OBSESSED & DISTRACTED: HOT DOG CAKE ERA
My latest collection of saved links look like someone shook out a random tote bag. A backpack for French fries, a 1953 glass house in Highland Park, and the serif font taking fridge cigarette to a whole new level. I stopped trying to find a connective thread here to give it a theme. There isn’t one, and I’m making peace with it.
Here’s everything I’ve been circling lately, in no particular order, with a little Luce update at the end because I was truly shocked.
Hot Dogs, But Dessert
Look, I’m just going to say it, we are doing way too much with hot dogs. Not one, but TWO hot dog desserts crossed my feed which is either a coincidence or frankly a warning. Oscar Mayer marked the Wienermobile’s 90th with a Milk Bar collab - a two-tiered birthday cake wrapped in hot dogs, dusted in ketchup and mustard confetti sprinkles with a tiny Wienermobile on top. It ran in New York, LA, and Chicago from July 31 to August 2, and anyone actually turning 90 years old this summer could request a Wienermobile visit, which honestly is the detail that absolutely sent me. Meanwhile, Salt & Straw brought back the Cool Dog for its first Boston shop: vanilla ice cream in a sponge cake bun, chocolate sauce and whipped cream standing in for condiments. I really don’t know if I could bring myself to consume either of these, but maybe I’m just not the target audience. Searches for hot dog cake are reportedly up which I fully don’t understand but hey, you do you.
McLaren’s New Home
Landor designed a new three-story Team Hub and garage experience for McLaren which debuted at Barcelona. The ground floor is for guests and partners, first floor contains drivers rooms and a quiet meeting space, and top floor is hospitality. The central staircase, called the Climb of Champions, has Bruce McLaren quotes printed on the steps to bring visitors into the champion mindset. In the garage, VIPs get a tiered race watch area with sightlines to both the track and the pit wall conversations with Landor focusing on bringing guests closer to live decision-making. Their entire design and creative process stems from the idea that people, not strictly innovation, technology or engineering decide races so the entire space is made to foster focus, collaboration and engagement between everyone involved each and ever race weekend. While I may slightly question that point, especially where McLaren is concerned, I can admit it’s pretty rare to see a brand design a building around that instead of just putting it in a deck somewhere. And, well, you have to live that philosophy when you’re taking apart and rebuilding this building every race weekend in a new location.
Coca-Cola Goes Marlboro and People Are Mad
Coke rolled out a new global identity from JKR and people are not happy. They tweaked the Spencerian script and the ribbon to introduce a slab serif called ‘Better With.’ Within a day, the internet decided they took the idea Diet Coke was a ‘fridge cigarette’ too far and the typeface looked a little too much like a pack of Marlboro Reds. Okay, first of all Marlboro’s typeface is proprietary so not widely available. It’s also structurally different, but both being in red and white, at a glance, close enough I guess. My favorite part of all of this: Better With actually debuted back in 2023 as part of Coke’s holiday marketing and no one really noticed. Nothing really changed just the context. It’s hard for Coca-Cola to change things up people feel like they have ownership over it. It’s been a significant part of their lives since childhood. Tropicana learned it in 2009, Gap in 2010, and let’s not forget whatever Jaguar was trying to do a couple years ago.
A Garage That Isn’t a Garage
Alessandro Isola converted an existing building in Italy into what he’s calling “The Silence of Speed.” It’s a multi-level house for a car collector, built around the collection rather than beside it. Black resin floors and walls, a folded black-metal staircase, a transparent lift, and glazed openings cut into the floors so you’re always looking through another level. I can’t decide which part of it I like best. The project is trying to translate a feeling of speed into a building that doesn’t move, which sounds like design-speak until you look at the images. Dark rooms, sudden glass, and no real reliable source of depth create a showroom that behaves like a house. It’s actually pretty badass.
The Dome Lives
The Cinerama Dome is an institution, and it was a gigantic bummer when it went dark six years ago. Now Sony is restoring the Cinerama Dome and it’s expected to open in early 2028. Welton Becket’s 1963 geodesic weirdo on Sunset keeps the Cinema name, the exterior signage, and the roughly 86-foot curved screen. The Alamo Drafthouse will run it, but not as dine in (thank god!). It will remain a real theater with filmmaker series, premieres and first-run films. The adjacent 14-screen complex, the old ArcLight, will reopen as a full Alamo with dine-in and karaoke rooms. The restoration starts this month which is really exciting. I’ve been mourning that building for six years, and despite being unsure about Sony’s involvement, I’ll take it.
We Need to Stop the ZigZag Headband
I said what I said. Miu Miu put the plastic stretch-comb headband on the fall 2026 runway, Hailey Bieber wore one in the campaign and a lot recently, Bryce on Love Island wore his religiously, and now they are everywhere for a ten dollar two pack. I understand the mechanics. I understand that Miuccia can put a middle-school hair accessory on a runway and make it mean something, and that is genuinely a skill. I just remember what these things did to the top of my head in 2002. They dig in. They leave a dent. They cause the world’s worst headaches. And my scalp has never forgiven me. In fact, typing this right now is sending me into levels of trauma and stress just thinking about sitting all day on picture day getting the headache of the century because the picture had to be on point and that meant this damn headband. Some Y2K revivals earned their second life and I’ll hear some out, but this one is just a plastic comb with a really good marketing team.
The Fry Backpack
McDonald’s China just made your life 20x easier with a backpack that has side pockets shaped like fry cartons to actually hold your fries. There’s even a dedicated compartment inside for ketchup packets. The whole thing is build from Tyvek so it crinkles and folds like a real takeaway bag, the zipper pulls are fries dipped in ketchup, and there’s a detachable charm that looks like a printed receipt. I’m literally not even joking. It came from a fan’s handmade concept which McDonald’s turned into an official release for its twelfth Big Fries Day. 5,700 units of the backpack were made and cost 119 yuan plus loyalty points, and they were gone almost immediately. This is when a brand takes fan work seriously instead of just reposting it. And, well, it’s not a pickle jacket so there’s that.
Gap Fragrance, Resurrected
Dream, Heaven, Grass, and Om are back along with a new friend, Harmony. The original Gap perfumes launched in 1994 and they brought back Honorine Blanc, who worked on the 90s line, to redo them alongside Nicole Mancini. I literally used to wear Dream which I bought at the mall without my parents knowing. Dream is still the white t-shirt of the group with freesia, orange flower, and neroli over cedarwood. Grass keeps the whole cut-lawn vibe but adds a little matcha and vetiver underneath. Om is apparently closest to the original and most interesting of the set, built around incense, ginger, labdanum and sandalwood. Nostalgia relaunches usually feel like a costume party, but bringing back the actual perfumer is the difference between a reissue and a tribute act. I’m not entirely sure I want to be instantly transported back to my early teen years, but hey, I’ll take it over some cucumber melon garbage.
Celebrating the Ferrari House
It’s hard to believe Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is 40 this summer. This movie, naturally, was well loved in my house growing up and we absolutely had to sit through an in-depth explanation of why running a car in reverse would never reduce the speedometer. I thought Sloane was the absolute coolest with that fringe jacket/wayferers combo. But the one thing we talk about the most is probably Cameron’s house. The Ben Rose House in Highland Park went up in 1953 and was designed by A. Joseph Speyer, a Mies protégé, in full steel and glass. The glass pavilion where Cameron’s dad keeps the Ferrari was added in 1974 by David Haid for the exact reason used in the film: displaying cars like objects. That’s why the scene works. John Hughes didn’t have to explain Cameron’s dad to us; the architecture did it for him. The Roses were paid $5,000 for a three-day shoot which might actually be the best deal in production design history.
King Tut is back in the chat
Ancient Egypt was probably one of my favorite history subjects in school and with so many artifacts finally on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum, it’s not really a surprise to see collections inspired by it. Van Cleef & Arpels released a jewelry collection built entirely around ancient Egypt. Roughly 180 pieces with pyramids, lotus flowers, hieroglyphs, and sacred animals rendered with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and ornamental stone. What I like is that it isn’t Halloween costume jewelry. The house already did this back in 1922 reacting immediately to Howard Carter opening Tut’s tomb because Egyptian geometry happened to line up perfectly with the Art Deco vocabulary they were building at the same moment. This isn’t a brand borrowing a theme. It’s more like a brand returning to a room it furnished a hundred years ago which is pretty hard to fake.
A Luce Update!
In an early post of Obsessed & Distracted, I talked about the Ferrari Luce. The all electric Ferrari that the internet decided was ugly roughly 11 seconds after it was unveiled in May. Former Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo joined the party and now announced they have sold their entire 2026 allocation. Just under 500 cars in about two months. Guys! 500 people willingly decided they wanted these cars and spent actual money on them! There’s a lesson buried here about the gap between purchasing behavior and discourse and I’m sure every brand strategist should have it on lock, but I can’t believe this one.
I’m not sure what a hot dog cake, a jewelry house revisiting ancient Egypt, a garage museum, and a soda company pissing people off with a serif have in common, but here we are. None of it really goes together, but I guess that’s the point. The things that stick with you rarely arrive in a matching set. Anyway, the Dome is coming back. Everything else is negotiable.
