At Hugo & Marie we spend a lot of time thinking, talking and writing about the cultural landscape with our clients. Welcome to Issue 02 of a new dispatch from our studio, where we start to join the dots.

Helium: what's in the air.

"If I was the front porch swing, would you let me hang?
If I was the dance floor, would you shake your thing?
If I was a rubber check, would you let me bounce
Up and down inside your bank account?
Would you trust me not to break you?
I’m just tryin’ real hard to make you
Notice me being around"

"Being Around", The Lemonheads (1993)

In 2024, how possible is being around?

"Being Around" came out a year before the debut of Friends: the show that epitomized the 90s as an era of being around par excellence. The gang hung out in one of their spacious, neighboring apartments or the coffee shop downstairs, as their various lovers and antagonists would drift in and out, bringing subplots and hijinx. Even in 1994 those apartments were suspiciously beautiful given their variously unemployed/unemployable inhabitants, but they now seem like pure fantasy. And our coffee shops don’t feel like Central Perk anymore either. Seating is disappearing before our eyes and coffee is now a luxury anyway. The spaces of being around have foundationally changed, and so have we.

In the Lemonheads heyday, being around was more than just a way of hoping the object of your affection might notice you. It was the way a cultural or social scene could allow for spontaneity, and amorphous evolution: making yourself a part of something by just showing up. For generation stay-at-home and generation sensible a ‘scene’ is no longer the experience of physically being in a place of spontaneous congregation. Rather, a scene is the curation and creation of an imagined space through the recording and posting of its visual signifiers- a “hyperactive digital landscape of so called aesthetics… with a lot to look at but a very thin relationship to any ‘real life’ anything, like behaviors or gathering places”. We are not ‘around’, we are on our phones.

The collapse of youth-driven, site-specific congregation changes how culture is developed and shaped. And there is a deep, inherent tension at the heart of the increasingly siloed, individualized world we have created in recent years and what allows us to flourish as people. Amid this landscape of "e-aesthetics", green shoots appear.

People seek connection. IRL approaches to dating are having a return to favor and brick and mortar shopping is steadily returning to the zeitgeist. ‘Third spaces’ have entered the vernacular as we seek them out and create new ones. And when we have established new assemblages, new subcultures germinate. Who saw a line dancing class coming as the new downtown scene so hot you better show up early for a spot?

New service-providers are offering gentle guidance and encouragement to people seeking adventure, creativity, conversation or parallel play: Peoplehood Peloton-izes human connection, turning it into a practice, like exercise or meditation (complete with monthly subscription fee). Flash Pack aims to help people create new friendships through their programme of ‘can't-do-by-yourself’ travel experiences. Time Left, where “every Wednesday, strangers meet for dinner” is taking off in cities all over America. Some offerings can feel a little staid and sanitized. At Hugo & Marie, the opportunity to explore something more unexpected, more mutable, and more unique intrigues us. As do the ways we can break down borders between being around one another physically and digitally.

The dream of the 90s may be dead and buried, but being around other people is still pretty much the best thing we can do for our happiness. As brands today consider what it means to be makers, sponsors and shapers of culture, and how best they can continue to deepen the connection with their audience, the role of being around will be something to consider. The infrastructure of our reality is shifting. There is no ignoring AI, gaming and whatever we used to call the metaverse, but in one form or another, being around is here to stay.