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Judge a book by its cover, and you might think that American Canto, the memoir by Vanity Fair‘s outgoing West Coast editor Olivia Nuzzi, is destined to be a classic. The memoir, which chronicles Nuzzi’s drama-filled life and career as a political reporter in the Trump era, features a strikingly simple cover that serves as shorthand for the book’s ambitions. The intent was to give the book a clean, no-frills design that felt both classic and contemporary, says Simon & Schuster senior art director Alison Forner, whos also designed book covers like Ezra Kleins all-type cover Why Were Polarized and Garrett M. Graffs Watergate: A New History. [Cover Images: Simon & Schuster] Nuzzi’s book features a stark white cover with the title and her name rendered in a serif typeface inspired by fashion magazine typography of the 1980s. The typeface does a lot of work for the book, which appears to be off to a slow start amid the ongoing media storm surrounding its rollout. A political reporter since 2014, Nuzzi was fired last year from New York magazine following an alleged relationship with now-Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Her publisher Simon & Schuster describes the much buzzed-about book by what it’s not: “not a memoir, nor a tell-all, nor a book about the president,” but “a character study of a nation undergoing radical transformation in real time.” Critics have called it a “tell-nothing memoir” that falls short of its ambition and is less interesting than the scandal that surrounds it. [Cover Images: Wiki Commons] Typographic covers using a vintage-inspired font is a surefire way to evoke a classic mid-20th century look, like in covers for John F. Kennedy’s 1956 Profiles in Courage or Robert A. Caro’s 1990 The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent. Most bestselling books today, however, use pictures and illustrations. On the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, just two books have type-led covers, and both have numbers in their titles and also use other visual elements. (Andrew Ross Sorkins 1929, about the year’s market crash, uses a cratering market line to divide the bright red cover, and the cover of former Vice President Kamala Harriss 107 Days about her 2024 campaign counts down in serif numerals from 1 to 107 on a blue background.) [Cover Images: PRH, Simon & Schuster] American Canto goes further, relying on just text and a subversively patriotic white, red, and black color palette to communicate its message. I wanted something simple and evocativered, black, and white give the jacket an urgent minimalism, Forner tells Fast Company. Olivia specified wanting a red without blue undertones, and I was more than happy to oblige. To capture the right shade of red, Nuzzi sent still photos of wildflower petals and cropped stills from films by director Martin Scorsese, including a scene in Goodfellas where a bodys in the back trunk of a car and the taillights are lighting up the fog. “When there’s no imagery to rely on, every detail becomes extremely importantfrom the typeface choices and letter spacing, to the negative space and color,” Forner says. “They all need to work on an almost subliminal level to become the ‘voice’ of the book.”
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E-Commerce
Artificial intelligence is the most exhaustively covered technology since the dawn of the internet. As any tech editor will tell you, it can be challenging to find stories about AI that are not merely new but big. So when our editorial director, Jill Bernstein, forwarded me a pitch from journalist John Pavlus, who wanted to write about a mad scientist attempting to stomp out hallucinations and other gen-AI nonsense from Amazons cloud security/ chatbots/robots/agents, I said yes in seconds. (He actually used a more pungent term than nonsense, but for decorums sake, Im keeping that to myself.) And then I braced myself. The pitch promised to explain the abstruse formal mathematics behind neuro-symbolic AI, a totally different kind of AI that is not based on the kind of large language models that power ChatGPT and just about every other AI product that has infiltrated our lives over the past three years. The mad scientist was Byron Cook, who heads up Amazons automated reasoning group. Reader, I trust your intelligence, but this sounded like heady stuff. My concern was not that the piece wouldnt be smart or interesting. It was that you might need to be Byron Cook himself to understand it. I neednt have worried. Ive worked with countless reporters over my three-decade career, and many of them dazzled me with their brilliance. But Im not sure Ive worked with anyone as gifted as Pavlus at translating the difficult into the digestible, let alone the delightful. See his story, Amazon’s hallucination hunter. This article closes out our third annual AI 20 package. For this years list, global technology editor Harry McCracken and senior editor Max Ufberg set out to identify the unheralded scientists and ethicists, CEOs and investors, and Big Tech veterans and first-time founders of the AI universe, as McCracken writes in the introduction. Household names, theyre not. Yet theyre already changing our world, with much more to come. You may have noticed that Ive now spent nearly 300 words touting our AI coverage without using the word bubble. That was intentional, and a bit superstitious. Do you have any idea how nerve-racking it is to produce a quarterly print magazine, in the age of AI, amid one of the frothiest stock markets in history, hoping that the tech reporting will hold? Because of course its a bubble. The question is when it will pop, and how loudly, and how long it will take for the market (and the industry) to recover and settle into a more sustainable trajectory, with costs and revenue in alignment and real value returned to shareholders. A bubble can be a bubble and still be revolutionary, as we learned after the dotcom crash of the early 2000s. Not everyone agrees, of course, especially the publicist, gadfly, podcaster, and mini media mogul Ed Zitron, who has become famous predicting that AI isnt just a bubble but a colossal fraud. He makes his case to McCracken in Meet Ed Zitron, AIs original prophet of doom.
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E-Commerce
When Levis CEO Michelle Gass was in Japan last summer, she and chief product officer Karyn Hillman wandered down the street from the brands store in Tokyos trendy Harajuku neighborhood to a small, unassuming vintage shop called BerBerJin. They took the stairs down into its cavernous basement, where it keeps racks and racks of its best denim finds, and began the slow, laborious task of searching for treasure. A couple of hours later, Gass walked out with a pair of 1947 vintage 501s and an even rarer 1952 trucker jacket. We tried on so many, many pairs of jeans, Gass tells me over coffee in her San Francisco office in September. You appreciate the nuances and beauty of denim, how it ages and how its worn. There are these incredible finishes that come as a result of people wearing it for 70 years. Its so special. Its the kind of experience that can only happen in Japan. When American Levis factories began modernizing their denim production lines in the 1960s and 70s, Japanese collectors came to America to buy up as much vintage and deadstock denim as they could. (Japanese manufacturers bought the antique shuttle looms, sparking homegrown brands like Big John and Studio DArtisan.) Levis created its Levis Vintage Collectionnew replicas of historical designsin the country in 1996. Recently, Levis cemented the relationship further, launching its Made in Japan Blue Tab collection, a premium line of trendy takes on classic Levis designs, last February. Gasss success in striking vintage gold in Tokyo last summer is also symbolic of a larger trend for the 172-year-old company: Most of its consumers are now outside of the U.S. This has been a blessing for the bottom line. At a time when U.S. retailers have been roiled by tariffs and global supply chain challenges, Levis is outperforming its peers, posting 14 consecutive quarters of direct-to-consumer channel growth. Its a level of consistency its competitors undoubtedly envy; Gap posted its first annual revenue increase since 2022 last year (1%) after years of flat sales and declines. Forty years ago, international sales accounted for just 23% of the companys annual revenue. Now that figure is close to 60%. The increase is noteworthy, given how low the U.S., as a country, has plunged recently in international esteem. According to recent Ipsos surveys, the opinion of America as having an overall positive effect on world affairs has fallen in 26 out of 29 countries over the last six months. Only 19% of Canadians see the U.S. as a positive influence, down from 52% six months ago. The aesthetics of America from the past are not the aesthetics of America for today, says University of Michigan marketing professor Marcus Collins. In September, Levis leadership in the U.K. acknowledged as much, saying that rising anti-Americanism as a consequence of the Trump tariffs and governmental policies could drive British shoppers away. The company avoided much of the impact from tariffs in 2025, thanks to a diversified supplier base across 28 different countries and minimal exposure to China, with less than 1% of its goods sold in the U.S. manufactured there. But its not immune: Gass said in October that the company will be raising prices on some of its products next year. But the companys success overseas shows that though the brand of America might be strugglingriven at home and distrusted abroadthe quintessential brand of Americana that Levis represents is thriving. Sales in foreign markets are generating double-digit year-over-year sales growth for the company. In a July interview with CNBCs Jim Cramer, Gass said the brand is on fire in Europe, especially among younger consumers, pointing to Paris, Barcelona, and Milan. Gasss vintage shopping spree reveals something else as well: that the woman at the helm of Levis grasps the intimacy of the relationship between people and their jeans. Fit, color, wash, agethey all add up to something ineffable for the wearer: identity. Merging heritage and quality with values of inclusivity, Levis is the ultimate ambassador for a certain kind of classic American cool, earning its spot on this years list of Brands That Matter. Since arriving at Levis two years ago, Gass has been rewiring the company into what she calls the worlds definitive denim lifestyle brand, with a target of $10 billion in annual revenue, a significant jump from the $6.4 billion the company generated in 2024. It entails growing the womens category (from 40% today to 50% of total sales); accelerating the companys direct-to-consumer business (currently about 47% of sales); streamlining its manufacturing supply chain; and expanding its brick-and-mortar footprint of 1,200 owned and operated stores by 250 locations over the next five years, particularly in high-growth regions like India, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. This will better help the company control the consumer experience and how wholesale partners market Levis. Our brand is actually bigger than our business right now, says chief marketing officer Kenny Mitchell. Levis has a market cap of $8.36 billiontiny compared to an American retailer like Nike ($107 billion). Its small even compared to Lululemon ($21.19 billion), a company with higher margins and a more developed DTC operation. (Denim, a more mature market than athleisure, has traditionally had lower margins and more competition.) Our job, Mitchell says, is to get our fair share. Mitchell was on vacation in Paris to celebrate his wifes 50th birthday in early 2024 when he started to hear the rumors: When Beyoncés new album, Cowboy Carterthe follow-up to her chart-topping Renaissancedropped that March, it would include a track titled Leviis Jeans. He immediately called Gass, who was barely three months into her CEO tenure. (She had been hand-picked for the role by her predecessor, Chip Bergh, after spending five years running Kohls and 16 years before that at Starbucks, eventually overseeing the European, Middle East, and Africa business.) It was the biggest gift, she recalls. I really could not believe it. Like, how in the world, or the universe, did this happen? Beyoncé clearly harbored affection for the brand, which had offered sponsorship support to Destinys Child in the early 2000s, featuring ads with the group wearing Levis Low Rise Jeans. (She also famously wore a custom pair of Levis cutoffs during her Coachella set in 2018.) For Gass, the song was a double win: Not only did it position the brand at the center of culture, it also offered a direct appeal to women, a critical component of Gasss growth strategy for Levis. She and Mitchell formed a team to brainstorm a joint campaign they might pitch to Beyoncé, if they got the chance. Levis is known for a lot of good things, but agility hasnt necessarily been one of em, says Mitchell, a veteran of McDonalds, Gatorade, and Nascar, who joined the company in June 2023 from Snap. The quick response showed whats possible, he says. Levis chief marketing officer Kenny Mitchell [Photo: Vincent Tullo; hair and makeup: Roland Brummer; set design: Peter Christensen] When the album came out in late March, Levis quickly changed all its social handles to include the extra i. (Fans were excited, too: The brands posts attracted 3 billion impressions within a month of the albums release.) Then Mitchell called Beyoncés team at Parkwood Entertainment; theyd seen the social swap and loved it, which led to talk of an official collaboration. Between September 2024 and August 2025, the parties would release three lushly produced video ads, all of which drew on the brands history while re-situating Levis within contemporary America. In a company press release to announce them, Beyoncé described Levis as the ultimate Americana uniform. Beyoncés embrace of Levis was unique, but stars have been aligning themselves with the brand since the 1930s, harnessing its working-class, Western roots to signal, and burnish, their own rebellious, down-to-earth image. John Wayne in Stagecoach. Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones. Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Elizabeth Taylor in Giant. A pair of 505s adorned the cover of the Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers. Bruce Springsteens 501-clad backside graced the cover of his 1984 album Born in the U.S.A. (in a photo shot by Annie Liebovitz). President Ronald Reagan, no marketing slouch himself, liked to wear Levis while working on his ranch. He often talked about America being the shining city upon a hill, a beacon for the rest of the world. Over the decades, that light has been a swoosh, the golden arches, an apple, a Coke bottle, and, yes, the iconic little red tab that identifies a pair of Levis. Mitchell recently returned from India, where he was visiting with two new Levis brand ambassadors: musician and actor Diljit Dosanjh and Bollywood star Alia Bhatt. I cant think of a lot of brands that have that dimension, he says of the variety of international cultures baked into its partnerships. Levis direct-to-consumer sales in Asia, including India, grew by 14% in Q1 2025. When Gass delivered the undergraduate commencement address at her alma mater, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), in Massachusetts, last May, she spoke about growing up in Lewiston, Maine, and the jobs she had before college, including working at a bread factory and bagging groceries at the local Shop N Save. Sitting in her office on the seventh floor of Levis headquarters on a September afternoon, with a stunning view of San Franciscos Bay Bridge, she smiles thinking about those old jobs, especially being a bun sorter at the bread factory, she says. It was for Burger King buns, no joke, that would come down the conveyor, and youd have to make sure that they were all lined up properly, toss the bad ones, and make sure it didnt get jammed up. I had a total I Love Lucy moment with hamburger buns that was really true. Buns were flying everywhere. In her speech to WPIs graduating class, Gass, whod received a partial scholarship to attend the school, charted her path from chemical engineering major to leader of an iconic brand like Levis by identifying five principles that were instilled in her during her time at the school in the late 80s: Ask the question; Its science and imagination; It will be hard; The right distance between two points may not be a straight line; and Consider the impact. Asked today how these principles apply to her work, she offers an example that illustrates principle one. Early in Gasss tenure as a marketer at Starbucks, in the late 90s, the company was still using red and white straws, like every other fast-food joint. She asked the question: Why dont we have green straws, to match the companys logo? That question prompted a company-wide look at small branding opportunities. Years later, after her almost 10-year stint at Kohls, Gass became Levis president in 2023, under then-CEO Bergh. While touring stores and offices around the world, she wondered, Where are all the denim skirts? Shouldnt Levis be the destination for the best denim skirt, like the 501 of a denim skirt? she recalls asking Bergh. It seems so simple, but it was not part of our core line. Chief product officer Karyn Hillman [Photo: Vincent Tullo; hair and makeup: Roland Brummer; set design: Peter Christensen] The strategy she and Bergh developed for transforming Levis into a fuller denim lifestyle brand entailed expanding the womens category beyond jeans, which means skirts and tops. Karyn Hillmans office is packed with five different racks of clothing samples, which she uses as inspiration for new products. Wearing a pair of vintage 1950s mens 501s, a brown leather jacket over a chambray blouse, and boots, the Levis product head exudes the companys denim lifestyle ambitions. She is positioning the brand as something of a personal stylist, helping shoppers make good-looking decisionsthe logic being, who knows what goes with 501s better than Levis? We have to keep answering that question day after day, Hillman says. Why would you buy that top, and why from us? And what makes it ours? As of Q3, tops comprise about 22% of the companys overall business, up 9% that quarter year over year. Meanwhile, Gass unified regional product teams within one group focused on design and merchandising, which helped Hillman and her team develop functional new materials. A new line of denim thread called Thermodapt, for example, can now be found in certain jeans and jackets (like the 501s and trucker). Thermodapt contains hollow-core cotton yarn designed to wick away moisture, trap warmth, and improve breathability in the heat. Its something increasingly important to customers in a warming world, especially in Asia. The rest of the denim lifestyle planwhich also involves bolstering the companys direct-to-consumer business, opening fully owned brick-and-mortar stores (particularly in Asia), and simplifying its supply chain and manufacturing operationshas involved difficult decisions. Last year, the company discontinued its sub-brandDenizen, originally launched in 2010. It sold another sub-brand, Dockers, for more than $300 million to Authentic Brands Group. These moves reduced staff in the companys headquarters by 44 people. Closing a production factory in Poland and a distribution center in Kentucky eliminated nearly 1,000 other jobs. One of the most important jobs of a CEO is resource allocation, Gass says. Now Levis is more focused. Levis will need that focus to navigate a landscape that is increasingly volatile. Last summers controversy surrounding American Eagles campaign with Sydney Sweeney (Genes are passed down from parents to offspring.... My jeans are blue) is a prime example. When social reactions objecting to the slogans eugenic undertones went viral, the right pounced. President Trump called the American Eagle ad fantastic and the hottest ad out there. American Eagle decided to do absolutely nothing, sticking with the campaign. In September, the brand reported that between the Sweeney spot and a Travis Kelce collab soon after, it had attracted 700,000 new customers and boosted the stock price, but Q2 comparable sales still slid by 3% compared to the year before. We are operating in a very complex environment, Gass says, but what gives me great confidence to navigate this time is that we have so much history and heritage around our values. The company began when Levi Strauss, a German Jewish immigrant, worked with tailor Jacob Davis to apply copper rivet reinforcements to tough denim in 1873, making the first manufactured waist overalls. Its social efforts began soon after that. Strauss started endowing college scholarships for women at the University of California, Berkeley in 1897. The company operated racially integrated factories in California during World War II and opened one of the first integrated factories in the Southin Blackstone, Virginiain 1960, four years before the Civil Rights Act outlawed workplace discrimination. In various marketing campaigns over the last few decades, Levis has often depicted itself as offering something for everyone. In a 2024 campaign, it called itself the unofficial uniform of progress. Earlier this year, as corporate DEI programs were being shuttered, suppressed, or de-emphasized to avoid undue negative attention, Levis did what it has always done. The company launched its annual Pride product collection, sponsored Pride events in San Francisco, and continued its donations to the Stonewall Foundation and the Trevor Project. In April, a conservative think tank called the National Center for Public Policy Research formally submitted a proposal to shareholders calling for the company to consider abolishing its DEI program, policies, department, and goals. More than 99% of shareholders voted to reject the proposal. [carousel_block id=”carousel-1764951032757″] We did advocate for our position on diversity and inclusion, Gass says. We did maintain our Pride sponsorship. This is who we are. And in times like these, its important to be consistent. Its the right thing to do, its part of our history, but its critical for business. Having a diverse workforce allows you to make better business decisions. Ive seen that time and time again. In August, Levis released a multimedia campaign starring Grammy-winning musical artist Shaboozey and chef Matty Matheson (who is also an actor and producer on The Bear) that exuded full-on, sun-soaked Americana vibes with a surrealist twist. Like Beyoncés commercials, theirsquirky odes to the Western shirt, 501s, and the trucker jacketevoke the history of Levis and of the American West. But theyre filmed through a modern lens (and maybe on shrooms?), blurring the line between heritage and hipster. Shaboozeys music does something similar, straddling the disparate worlds of country and hip-hop. He is a Black artist drawing acclaim in a genre largely dominated by white artists and audiences, and his success is a living example of how expansive Americana can be. Its knowing where youre from, not being scared to journey into new territories, he says, and understanding that at the center of everything, its the same heart, soul, and spirit of whatever it is you represent. I think for Levis, across any decade or trend, the soul and the heart remains the same. Shaboozey says hes been collecting Levis denim for as long as he can remember. Ive bought and sold and spent way more than I should on jeans, he says. It is part of my whole brand. My Twitter handle has been @ShaboozeyJeans since 2016. He was thrilled earlier this year to visit the Haus of Strauss, the nondescript bungalow near the Chateau Marmont on L.A.s Sunset Strip that opened in 2022 as a place for artists, stylists, producers, managers, and others in arts and entertainment to check out the denim brands best and even get customized pieces. (There are now outposts in Paris, Mexico City, Tokyo, and London.) If you see Ryan Gosling in Barbie wearing a Levis vest, it wasnt a paid sponsorshipits because of the relationship with his costumer. Or artists come through before Coachella to pick outfits. Its an investment, CMO Mitchell says, but its a part of how we stay connected to culture and subcultures. Beyoncé is a tough act to follow, but the NFL has gifted Levis with another potential megawatt moment: Super Bowl LX. The game will take place at the Levis Stadium in San Francisco in February, and perhaps even more importantly, so will the Super Bowl halftime show. It will be broadcast to more than 180 countries, with a total worldwide audience of more than 200 million. Once again, Mitchell says, We will be in the center of culture. The scheduled performer? Bad Bunny, whose politics of inclusion align with the companys values, and who has drawn public scorn and ridicule from conservatives all the way up to President Trump and Mike Johnson, who disagree with his politics and lack of English lyrics. The spotlight will offer a powerful opportunity for all three partiesBad Bunny, Levis, and America itselfto assure global audiences that there is still a lot to love on these shores. And its a high-profile chance for Levis to grow its business to be as big as its brand, finally. Gass believes it can be done; 172 years of history give her confidence. We know who we are, were clear in our values, and we always want to be on the right side of history. Plus, she says, At times like these, consumers go to brands that they recognize and trust. Levis is one of those brands. Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is no stranger to Levis products. At the 2023 Grammys, his pared-down outfita Uniqlo tee and Levis 501sdrew rhapsodic reviews from no less than Vogue. Will he sport a Blue Tab Canadian tuxedo on the 50-yard line? Im not going to break any news, Mitchell says, but I think your instincts are good.
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E-Commerce
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