Has any other bit of Meryl Streep dialogue so perfectly distilled a complex industrial process? The scene illustrates the concept of trends coming from on high. In terms of how trends work, the cerulean sweater scene in The Devil Wears Prada is practically a cliché at this point. It's also true that things aimed at teens inevitably gain traction among tweens, just like it is true that Seventeen is often read not by 17-year-olds but by 12-year-olds. A caveat: Words are meaningless/a 6-year-old is not an actual tween. And here we will define "tweens" as kids aged 6 to 12, like the marketers do. So naturally it is girls who are on the bleeding edge of that new-new next-next bracelet shit year in and year out. It is girls who drive all of society's innovation, be it in tech, style, or elsewhere - we know this. Specifically, we're talking bracelets for teens and tweens. This is a working paper toward a grand unified theory of bracelets. As millions of girls head into another school year, their wrists blank slates on which we will project the next chapter of cultural history, it is time to ask the question: What does it all mean? Every few years, a new bracelet craze every few years, a braided, beaded, collectible, dispensable, authentic, synthetic peek into young people's lives. More recently, it was Rainbow Loom-weaved bracelets that were hanging off the wrists of girls around the country. Years earlier, friendship bracelets were all the rage. Slap bracelets were the biggest fad of Christmas 1990. But I do know that in its taut-one-second, curled-the-next form, it carries a succinct, full-circle history of the last 30 years of American youth culture. What if I told you that a Minions slap bracelet, available for $6.50 at Claire's, in its own small way encapsulates our society and how we got here? No, I have no idea why it says "banana" on it. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here. The archives will remain available here for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years.
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