Hello, from sunny New York! The birds are chirping, the cars are honking, World Cup watch parties are on seemingly every other block, and if you’re lucky, you can still spot a stray shred of blue and orange ticker tape from the Knicks’ victory celebration parade last week floating on a summer breeze. In short, the vibes in New York are immaculate.  

If you can’t tell, I’m trying to start this newsletter off on a high note, because we’re kicking things off below with a dramatic fall from grace. 

Despite being squarely Gen Z, I consider myself to culturally be a millennial. And two companies that cater to a particular optimism inherent to millennials (cultural, generational, or otherwise) are Allbirds and Everlane. At least they used to. 

Allbirds is now an AI company. Everlane got bought out by fast-fashion house Shein. Sure, the Knicks won; that dream never died. But it’s harder to say the same about fashion companies that were once marketed as sustainable and ethical. When it comes to ethical clothing brands, I guess you don’t know you were in the good times until they’re actually over?  — Dylan Miettinen, digital producer 

More than a decade ago, a garment factory near Dhaka collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers. The owners had expanded the building from four floors to eight and cut lots of corners.

“There’s always been this race to the bottom in terms of pricing,” said Ann Cantrell, associate professor of fashion business management at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “And this is what happened in Bangladesh.”

The race to the bottom in pricing meant a race to the bottom at the factories where clothes are made.

“The thing that’s really hard with fashion is not only is it one of the least-regulated industries in the world, but it’s also very human-centered,” Cantrell said. “Like the armhole of our shirt or details on a dress, they are still done by humans.”

The factory collapse was a turning point in the apparel industry because it made worker abuse impossible to ignore. And the timing of the event is important because the economy had just recovered from the Great Recession, which made it financially easier for companies and consumers to pay more for responsible clothes. Mission-driven brands like Everlane, which was recently bought by fast-fashion house Shein, and Allbirds, now an AI company, took off.

But things changed when the pandemic hit. People stopped buying clothes, and supply chains snarled.

“I mean, brands are just trying to exist,” Cantrell said.

Companies needed cash, and private equity firms rushed in. Cantrell said investors demanded bigger returns over better missions. The optimism that once filled the industry started fading.

“Selling a good-quality product that is ethically made that’s also going to last a long time is not going to have the same margins,” she said.

Family is complicated — all the more so if that family isn’t even recognized by the state. In this week’s episode of “This Is Uncomfortable,” Reema Khrais explores the legal loopholes that people can explore for codifying their chosen family, from adopting an adult friend in need of financial support to becoming an LLC as a group of friends or a polycule.

The prospect of mountains of student loan debt, the rise of AI, and the prospect of six-figure salaries — these are some of the reasons that younger people are eschewing a four-year degree in favor of going into the trades. While the promise of a six-figure salary certainly sounds enticing, let’s get down to brass tacks. Chalkbeat crunched the numbers and found that while a handful of blue-collar positions make slightly above the national median wage, that’s not the case for most jobs that don’t have college degree requirements.