Future+ Codes of Culture | Issue 86

AI, scent, sport, and style signal a shift in retail and culture

It’s Friday, July 25th, and our final edition before the August reset. We’ll be offline for the first half of next month, back mid-August with sharper tools and a few new moves.

This week’s signals point to a quiet but decisive shift: from broadcast to embedded, from scraping to simulating, from passive retail to intelligent interaction.

CommerceGPT is a glimpse into what comes after search, where AI agents don’t just respond, they anticipate. Fashion, for all its climate claims, is still chasing volume over impact, while Forest Green Rovers are rewriting the playbook with the first fully vegan-certified kit. Boots is turning fragrance into a full-sensory retail strategy. And Spotify? It’s laying the groundwork for a future where entertainment and commerce blend invisibly into everyday interaction.

Zoom out, and a pattern emerges: brands are moving from scale to specificity, from owning channels to shaping context.

Scroll on for our deep dive on the 5 stories shaping the week across luxury, fashion, tech, and culture.

See You in August!

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