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Dainty fashion darling Sandy Liang is bringing her playful, delicate designs to the masses. The New York City-based designer, who until now has had a small retail footprint and big fashion clout, is releasing a limited collection with Gap (big footprint, big clout). The collection is anchored by core Gap and Sandy Liang categories, like denim and outerwear, including a precious pair of carpenter jeans with bow stitching on the pocket, a faux fur half zip in a Bambi-inspired print, and two heavy-weight fleece hoodies glamified with the Sandy Liang logo or her signature bow. Baby and toddler styles are also available for the first time. Prices range between $15 and $268. The collection will be available starting October 10. Prior to this collaboration, you could only buy a Sandy Liang piece in two places: on her website, or in her Orchard Street boutique in New York Citys Lower East Side. Now, you’ll be able to get the collab pieces on the Gap website, and at select U.S. and global Gap stores (until they sell out). [Photo: Gap] The collection gives Gap fashion cachet, Liang access to a huge new audience, and the rest of us easier access to Liangs covetable, girlish pieceswhich typically have a pricing floor of several hundred dollars under her own high-end label. That cachet-by-association is important to Gap because it establishes its authority in the fashion space by targeting a new audience with in-the-know fashion taste. The aim is to win over the tastemakers and conversation starters who later adopters look to for cultural signals, gain cultural relevancy, and then become a driver of cultural conversation itself. The Sandy Liang partnership brings fashion credibility through her lens, Gap brand president and CEO Mark Breitbard says. And it’s indicative of Gaps broader partnerships strategy. What you can see is that we have a reason for each, Breitbard says, referring to Gaps recent collaborations. There is a story behind each. There it’s a real true marriage of their brand and our brand in each, and it’s something that continues to bring energy. [Photo: Gap] Core memories This collection started with Liangs mood board of creative inspirations: Nancy Myers, herself as a kid in the ’90s, and phrases like Gap kids for adults, and Gap adults for kids. All of her designs started from this tensile idea of creating the most serious baby clothes possible, and the silliest, most fun adult clothes ever. I really wanted to play with that dynamic of kids things for adults and adult things for kids because when I was a kid going to the Gap stores, so much of that time being in the physical Gap stores was spent fantasizing about what my adult closet would look like, what the adult Sandy would like from this collection, Liang says. With that lens, she then took some of her favorite Sandy Liang pieces and reinterpreted them for everyday wearability and comfortability in the Gap way. Liang describes the collection as one for your inner child, which is also a core driver of her own label. She recalls being a student at New York Citys Parsons School of Design, where she says she was taught to find a particular subject and sketch a collection from that. For me, being instructed to do that just felt so emotionless and not personal, she says. Instead, the inspiration for her senior thesis came from a capability of the iPhone, which had just come out a few years earlier. Liang recalls scrolling through her iPhone photo albums, which had become an instant and unlimited pool of inspiration. I remember being like, why can’t I just reference the moments that I’m finding in life? asked Liang, originally from Queens. Whether it be this Chinatown grandma or my grandma’s blanket or this floral motif I found in this random store. So that’s why personal memories influenced me so much. And its how her brand story originated. [Photo: Gap] Bows, stars, and frills: childhood motifs as brand emblems The Sandy Liang label is known for particular motifs: bows, stars, and rhinestones, girly details that stem from her own childhood doodles. These appear in small, premium garment details in the collection, like star grommets on the jeans and work pants, star zipper pulls, eyelet trim on an athletic black tracksuit, bow stitching on the pockets, and bows on the back of the trench and a navy work trouser. In combination, these design elements create a garment that is comfortable, sporty, easy, but also just like the slight hit of that was unexpected, she says. (See the zip-up hoodie with fur trim, for instance.) [Photo: Gap] The star motif is something that I’ve been doing a lot with my own collection, says Liang. Again, it goes back to childhood emblems that I always reference back to. It felt right for Gap, obviously because childhood memories are such a big influence on the collection. On a practical level, star was also the perfect size to put on a ball cap in the classic Gap font. [Photo: Gap] The recurring bow motif, meanwhile, is kind of born out of this fascination with princesses and crowns and that sort of thing, says Liang. Growing up, I was a bit of a tomboy and I felt insecure to lean more into the pink, girly side. Now that I’m an adult, what I’ve been trying to do is always fulfill my inner child. So I’m doing all the things that I wish I had. All her design references come down to core memories and are interpreted through the eyes of childhood. Her interest in the ’90s is because thats when she was a kid. Rather than referencing it in a literal sense, she references her memories of what the adults were wearing in the ’90s and what it felt like to be a kid in the ’90s and less so real references, she says. It’s more like the energy and feeling. [Photo: Gap] The opposite of a trend forecaster Her consistent use of childhood motifs has led content creators to missassociate her with ephemeral TikTok trends that bubble up over the years, which the chronically online might remember: like balletcore and girlhood. Who What Wear claimed Liangs ballet references were one of many to emerge following MiuMius fall/winter 2022 show. Last year, Marie Claire put Sandy Liangs spring/summer 2024 collection within the popularizing catch-all of the girlhood aesthetic. However this is purely coincidental. The idea of childhood, or girlhood for her, has been driving her brand since it was founded in 2014. Her Mary Jane pointe shoes ended up in a lot of #balletcore roundups, but it had actually been in production for two years prior. That trend may be in the internets dustbin, but the shoe is still a core shorthand for Sandy. In fact, you can get it on a Sandy Liang x Gap sweater. [Photo: Gap] I literally am the opposite of a trend forecaster. I’m just trying to find what makes me happy and inspires me, whether it’s a TV show or being a mom right now, or whatever, she says. I had no idea what ballet core even meant. That’s just the timing of life. A similar coincidence of timing happened with bows, an internet microtrend which outlets like the Guardian and Harpers Bazaar say Liang popularized and was associated with balletcore and hashtags like #girlhood. I just happened to really love bows and satin, she says. The conflation was really funny for me because none of it’s intentional and none of it’s me trying to play a part. Or even being with Girlhood. That is something that I identify with, but it’s not a new thing for me. It’s something that’s always driving me, but it’s the thing right now, so people like to associate that. The internet is just so crazy. [Photo: Gap] Girlhood forever Once again, the bow trend if there ever was one, is overbut the bow as a core symbol of the Sandy Liang brand lives on. Today, you can find it stitched onto a pocket of Sandy Liang x Gap jeans, and its these kinds of recurring visual symbols and related aesthetic tensions of practicality and frivolity and adlthood and girlishness that appeal to Liangs core customers year over year. And with this release, Liang will likely have many more customers on her hands. [Photo: Gap] The Sandy Liang hoodies also show how Gap is improving the quality of its overall product lines. They have a boxy contemporary fit but also a weighty hand feel that led me to inquire about the fleece make itself. The company told me it expanded its fleece assortment last fall to include heavyweight (400 grams per square meter) and extra heavyweight, (650 grams per square meter) its most premium fleece offerings to date. The Sandy logo hoodie is extra heavyweight, and the bow hoodie is heavyweight, which establishes quality in addition to exclusivity as a limited drop. It also released the classic Arch Logo hoodie in extra heavyweight fleece this month. Collaborations can also create leads for Gaps core brand: 20% of consumers who made a collab purchase also added a Gap item to their cart, the company told me in September. So just maybe, the fashion set will buy into Gap, too.
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E-Commerce
When its time to face the day first thing in the morning, everybody needs informationabout the weather, about their calendar, about whats going on. Most of us get all this information manually, building habits like listening to the radio, browsing various news and media apps, and checking schedules. But a storied few have personal assistants who will pre-curate all of that, creating a highly personalized set of prioritized information. That, as far as I can tell, is exactly what ChatGPT Pulse is supposed to be: a digital assistant in the true sense of the word. Pulse is a new feature in ChatGPT thats available initially only to ChatGPT Pro subscribers (thats the $200 monthly tier). After you set it up by telling it what topics youre most interested in (among other things), Pulse will build a highly tailored daily update, just for you. And its not just the news of the day; Pulse will look to your chat history, email, and calendar for context, assembling a highly personalized custom summary. ChatGPT Pulse is arguably an inflection point in our relationship with AI. It’s different from previous AI products because it shifts AI from a passive tool to a proactive one. Intelligence is no longer something you go to with a specific queryits now pushed to you when youre not even engaging with it. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} How Pulse is a different kind of aggregator Thats a pretty big change, one with a lot of opportunity. If Pulse takes off, theres no doubt media, marketing and PR companies will compete for its attention. And where theres attention, advertising soon follows. In fact, Pulse looks like a pretty obvious play to build something that could end up being an ad platform for OpenAI, which, given its ambitions, needs all the cash it can get. That of course depends on whether people actually want it. Its not like theres a shortage of apps and features in apps vying to be everyones start your day touchstoneeven the default home screen in Windows will show you headlines. When you set them up, some get you to pick news sources, and some offer you topics. But OpenAI is betting its intelligence, paired with the right context, will produce something better. And it may be onto something. Ive been using Pulse for several days, and I like how it writes summaries of not just the news Im interested in, but how that news intersects with my work. I often write about how AI search engines and agents are changing how content is discovered, and Pulse surfaced a new report from DataDome on bot security the morning it came out. Your mileage on this might vary depending on how much you use ChatGPT for work vs. personal tasks, but because Im constantly collaborating with ChatGPT on writing, courses, consulting, and more, Pulse (my version anyway) is heavily skewed toward what Im working on as opposed to what I relax with. Id wager thats probably true for most users. And thats OK. Id much rather want an executive assistant than a butler. Trust: the biggest hurdle To be an effective assistant, though, Pulse will need to consistently bring users good, actionable information. There are of course many platforms out there built for media monitoring, but Pulse is something different. Not an alert system, but a kind of opportunity assessment, one with a large dash of personal context. Thats valuable, but only if it doesnt miss things, eliminates redundancies (I dont want to see the same stuff highlighted day after day), and doesnt fill my update with junk when there isnt anything of use. If it can do that, though, OpenAI might finally crack the notification barrier, earning a place among the apps that send you push alerts you might actually open. One of the primary reasons newsletters took off in the last decade is because your email inbox was a reliable way to get user attention. Is AI in that category? ChatGPTs 700-million-strong user base suggests its built a large degree of trust. Pulse could leverage that to successas long as the content is good. In that future, where AI is powering not just our active queries but the information were using to start our days, news providers start to look a lot more like information wholesalers, providing the raw data that AI will curate, summarize, and put in context for the user. And that’s an existential threat to a big chunk of what the media does. While morning newsletters, digests, and story roundups are helpful, they wont be able to compete with Pulse. And thats because theyll never have what ChatGPT has: the entire picture of everything you care about. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
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Matchmaking is an ancient dating process that stretches back thousands of years. But as online dating fatigue has begun to dominate the modern-day discourse around finding love, one company is betting that matchmaking will see a revival, and theyve spent years developing a tool to make it happen: an AI matchmaker named Tai. One might argue that all modern dating apps aim to serve as a kind of matchmaker; an intermediary whose purpose is to connect two singles with each other. But Adam Cohen-Aslatai, CEO of the matchmaking company Three Day Rule, says dating apps still put the onus on users to choose the right partners based on what the algorithm serves. In contrast, he explains, a traditional matchmaker uses their in-depth knowledge of the client to facilitate that process, selecting matches that arent just compatible on a screen, but in real life. Now, Three Day Rule is rolling out its first-ever app designed to bring that human-centric matchmaking experience to a broader client base. The app leverages multiple AI models built upon 15 years of matchmaking data collected by the company. While Three Day Rules elite white-glove matchmaking services typically run clients around $2,000 per month, its AI matchmaker is available starting for free. AI features have become increasingly popular on existing dating apps in recent months. But Cohen-Aslatai says none of them are fixing the larger problem: Self-serve dating apps just dont work very well. Traditional dating apps are effective 9-11% of the time, he claims, compared with an 70-80% success rate for traditional matchmaking. Matchmakers aren’t self-serve; they are serving you, Cohen-Aslatai says. They are doing all the work for you. And they’re saying, I know you better than you know yourself. I know what you need for long term relationships. And I’m not going to let you waste your time on people that are candy, I’m going to give you the full meal. Three Day Rule Founder Talia Goldstein and CEO Adam Cohen Aslatei [Photo: Three Day Rule] Is matchmaking the new swiping? For many singles searching for love, AI-powered tools are becoming an integral part of the swiping process. Hinge now uses AI to help users craft better profile prompt responses; Tinder is set to roll out AI-powered personalized matches; the AI assistant app Rizz uses AI exclusively to help users come up with responses on dating apps; the AI relationship advice app Meeno helps men find love; and Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd even announced that the company is currently working on its own AI matchmaking service. Cohen-Aslatai has seen it all. He previously worked at dating apps including The Meet Group, Zoosk, and Bumbles gay dating app Chappy, and even founded and sold his own app called SMore. But, over the past few years, hes become convinced that matchmaking is the most effective dating option out there. He argues that, on dating apps, users are looking for a match that meets their requirements on paperstandards that, oftentimes, are preventing them from taking healthy risks. Matchmakers are trained to take those preferences into consideration while also encouraging clients to try people slightly outside their comfort zone. Three Day Rule’s process starts by assigning three experts to each client: A matchmaker tasked with learning everything about the clients needs and wants in a relationship, a coach to help advise clients on dates, and a recruiter who meets potential matches at places like the airport or the beach. For its highest paying VIP members, the company offers everything from personal stylists to hair and makeup services. It’s dating for people with more than just a little extra money who don’t want to leave their love lives up to chance. Cohen-Aslatai stepped in as the CEO of Three Day Rule last October. In the past year, he says company sales have increased by a whopping 40%. Its VIP matchmaking membershipwhich costs a head-turning $100,000 for 16 monthshas also shot up from accounting for 5% of its business to 50% in the same period. Last year, Three Day Rule conducted its own survey to understand how singles outside of its network are thinking about matchmaking. The report, which included 250 respondents, found that 74% would try matchmaking, while only 1% actually have. The main reason for that discrepancy is the price barrier. So, if you think that matchmaking works, and everyone would try it, but it’s too expensive, the question is, how do we democratize this concept? Cohen-Aslatai says. [Image: Three Day Rule] How Three Day Rule built an AI matchmaker The answer hes landed on is Tai. Cohen-Asla”tai” and Sneha Ramachandran, general manager of Three Day Rules new app, have been working on perfecting this AI matchmaker for the past two years. Whereas Three Day Rule’s services typically start at a hefty $1,500 for a three-month plan, its new app comes in a free tier, which gives users five minutes of daily voice conversation with Tai and a separate AI coach (alongside unlimited texting), as well as five ogoing conversations with matches. A second premium tier costs $99 per month and includes four guaranteed match introductions per month, 10 minutes of daily conversation with Tai and an AI coach, and unlimited conversations with matches. Tai is built off of ChatGPT, which, Cohen-Aslatai says, has the fastest voice response rates of any other models on the market. But while ChatGPT serves as the base of the model, its trained on data collected by Three Day Rule. That means that all of Tais interactionsfrom their tone to the questions they askare informed by data collected through Three Day Rules human matchmakers. Unlike other dating services, which are primarily focused on facilitating first dates, Cohen-Aslatai explains that Three Day Rule has collected a wealth of post-date data. This information, gathered through multi-question surveys sent after every date, lets matchmakers know exactly what the client did and didnt like about their match. All of these insights have helped to refine Tais matching abilities. When users first download Three Day Rule, theyll have to complete a mandatory photo verification process in order to join. From there, theyll have an initial conversation with Tai (via text or voice messages), during which Tai will gather key details like important preferences, demographic and psychographic information, and relationship deal-breakers. After that discussion, Tai will begin searching the apps database for matches. Over time, the model will make its way through 150 questions identified by Three Day Rule as important topics to understand exactly what a client is looking for. We’re trying to really deeply understand your personality, Cohen-Aslatai explains. Part of that process means attempting to replicate the uniquely human touch of a matchmaker in AI form. If a user is giving brief yes or no answers, Ramachandran says, Tai will adjust its responses to match that cadence and probe deeper in later conversations. A chattier user will get chattier answers. Tai is even programmed to trick you by asking the same question in different ways if it suspects you may just be giving the answer it wants to hear. When the app identifies potential matches, both parties have to approve the decision before theyre connected online. From there, users can also chat with a second AI model in the app, which stands in for the human coach the company offers to its clients. This model has been trained using company podcasts, articles, and coaching guidelines to field questions about dates, debrief interactions, and help clients overcome personal obstacles to love. In response to a question like, I liked him, but how can I know if he liked me? for example, it might give three potential signals of mutual attraction. The app is built to offload the effort of swiping, searching, and vetting potential partners from the user onto the AI matchmaker. All the client should have to worry about, in theory, is uncovering what they really want in a partner. [Image: Three Day Rule] Why relationship experts are wary about AI-powered dating apps Tai is designed to make navigating the online dating world less complicated. But Treena Orchard, an associate professor at the School of Health Studies at Western University in London and author of the book Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating, isnt convinced. As a researcher specializing in the intersection of sex, relationships, gender, and tech, Orchard is generally wary about the claims made by many dating apps that AI features will make dating easierespecially considering that, from her perspective, that shouldnt necessarily be the goal. The problem I have with a lot of these different services is that it just really amplifies the difficulties that already exist, Orchard says. Dating is going to be hard no matter who’s doing it, because relationships are strange and we’re humans, and we have lots of desires and things pent up, and we’re not really good at teaching each other how to talk about these things. When we start to rely on an external source to facilitate datingwhether that be a matchmaker or a digital deviceshe says that we become removed from the process of actually getting to know each other. In regard to Three Day Rules new app, Orchard sees the utility of tapping into a network created by professional matchmakers who have experience in pulling together eligible singles. Still, she says, its important to recognize that, while matchmaking may be statistically more effective than dating apps, thats also because its historically required a much greater financial investment. Okay, it’s been trained by high end white-glove matchmakersgreatbut it’s still AI, Orchard says. One of the critiques I have is that variety is so important. Taking a chance on someone new and someone different can open up a whole interesting Pandora’s box of experiences that you could never have calculated in your wildest dreams if you just rely on an algorithm. On a broader scale, shes concerned about what it might mean to continuously find new ways to incorporate AI into our romantic relationships. For those who feel trapped in the online dating cycle, she recommends balancing the apps with trying new in-person events and hobbieseven, and especially, if its hard. The struggle is how we learn about rejection, about resilience, about failure, about one another, and how we get better at dating and become confident in ourselves, Orchard says.
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E-Commerce
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