Codes of Culture | Issue 104
LVMH is selling Marc Jacobs for $850 million.
Welcome back to Codes of Culture. I’m Ashumi Sanghvi.
Interesting conversations at the Nice Aunties documentary preview dinner last night with the artist herself, Wenhui, and the ever-shifting ideologies around longevity, beauty and community. The long-standing questions around man vs machine have become more prevalent than ever, and I’m excited that this film so poignantly highlights the human emotion of the process. Weaving beauty and code through with emotion and storytelling.
An interesting startup that came to my radar this week is Interstellar Lab, which uses intelligent systems to autonomously grow flora and fauna on Earth and in Space. The visuals look stunning, and this is the go-to company for beauty giants’ floral perfume needs. So interesting, as we also cover the production of synthetic lichens designed to produce food and fuel for space missions in today’s issue.
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📖In this issue:
LVMH is selling Marc Jacobs.
Fashion’s sustainability pitch has moved into wellness.
Amazon merged Alexa and Rufus into a single shopping agent.
SpaceX is pricing a future where computing moves into orbit.
Synthetic lichen systems could produce food and fuel during space missions.
1. LUXURY AND CAPITAL
What’s happening: LVMH has agreed to sell Marc Jacobs to a joint venture between WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group, with the buyers raising up to $850 million to fund the acquisition. WHP will hold the intellectual property, while G-III will run retail, e-commerce, and wholesale through a long-term exclusive licence. Marc Jacobs remains creative director. The transaction is expected to close before the end of 2026.
TLDR:
LVMH is exiting Marc Jacobs after 30 years. The group’s portfolio is being reshaped with greater precision.
WHP will own the brand. G-III will operate the business. The structure separates control of identity from day-to-day execution.
Marc Jacobs remains in place as creative director. Continuity at the top supports the brand’s next phase.
With Marc Jacobs added, WHP’s portfolio now exceeds $9.5 billion in global retail sales.
The planned $850 million raise signals conviction in the brand’s licensing and distribution potential.
Why it matters: For founders, investors, and brand operators in our network, this is a clear signal in luxury ownership. Culturally resonant American labels are increasingly being reorganised through IP-led structures that prioritise brand control, licensing reach, and operating flexibility. Marc Jacobs now sits inside a model built for monetisation across channels and categories. The broader question is which other legacy names are best unlocked through the same structure.
2. FASHION AND CULTURE
Fashion’s sustainability pitch has moved into wellness.
What’s happening: Reformation, one of the brands that helped define sustainable fashion for a mainstream consumer, has shifted its messaging toward natural fibres, material transparency, and product longevity. The underlying operational work remains in place, but the customer-facing language has changed. Across fashion and beauty, brands are increasingly framing these decisions in terms of personal health, comfort, and daily use rather than environmental impact. The consumer logic is clear: according to the BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion 2026 report, 84% of US consumers rank wellness as a top priority, and 51% say they would maintain or increase wellness spending even if discretionary income were to tighten.
TLDR:
Reformation’s material mix is now 98% natural or recycled fibre. The strategy remains intact, but the consumer framing has shifted.
Shoppers are paying closer attention to polyester, microplastics, and material composition. The purchase decision is increasingly shaped by what feels proximate and physical.
Brands such as Rise & Fall and Ilia Beauty are leading with quality, performance, and material integrity, with sustainability embedded in the proposition rather than foregrounded.
Others are building adjacent routes through repair, product longevity, and clearer value communication.
The category language is changing. Material trust and personal well-being now resonate more with consumers than sustainability terminology alone.
Why it matters: For brand operators, founders, and creative directors in our network, this is a shift in positioning with direct implications for product, storytelling, and retail language. Consumers are responding to materials through the lens of feel, safety, longevity, and personal well-being. That changes how value gets communicated. The brands gaining traction are aligning product truth with a language customers recognise immediately in their own lives.
3. AI COMMERCE AND DISTRIBUTION
Amazon merged Alexa and Rufus into a single shopping agent.
What’s happening: Amazon has launched Alexa for Shopping, combining Rufus’s product expertise with Alexa+ personalisation across devices. The experience is available to all US customers on the app, website, and Echo Show, with no Prime membership required. Users can query the main search bar in a conversational way, automate purchases through Scheduled Actions, and buy from third-party retailers via Buy for Me, which completes the transaction on their behalf. Shopping context now moves across Amazon surfaces and Alexa devices in both directions.
TLDR:
Rufus reached more than 300 million customers in 2025. Amazon has now folded that product layer into Alexa’s broader personal context.
The search bar has become a conversational interface. Discovery is being shaped through prompts, memory, and intent.
Scheduled Actions allow users to automate routine purchases around timing, price, and personal conditions.
Buy for Me extends Amazon’s role beyond its own inventory and into third-party retail transactions.
With no Prime requirement, Amazon is rolling out agentic commerce across its full signed-in customer base.
Why it matters: For retail operators and brand owners in our network, Amazon’s commerce layer is becoming more mediated, more personalised, and more influential in surfacing products. Discovery now runs through an interface trained on purchase history, browsing behaviour, and device-level context. That changes how brands earn visibility. The commercial question is no longer just how a product ranks in search, but also how it enters the agent's recommendation logic.
4. INFRASTRUCTURE AND FRONTIER COMPUTE
SpaceX is pricing a future where computing moves into orbit.
What’s happening: Google and SpaceX are in discussions around orbital data centres as part of Google’s Project Suncatcher, an initiative to deploy 81 satellites carrying Google Tensor Processing Units into orbit. Prototype launches with Planet Labs are targeted for 2027. SpaceX is also presenting orbital compute as a core part of its reported $1.75 trillion IPO narrative, framing space-based infrastructure as a major future market for AI. The talks follow Anthropic’s agreement to use capacity from xAI’s Memphis facility, with orbital collaboration also under discussion. Google is in parallel talks with other launch providers.
TLDR:
Project Suncatcher centres on 81 satellites, Google TPUs, and an orbital compute cluster, with prototype launches targeted for 2027.
SpaceX is placing orbital data centres inside its long-range commercial narrative. The Google discussions are strategically important to both companies.
Anthropic’s Memphis compute agreement with xAI points to a broader reshaping of who supplies frontier infrastructure and where that infrastructure sits.
The economic case depends on launch costs continuing to fall, with Starship central to that thesis.
Google has held a stake in SpaceX since 2015. This is an operational conversation with a long-standing financial relationship underneath it.
Why it matters: For capital allocators, infrastructure operators, and frontier technology founders in our network, Orbital Compute is emerging as a serious infrastructure thesis. The next phase of AI buildout is expanding the question from who owns chips and power to who defines the geography of compute itself. SpaceX is turning that premise into a market narrative ahead of one of the most consequential IPOs in circulation. Google’s involvement gives the category strategic weight early.
5. FRONTIER SCIENCE AND SPACE MANUFACTURING
Synthetic lichen systems could produce food and fuel during space missions.
What’s happening: Scientists at Imperial College London are developing synthetic lichen systems designed to produce food and fuel during space missions. The organisms pair cyanobacteria, which convert carbon dioxide and light into sugars, with yeast that transforms those sugars into fuels and food ingredients. The research draws on the symbiotic architecture of natural lichen and is built for missions where resupply from Earth is limited. It sits within a broader field of biomimetic space manufacturing that also includes mycelium-based construction materials and algae-derived oxygen systems.
TLDR:
Synthetic lichens use carbon dioxide and light to generate sugars, then turn those sugars into usable fuel and food ingredients.
The system is designed for closed-loop production, creating mission-critical resources within the environment itself.
Lichen offers a resilient biological model for extreme conditions, which makes it a strong template for space manufacturing.
Imperial’s work sits within a broader push to build production systems for environments beyond conventional terrestrial supply chains.
Research from Imperial and Texas A&M signals growing scientific momentum behind off-Earth manufacturing.
Why it matters: For the founders, operators, and investors in our network who track longevity, wellness, deep science, and frontier infrastructure, this is part of the same broader shift: biology is becoming a production layer. Imperial’s research points to a future where living systems are engineered to manufacture essential resources in constrained environments. Read alongside orbital compute, the signal is clear. The next infrastructure cycle is being designed for conditions beyond Earth, with capital, science, and industrial ambition moving in parallel.