The Week in Recommendations 6.18.25
#NoKings, breezy summer tops, and how "Love Island" has taken over our lives!
This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast was about Bravo’s “The Valley.” Rich Text is a reader-supported project.
Over on Love To See It this week, we’re talking “LIB” and “Bachelor” gossip, and “Love Island USA” Season 7!
Civic challenge of the week:
If you’re a registered Democrat in New York City, get out and vote in the mayoral election! Election day isn’t until 6/24, but early voting started on 6/14. You can find your polling place here. And remember: DO NOT RANK CUOMO, and DO rank five other candidates. I (Emma) will be ranking Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani as my top 2, followed by Adrienne Adams, Zellnor Myrie and Michael Blake.
Claire has been reading… 📖
The news, baby. This week I read a couple of great deep dives on recent events: a Wired piece on how the Tesla Takedown movement took root, and a New York Times piece on DOGE’s rampage through the Social Security Administration.
Emma has been reading… 📖
I started
’s book, “Being Jewish After The Destruction of Gaza.” I’m only one chapter in, so I don’t really have thoughts about it yet. But I am very excited to properly get into it, since I tend to really respect Beinhart’s read on complex questions of Jewish politics and identity. Mostly, instead of reading, I am staying up until 2 a.m. staring at an endless stream of TikToks debating Huda and Jeremiah, the supremely toxic couple at the center of “Love Island USA” season 7. Help me before my brain turns into utter mush!!!!Claire has been watching… 📺
“Love Island USA” and “The Bachelorette” season 11 are still consuming me. Do you have any idea how many hours of video content one has to consume in the first two weeks of June if you’re watching both of these series?? (Please tell me, both space and time have lost meaning at this point.)
I am eagerly awaiting life after our live show, when I will only be juggling “Bachelor in Paradise,” “The Ultimatum: Queer Love,” and eventually “Perfect Match” and “Love Island: Beyond the Villa.” Along with the return of these shows, I’m looking forward to actually finishing “Too Much,” “The Rehearsal,” and “Forever”; continuing to follow “And Just Like That…” and “The Valley”; and getting into the upcoming season of “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” Who wants to go outside during a New York summer, anyway?
Emma has been watching… 📺
“Love Island USA” and “The Bachelorette” season 11 are my whole life. I live in the liminal space between Fiji in 2025 and the Bachelor Mansion and/or Ireland in 2015. I’ve started losing sense of space and time, and frankly the gloomy weather outside is not helping.
However, I did dip my toes into screeners of the new season of “The Ultimatum: Queer Love” and less than a full episode in, I’m already hooked. (Truly why do they even bother making the straight version? It pales in comparison.)
Claire has been listening to… 🎧
This straddles the line of listening and watching, but lately I have been fascinated by the musician Jill Lavin’s videos in which she spends just an hour remaking a pop song in the style of another pop song. (Lavin, also known as Spritely, may be familiar to you from her earwormy breakup song about moving to Texas for her ex, only to get dumped.)
She’s remade Justin Bieber’s “Baby” as a Sabrina Carpenter song, Katy Perry’s “Thinking of You” as a Britney Spears song, and The Chainsmokers’ “Closer” as if it were “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers — and the best part is how she documents the process of breaking down the songs to their individual components so she can replicate the sound of each artist and figure out how to adapt the original material to the new style. I love getting a little lesson in music production, chased with an unexpectedly groovy cover of a pop song I once considered to be utterly basic. (Though I may be one of the few people who ever could have claimed to be obsessed with the song “Thinking of You” by Katy Perry. It’s a top-tier song to sob to after a breakup!)
Emma has been listening to… 🎧
The latest season of The Binge Cases. This limited series, Catch Me If You Ken, follows a love scammer named Ken. He meets women, woos them posing as a rich investor / entrepreneur, and then when they are fully in love with him, he extracts money from them and their families. If you, like me, are always deeply intrigued scam stories, this will be right up your alley.
Claire has been buying… 🛍️
R+Co's Grasp intense hold shaping balm to smooth my dirty-hair-day styles. I have been relying on products meant to smooth flyaways, but I finally had to admit that a hair balm stick just isn’t powerful enough to keep my bangs neatly slicked back. Whether they were secured with bobby pins or a little flipped ponytail, they were popping out all over. This R+Co gel keeps things in place without being too stiff or wet-looking for my taste.
Plus, I loved Sézane’s new collab with Galician brand Andión, which is full of breezy pastels and vibrant embroidery. I got the Luciana top, which is a bit out of my comfort zone – so much white, and yet so much color! – but it feels like a welcome vibe shift for this summer.
Emma has been buying… 🛍️
Summer tops from Reformation! I realized that I have a serious lack of versatile summer tops — especially ones that can be mixed with fancier pieces or stand in as the adult version of the “going out tops” that haunted my youth. After seeing
and rave about Ref’s tank top game, I took the plunge on the Calie Tank in Mole and Heather Gray. For a fancier vibe, I ordered the mini polka-dotted Nila Top and the Monica Silk Top in black. Only the Monica has arrived thus far, but I love love love it! It’s an item of clothing that pushes me kinda out of my comfort zone, but that feels worth doing every once in awhile. (Also, Ref happens to be having a fun 25% off sale right now! Not on these tops unfortunately, but I definitely have my eye on a few pairs of shoes…)
Claire has been making… 🧶
No Kings rally signs with my five-year-old! He was the sloganeer, creative director, and artist (though I did outline the letters), and I think he came up with some pretty effective concepts. (Please note the angry face he instructed me to draw in the O of “WORST.”)
We braved the rain as a family, and we were glad we did. The Jersey City rally was at least twice as big as the one held in April, and it felt encouraging to see friends and neighbors in the crowd.
Emma has been making… 🧶
I recently went back to one of my absolute favorite oh-no-what-should-I-have-for-dinner recipes,
’s Frizzled Chickpeas. Both Adam and I love this heartier-than-it-looks dish, and thus it is in my frequent cooking rotation. It’s salty and spicy and cheesy and filling — basically all of my favorite things?? I add extra garlic and a bunch of chili flakes to mine, and it was a great way to use the fresh herbs I bought (but did not use up) for a different recipe before they fully wilt.
I also made it to the Brooklyn No Kings rally! Even though the weather was beyond disgusting, it felt really really good to take some kind of action, and stand in solidarity with the millions of Americans who are deeply distressed at the direction our country is evidently heading in. (Read: Fascism.) My favorite sign that I saw said “The only orange monarch I want” with an arrow pointing to a drawing of a butterfly. 10/10 no notes.
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the poster!! the palette, the angry face, everything, A+ art direction.
and Emma that top is so sexy but chic! love.