The Temu Croissant Lamp that Stole my Thunder

We are about to be eaten alive by end of days goods. The ants know something.

Picture the scene. We are in a razzy Manhattan restaurant overlooking the Hudson. Outside Thomas Heatherwick’s Vessel glistens in the setting sun, inside a group of powerful men and women have gathered for a bracing discussion on sustainability in the fashion industry. It’s a dinner curated for the launch of my book What to Wear and Why, and I am joined by Chief Sustainability Officers from major brands, some powerful media types, fashion influencers and two Gen Z women who are helping me co-host.

The conversation is robust - as so often in sustainability rooms we all agree the problem, but while plates of sushi pile up on the table and a Friday night scene of celebrating couples, friends on a night out and the general hustle of the gigantic Hudson Yards shopping centre throbs around us, we talk about new bio-materials, incoming legislation, the challenges for independent designers, mining supply chains. Our Gen Z friends offer their perspective - they might not be able to buy fancy sustainable luxury yet, but they get through their working wardrobe week on Pickle, a peer to peer rental site. The cute dress one of them is wearing rents out at weekends for $20. New York’s trendy young are wardrobe sharing and earning money doing it. The future seems in reach: the wizardry of science, the sense of lawmakers, and human creativity may just prevail. More consciousness, more determination, the right mindset, could it all save us?

Then, as the evening draws to a close and the guests peel off, there’s some wine left in the glasses that definitely needs finishing off, and me and the Gen Zs fall to talking about The Problem With Shein. “Shein,” they offer, “has nothing on Tiktok Shop”. Forget Amazon swipe to purchase, Tiktop Shop is the end of days. They show me a video of a flicky haired influencer prancing around in a stretchy minidress - tap the screen and the ad for the dress and a price tag of $6.87 pops up. The influencer looks exactly like the girl in the ad - all flicky blonde hair and whirling bedroom scene. It’s not an accident. Hit buy, and we’re straight into Apple Pay. With shipping, the dress now costs $14. It’s extraordinary, because unlike Amazon where you have a shopping mall of products to browse, and some manner of intention and choice in your action, Tiktok is offering speed of purchase along with an algorithmically tuned entertainment channel that knows your every thought, predilection and impulse before you do. The influencer has styled herself identically to the girl in the dress ad, and if I was following and admiring her I would find her lifestyle content a very convincing reason to buy. Two taps of the finger and the dress is on its way from another continent. Shopping is too, too easy, thoughtless even - and we all know how a $6 dress gets made. I wonder how many of these dresses Tiktok ships an hour?

Then we find the Temu croissant lamp video. It was the viral video of last week that amassed 15m views in three days, and if you haven’t seen it yet, catch it here. Froginahatgirl hit Tiktok fame when she noticed a lamp shaped like a croissant she bought on Temu (‘Shop Like a Billionaire!’), had attracted ants. Worse, she was convinced the ants were eating the lamp. So she breaks open the lamp and discovers that inside it looks very much like an actual croissant. Was it, in fact, an actual croissant? The video finale sees her nibble a bit of the lamp, which allows her to confirm that her Temu homeware purchase is, indeed, an actual croissant dipped in resin.

This is how we are making stuff now. Dipping our breakfast in poisonous plastic, selling it via toxic algorithms designed to trap and ensnare our brains with dopamine shot instantaneous purchases dressed up as entertainment, then shipping it across the world for less than $10. The thoughtlessness required to devise, manufacture, sell and buy a lamp like that is not going away - technology is just making it easier and easier. It’s a long way away for biomaterials and legislation to save us.

Some observations from the wonderful talk at the New York Society Library last Thursday to launch my book: