And thank you to Maya Spangler, Meka Boyle, and Tommy Rico for photos.

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Photos by Tommy Rico

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Photos by Maya Spangler

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Photos by Meka Boyle

Today’s Important Headlines

A$AP Rocky dropped a trash bag couch

Produced by his design studio hOMMEADE in collaboration with Crosby Studios, A$AP Rocky’s latest object is a bean bag couch assembled entirely from colorful trash bags, some stuffed with plastic bottles, others with assorted garbage, and one packed with fake dollar bills, the whole thing meant to evoke the texture of a city sidewalk. hOMMEADE has been on a roll, having recently released a retro-inspired mobile recording studio and a vintage gaming console. Online commenters were quick to draw comparisons to Balenciaga’s trash bag pouch. No price point has been announced yet.

This Instagram account curated a time capsule of iconic 2000s Coachella performances

@indiesleaze compiled 18 fan-filmed Coachella performances from 2004 to 2012. Shot by regular attendees rather than professional crews, the footage carries a nostalgic intimacy that polished concert films rarely capture. Standouts include Justice (2008), Crystal Castles (2009), and Lil B (2011).

NVIDIA’s new initiative is trying to integrate AI and fashion

NVIDIA, the producer of an estimated 80% to 95% of the world’s AI chips, has partnered with the London College of Fashion’s Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA) on a series of AI runway showcases featuring generative lookbooks, simulated audience responses, and rapidly generated visual narratives capable of adapting to different markets in seconds. The project is part of a larger strategy by the company aimed at demonstrating human-AI co-collaboration will become a core skill in the creative industry of the future.

Charli XCX’s next album will be rock

In a recent interview with British Vogue, Charli XCX said, “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music.” The response has been split. Some praised her willingness to pivot and understood the creative fatigue that could follow BRAT’s all-consuming grip on culture. Others pushed back, criticizing what they see as her tendency to frame herself within rigid trend cycles, reading it as noncommittal and performative rather than a genuine shift.

Drake commissioned a 9 ft sculpture of Sade

Drake’s longstanding obsession with Sade is now quite literally cast in stone with a newly commissioned nine-foot sculpture recreating the cover of Love Deluxe. The work is by artist Rebecca Maria, whose practice centers on hip-hop iconography, often rendering cultural figures as sculptural monuments dressed in streetwear labels like BAPE.

Issey Miyake’s new NYC flagship is a store, gallery, and cultural hub

Issey Miyake has opened its largest store outside Japan in Manhattan. Beyond being architecturally impressive, the 13,000-square-foot retail flagship doubles as a cultural space, a gallery concept the brand had previously kept exclusive to Japan, showcasing Issey Miyake’s signature pleating techniques, heat-reactive baseball caps, and rotating works by artists including Shoji Kamoda. The store incorporates repurposed tables made from the glass wall panels of the now-closed Tribeca flagship and offers exclusive pieces created specifically for the opening.

A new AI company “TITLES” will train models on an artists work – then pay that artist every time someone uses it

Addressing the increasingly homogenized visual style produced by many generative AI models, which are often trained on large, generic datasets and criticized for their parasitic use of uncredited creative labor, a new artist-centric startup called TITLES proposes an alternative system. Instead of relying on massive, undifferentiated data pools, it allows artists to build small-batch, custom models using their own training media. When an artist’s work is used, the platform tracks attribution in real time, compensates the original creator, and clearly tags them as the source.

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

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Today’s inspiration supplement. Click through to view.

From The Archive

An extra piece of content from the Welcome Archive for Magazine subscribers only.

The Jerdon Magnum 357 Handgun Blow dryer

Released in 1981, this Jerdon hair dryer was designed to resemble a .357 Magnum revolver, with the barrel housing the heating element and the grip used as the handle. It reflects a period when novelty appliances used recognizable pop culture imagery to stand out.

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Exciting opportunities, employment and otherwise

Christian Dior Couture — Assistant Studio RTW Leather & Fur Intern (Paris, FR)

Internship supporting RTW leather and fur development through design research, technical drawings, material sourcing, and show preparation within a luxury fashion studio. Ideal candidate will be a fashion design student or graduate with strong Adobe skills and interest in luxury RTW development.
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Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment — Curatorial Internship (Brooklyn, NY)

Paid internship supporting a contemporary art program at Barclays Center, assisting with artist research, commissioning, interpretive materials, tours, and on-site artwork stewardship in a high-traffic public venue. Ideal candidate will be an emerging curator with strong writing skills and interest in public art and audience engagement.
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Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) — Social Media Manager (Los Angeles, CA)

Digital strategy and content role overseeing MOCA’s social channels, producing photo and video content, managing engagement, and analyzing performance in collaboration with curatorial and marketing teams. Ideal candidate will have strong content production skills, platform fluency, and experience managing fast-paced social ecosystems.
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Everyone is always trying to figure out what is ‘going on’ in culture. A common time to try to do this is at the end of the year. But things change too much in one year. To get a real sense of what’s happening, you need to be checking in more frequently than that.

It also helps to have a larger sample. That’s why we’re conducting the Welcome Quarterly Survey, where we ask a panel of notable figures what they noticed happen in culture and the world these past three months. Their responses are reproduced below.

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Illumitati [artist]:

In reaction to world war 3 and impending doom, I’ve noticed a lot more solar-punk hopecore types of content. I’m not sure if it’s linked to accelerationism, but it seems there’s a lot of content emerging that is using nature and sustainable energy as pinpoint to unify people.

And peptides. Holy shit the peptides started in 2021 I didn’t think it would get this big, thanks Clavicular!

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beenslackin [style icon]:

I don’t think I could say just the last three months, I would say something that has been culminating for the last four years but has escalated to new levels I thought were unimaginable, is the aggressive campaign against human empathy. Empathy being seen as a sign of weakness as opposed to an admirable trait.

And I think some of the best works of art come from humans with empathy or a human showing empathy and compassion for other humans like Earth Song by Michael Jackson, Viv Westwood in her early days, all the way till she passed away using her runway as a political narrative of what she believed to be right and wrong, some of Raf Simon’s most coveted 02 / 03 collections all was bout the war on Terror. The issue is now we have mostly either: spineless creatives and creators who don’t want to align themselves to any political side in fear of losing money or sponsorships, or just straight up people who only care bout themselves. And that’s fine just lame imo lol.

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42 [music journalist]:

AURA has died in Q1 of 2026.

No one cares about aura.

And that’s a good thing!!!

Just be yourself.

That’s how you can be happiest.

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The Femcels [musical group]

Our boobs grew…. 4kg… each… wait I don’t think it went to my boobs…. I’m obese… oh and we are famous.

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Bazo [designer and founder of 1199]:

Good question.

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Slawn [artist]:

You know what trend I noticed actually kind of died was baggy pants. You see less and less of them nowadays. Not that people are wearing skinny jeans now but they’ve they’ve kind of been getting skinnier.

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DIVA Corp [art critic]:

All of a sudden, artists are bullish on San Francisco. It makes no sense. It’s not all artists, of course, but the city’s being discussed and taken seriously as an alternative to LA and New York, and this is new. The sentiment’s gaining steam, too, which speaks more to the perceived erosion of LA and New York than it does to some cultural renaissance specific to SF. After all, San Francisco hasn’t been artistically relevant since the Beats; rents are through the roof and rising; and the moneyed priorities are tethered to seed funding, not art. Are LA and New York any better, though? Rents certainly aren’t, plus we’ve got slumping markets, gallery closures, and pretty austere artistic ambitions due to a career-obsessed creative class. Not to mention sociopolitical upheaval. So, “Why San Francisco?” – a question without an easy answer – has given way to “Why not?” Artists feel stuck in cities that don’t seem to want them (see: Josh Kline’s piece last week in October), and San Francisco represents an escape, a shred of hope, a familiar alternative. Realistically, it’s also a pipe dream built on pure projection.

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Hamza [one half of Slushy Noobz]:

Our ability to make sense of information and distinguish what matters is being tested.

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Martin [the other half of Slushy Noobz]:

More AI generated memes.

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Max Evasion [?]:

Everyone is cooking, for better or for worse.

No one is just watching anymore.

We’re all in the kitchen.

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Lightris [musician]:

The pizza movie dropped.

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Nation [musical group]:

They’re adding 125 traffic cameras to the streets of Los Angeles after years of them being outlawed.

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Eilish Constance [musician]:

World war 3. my room is getting messier. And my hair is getting longer, I’m also trying to figure out what my favorite color is and I think I landed on pink?… but I’ve learned a lot about myself and my relationships and what works to keep me balanced and I think that’s what I’ve been trying to teach myself my whole life.

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Zukovstheworld [musician]:

Gymskin & Clavicular.

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Mikail Haroon [Welcome staff writer]

Overt imperfection in design, fashion, and writing is something that people increasingly value in the past 3 months. with AI’s advance, it’s more appealing than ever to keep the imperfections, share casual unfinished pieces of thoughts, and display visible wear.

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AS IS AGENCY [creative agency / Welcome collaborator]

Acute authenticity poisoning. Levels of cynicism have reached new highs. Baseline trust in the sincerity of content encountered on the internet is crashing in the general population.

A glut of polished content placed a premium on authenticity, the intimate BTS type moments, and marketers caught up. The SWAG rollout was a turning point for a lot of people who thought those crash-outs were real. Turns out you can’t trust the video of a bystander anymore. You cant’t trust people in the comment sections anymore: Chaotic Goods is manufacturing discourse for clients using effective bots. This is pretty much just the dead internet idea, but it is kind of sad to see. Like Clavicular ODing and the first question is whether it was a stunt. Maybe it was. New methods needed.

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Jordyn Lasko [founding publicist at LASKO / Welcome collaborator]

The stakes feel way higher now. The stakes elevate faster. That’s how it feels the world has changed to me. Given the majority of my clients are not American I see how international politics affect musical touring and people’s ability to execute creative projects and it requires a true fighting spirit and it kinda breaks my heart sometimes but the resilience is cool and that’s what I’ve noticed :)

Today’s Important Headlines

Someone just got a $1M Picasso for $116

A French charity raffle titled “1 Picasso for 100 Euros” drew its winner yesterday in Paris, awarding Picasso’s 1941 gouache Tête de Femme, a portrait of his muse and partner Dora Maar painted in the same studio where Guernica was created, to a single ticket holder for the price of one entry. All 120,000 tickets sold at 100 euros each, raising a total of 12 million euros for Alzheimer’s research. The initiative was founded by French TV producer Péri Cochin in 2013, marking the third time he has organized the raffle.

Blood Orange, FKA Twigs, and Brian Eno will debut a “sonic prayer” at the Vatican

A “sonic prayer” will take place in Vatican City on May 9, as part of the 2026 Venice Biennale. The prayer is made up of a series of sound-based works by a stacked lineup that includes Blood Orange, FKA twigs, Brian Eno, Patti Smith, and Jim Jarmusch, and will guide attendees through the Vatican’s Holy See pavilion, where they will experience the sound installation via headphones. The exhibition is inspired by the life and work of medieval artist and healer Saint Hildegard of Bingen. While you wait for that, Arca’s ICA exhibition, featuring her signature maximalist paintings, closes this Friday.

Hunter Biden has challenged Eric and Donald Trump Jr. to a cage fight

During a video appearance on YouTuber Andrew Callaghan’s Channel 5 Instagram page, Hunter Biden declared himself fully willing to fight Eric and Donald Trump Jr. in a cage match, saying he was “100% in” if Callaghan could make it happen. Neither the White House nor the Trump Organization has responded, leaving the whole thing firmly in the realm of maybe.

Ye’s childhood art is now worth $3.1M

In 2020, five pieces Ye made at age 17 (two graphite drawings, two scratchboard works, and a gouache painting) were priced at $23,000 in an episode of PBS’s Antiques Roadshow. Now, a new USPAP-certified appraisal commissioned by current owner Vinoda Basnayake valued the same collection at $3.1 million, arguing the works deserve to be read as the earliest artifacts of a generational creative figure rather than run-of-the-mill celebrity memorabilia. A portrait of his late mother Donda alone accounts for roughly $335,000 of that figure.

Oasis, Wu-Tang Clan, Sade, and more are headed to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has announced its class of 2026, with Oasis, Wu-Tang Clan, Sade, Joy Division/New Order, Iron Maiden, Billy Idol, Phil Collins, and Luther Vandross all earning induction across a notably genre-diverse lineup spanning punk, metal, R&B, and hip-hop. The announcement has also sparked discussion on two fronts. First, the lineup is British-heavy. Second, many doubt that Sade will actually appear to accept the aware, given that she has not performed publicly since 2011 and has not released new music in 16 years.

The internet is debating whether Geese is an Industry Psyop

Earlier this month, author Eliza McLamb published a Substack essay exploring the UGC and narrative-driven campaigns run by Chaotic Good Projects, a digital marketing agency representing acts like Geese, Sombr, and Alex Warren. McLam’s essay took a neutral stance, focusing on advertising within the broader “dead internet” discourse. Wired then extended McLam’s investigation with a controversial article titled “The Fanfare Around Geese Was a Psyop,” sparking widespread debate about the increasingly blurred lines of contemporary digital marketing and what the term “industry plant” really means in 2026.

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

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Today’s inspiration supplement. Click through to view.

From The Archive

An extra piece of content from the Welcome Archive for Magazine subscribers only.

Andy Warhol and Liza Minnelli during a photoshoot at the Factory in New York City (1978)

Photos by Richard Young

Today’s Important Headlines

Coachella roundup

From Justin Bieber’s stripped-down $10 million set, reportedly the highest-paid in the festival’s history, to The Strokes returning for their first Coachella performance in over a decade, legacy acts dominated the conversation. The xx also made their first live appearance in eight years, while newer energy came from Destroy Lonely previewing an unexpected EDM track during Subtronics’ set and Ninajirachi debuting a new song with Porter Robinson. Elsewhere, Geese covered Bieber’s “Baby,” and Blood Orange delivered a standout performance of “Champagne Coast” on the festival’s circular center stage.

A $300M Frida Kahlo collection has become the center of an Art World true-crime mystery

A cache of works by Frida Kahlo once owned by collectors Jacques and Natasha Gelman has become the center of a cross-border legal and cultural controversy stretching from Mexico to Spain. It’s a crazy story involving an American curator and a murdered notary. The upshot is that the collection, which legally was never supposed to leave Mexico, is now headed to Spain, and could one day be owned by a Spanish bank. Understandably, this has sparked protests in Mexico.

Harmony Korine’s first U.S museum show opens this week

A new exhibition at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami presents “Perfect Nonsense,” the first American museum survey of Harmony Korine, bringing together more than 50 works across film, painting, collage, drawing, and experimental media. The exhibition moves through Korine’s career from his early emergence after writing Kids to recent work like Baby Invasion, highlighting his shifting but consistent focus on outsider figures, fame, and American adolescence as cultural myth. Opening April 15, it arrives nearly a decade after his major mid-career retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2017.

The secret concert recordings of the most prolific bootlegger ever are now online

Since 1989, Aadam Jacobs has quietly taped more than 10,000 shows, starting with an early Nirvana performance years before Nevermind. The archive spans decades of indie and alternative music, with early recordings of artists like Fugazi, The Cure, Pavement, Sonic Youth, and Björk. Now, a global team of volunteers is digitizing and uploading the collection for free, turning decades of bootleg recordings into a public resource. A 2023 documentary on Jacobs offers a deeper look into the project.

Margiela allowed fans to paint their own clothing ‘Margiela White’ at an event

Attendees at the event were invited to bring branded clothing to be covered in Maison Margiela’s signature white paint, a process they refer to as the “bianchetto” technique. Online reactions were split, with many calling it a lazy gimmick, while others defended it as consistent with the house’s long-standing use of hand-finished bianchetto treatments on Replica and Tabi sneakers. Margiela’s recent show invitations also referenced the technique, when guests were sent buckets of white paint and a paintbrush.

The long-awaited Duchamp show is now open at MoMA

A major new exhibition at the MoMA traces the radical career of Marcel Duchamp, whose work repeatedly broke with tradition and redefined art in the modern era. Spanning roughly 300 works and more than six decades of output, the show is the first full-scale U.S. retrospective of his work since 1973 and offers a rare look at his experiments across painting, sculpture, and conceptual work. The show opened yesterday and will run until August 22nd.

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

Moodboard 057

Today’s inspiration supplement. Click through to view.

From The Archive

An extra piece of content from the Welcome Archive for Magazine subscribers only.

Desk Job by Louis Quail, the photography series covering the draining lives of office workers.

Shot in 2006 and 2007, the series was inspired by Quail’s own experience in the office at only 19 years old. “It was the most tedious job in the world for me, It required just enough brain power that you couldn’t switch off. It was a slow torture.”

Today’s Important Headlines

Björk is throwing a solar eclipse rave with Arca

Mánakvöld is a long-running series of DJ sets curated by Björk timed to the full moon. This year, she expands the concept into a larger rave celebrating the solar eclipse at Víðistaðatún Sculpture Park, joined by Arca and collaborators including Ronja Jóhannsdóttir and Sideproject. For one minute and four seconds, the sun will be completely obscured by the moon. Björk will also present an exhibition under the same name at the National Gallery of Iceland from May 30 through September 19.

Radiohead’s new installation is debuting in a massive underground bunker beneath Coachella

No, Radiohead will not be performing at Coachella. Instead, their new exhibition Kid A Mnesia will debut at the festival before traveling to San Francisco, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Mexico City. The installation features a 75-minute film that reinterprets and expands upon artwork created by Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood during the 1999 Kid A and Amnesiac recording sessions, originally collected in Kid A Mnesia: A Book of Radiohead Artwork. Early access can be reserved until April 12.

Harmony Korine is a producer on IShowSpeed’s new anime

IShowSpeed will receive his own anime adaptation, written by Netflix’s One Piece co-showrunner Matt Owens, whose adaptation of the series is among the highest-rated live-action anime adaptations. Bizarrely, Harmony Korine, the director behind cult classics like Spring Breakers, Kids, and Gummo, is attached to the project as a producer.

Supreme collabed with Honda on a generator

What might initially read as just another bizarre Supreme collaboration, the new camo-wrapped Honda EU2200i generator actually taps into a specific strand of skate history. In DIY skate culture, generators were often used to light up spots for late-night sessions after security cleared out. The campaign leans into that lineage, featuring clips of skaters like Mark Gonzales (Gonz) and Pete Piggs skating under generator-powered lights, nodding to an era of self-made environments.

Inside the ‘Great Unseen Collection’ of a legendary New York art-collecting couple

New York gallery David Zwirner will open a new exhibition of largely unseen works drawn from the personal collection of art-collecting couple Joel and Carole Bernstein. The show will feature works by Andy Warhol, Alice Neel, and Alex Katz, alongside numerous pieces of historical significance, including an Alex Katz portrait of his wife, a subject he has painted over 250 to 300 times across seven decades, as well as major self-portraits by Joan Brown. The exhibition opens May 7.

J. Cole makes his Chinese Basketball debut tomorrow

In early April, Cole signed a contract through the Chinese Basketball Association to play for the Nanjing Monkey Kings, following a commitment last year to appear in a few games with the team. The rapper has also played for the Rwanda Patriots in the Basketball Africa League in 2021, as well as the Scarborough Shooting Stars in the Canadian Elite Basketball League in 2022. He is reportedly set to appear in up to six games this season.

Gucci Mane drops Pooh Shiesty diss track

Produced by Zaytoven, “Crash Dummy” includes multiple lines aimed at Pooh Shiesty, most notably: “After all that, boy, you still signed to me / I’m like Birdman, and, n----, this my Cash Money,” and “I thought it was a business meeting, but it was a setup / I walk in the room, you can feel the pressure building.” The release comes as Pooh Shiesty was denied bail two days ago.

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

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Today’s inspiration supplement. Click through to view.

From The Archive

An extra piece of content from the Welcome Archive for Magazine subscribers only.

‘My Stop Smoking Coach’ (2008)

Backed by Ubisoft and built around Allen Carr’s “Easyway.” The game had 12 lessons, mini-games, and trackers designed to help you break your addiction.

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Exciting opportunities, employment and otherwise

Vetements — Product Development Intern (Zurich)

Internship supporting the end-to-end product development process, working closely with design, production, and suppliers to translate concepts into production-ready garments while managing timelines, samples, and technical documentation.
Ideal candidate will be highly organized, technically minded, and eager to build a career in fashion product development with strong communication skills.

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Acne Studios — Internship Program (Paris)

Six-month, cross-functional internship program offering experience across design, merchandising, PR, and communications within a global fashion brand. Ideal candidate will be a motivated student eager to gain hands-on experience across the fashion product lifecycle.

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The Box — Graphic Design Fellowship (NYC/Remote)

Freelance fellowship supporting visual design across brand, marketing, merchandise, and special projects within a nightlife and hospitality-driven creative environment, ideal for emerging designers building real-world experience. Ideal candidate will be a visually strong, detail-oriented designer with interest in culture, nightlife, and brand storytelling.

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