italy criminalises marketing to children whilst luxury chases desirability metrics 28.03.2026 4:41

Culture Pulse: 72. Italy prosecutes Sephora for child marketing, courts hold Meta liable for algorithmic harm, influencers cut open luxury bags. Value transparency is no longer optional. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-28.html

No. 31: Desirability replaces growth as the new CEO incentive metric at Kering 27.03.2026 5:34

Culture Pulse: 72. Kering is paying CEOs based on desirability, not growth. Meta is liable for addictive design. The next advantage is what you measure and how transparently you operate the systems. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-27.html

No. 30: Big tech launches music tools whilst Aerie wages culture war against AI 26.03.2026 5:34

Culture Pulse: 72. Aerie wages culture war against AI whilst Google democratises music generation. Everyone's responding to the same authenticity crisis, just from opposite sides. No middle ground left. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-26.html

No. 29: Retail borders collapse as beauty consolidates and China exports store formats 25.03.2026 4:51

Culture Pulse: 68. Puig-Estée Lauder merger isn't about growth, it's survival economics. Meanwhile Chinese retail exports store formats optimised under brutal competition. Scarcity is no longer defensible. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-25.html

No. 28: Beauty consolidation and Chinese retail expansion redraw global commerce maps simultaneously 24.03.2026 6:48

Culture Pulse: 78. Beauty consolidates whilst Chinese retail colonises Western high streets. Both landgrabs exploit the same truth: algorithms drive discovery, physical space controls margins. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-24.html

No. 27: Chip sovereignty replaces platform wars as tech's defining battleground 23.03.2026 4:48

Culture Pulse: 78. Chip sovereignty replaces platform wars. Amazon's Trainium now powers OpenAI, Anthropic, Apple. Musk wants 50x current production. Meta spent £80B to escape Apple's tax. Everyone's building their own infrastructure. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-23.html

No. 26: Hardware is back, and everyone's building their own chips now 22.03.2026 4:50

Culture Pulse: 78. Hardware's back. Amazon opens its chip lab, Musk announces Terafab, and Minecraft builds a theme park. After a decade of outsourcing, vertical integration wins again. The Pattern, 22 Mar 2026. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-22.html

No. 25: Tech companies are buying physical robotics to own the last mile 21.03.2026 5:36

Culture Pulse: 78. Amazon bought stair-climbing robots. Galliano joined Zara for 2 years. Hacks announced its ending. The pattern: specificity and limits now signal strength, not weakness. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-21.html

No. 24: Fast fashion discovered luxury directors cost less than celebrity collaborations 20.03.2026 5:41

Culture Pulse: 68. Fast fashion hired creative directors for sustained credibility instead of celebrity capsules. Amazon bought the robots it already funded. Vertical integration became cheaper than partnerships. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-20.html

No. 23: AI arms race splits between military compliance and conscientious objection 19.03.2026 4:51

Culture Pulse: 78. AI companies face binary choice: build weapons or get classified as threat. Plus: copyright becomes an AI product, design tools collapse, and Meta's age verification play exposed. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-19.html

No. 22: Age verification and military AI contracts are the same lobbying strategy 18.03.2026 4:45

Culture Pulse: 78. John Galliano at Zara, Meta's age verification vendor ties, Pentagon's Anthropic supply chain risk. When platforms push regulation, they're selling the compliance infrastructure. The Pattern, 18/3/26 Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-18.html

No. 21: Nvidia just turned the fashion calendar into a tech industry footnote 17.03.2026 5:03

Culture Pulse: 78. Nvidia's GTC keynote is now the most important date on the culture calendar. Fashion weeks still happen, but the centre moved to Silicon Valley. The Pattern, March 17, 2026. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-17.html

No. 20: Awards season just became the last place brands can buy cultural legitimacy 16.03.2026 5:12

Culture Pulse: 72. Awards season became the last place brands can buy cultural legitimacy. Netflix won 5 Oscars whilst Hollywood studios ghosted ad buys. The gatekeepers changed but the anxiety remained. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-16.html

No. 19: Streaming platforms are rebuilding television as a shopping channel with algorithm controls 15.03.2026 4:52

Culture Pulse: 68. Disney turns streaming into TikTok. Amazon locks 4K behind paywalls. Spotify gives you algorithm override controls. The pattern: platforms are selling user agency back to us. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-15.html

No. 18: Streaming platforms become geopolitical tools as services weaponise paywalls and access 14.03.2026 5:03

Culture Pulse: 72. Amazon tiers 4K behind paywalls, ByteDance routes around chip bans, ships broadcast false flags near Iran. Fixed categories are becoming toggleable features. The Pattern, 14 March 2026. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-14.html

No. 17: War becomes a product feature as tech companies rebrand conflict infrastructure 13.03.2026 5:19

Culture Pulse: 68. War becomes a product feature, ships toggle nationality, founders lose their own names, and AI turns coders into architects. Everything fixed is now negotiable performance. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-13.html

No. 16: Luxury discovered it can charge more by making customers wait less 12.03.2026 5:24

Culture Pulse: 72. Balenciaga killed the six-month wait. Netflix bought the camera, not the film. China's teaching humans to work with robots before deploying them. Speed is the new vertical integration. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-12.html

No. 15: The Pentagon just weaponised procurement to reshape AI's competitive map 11.03.2026 4:55

Culture Pulse: 72. Pentagon uses procurement to reshape AI without regulation. Whoop hides tech in clothes. Supreme resurrects old collabs. Invisibility is the new competitive advantage. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-11.html

No. 14: Founders are stepping down everywhere and nobody's asking why 10.03.2026 4:17

Culture Pulse: 72. Founder era over. Operators in. Meanwhile: Starbucks curates fashion, tech hides in clothes, retail becomes hospitality. Everything's blending. Pattern for March 10. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-10.html

No. 13: Luxury brands treating pop-ups as theatre rehearsals, not retail experiments 09.03.2026 4:30

Culture Pulse: 68. Starbucks does Devil Wears Prada pop-ups. Palmer Luckey hunts $1B for Game Boy nostalgia. Brands are excavating the past or staging the future. The present has become commercially inert. Read the full edition: https://thepattern.media/editions/2026-03-09.html