My endless search

About friends, fanning out and plunging into the depths of the Carted feed.

I went away with some friends over the weekend. I love these girls and I love our trips. For better—or for worse (lol some of the things…)—when we get together it’s like we never left each other. You know those friends? We are tight. We talk about everything. And it’s rare that we don’t take a collective moment to discuss what we’ve all been buying lately.

Over the years we’ve talked ad nauseam about quality SPFs as we age (recommending this and this and this if you need mineral like me). Activewear is often discussed—the cost of which also seems to increase dramatically as we age. JEANS. A big one and always on the table in a shop talk session. Imagine any topic, we’ve been there.

And in those moments at least one of us is guaranteed to be in a style rut. A job has changed, a couple has shifted, someone has moved houses, clothes feel boring and uninspiring. Or someone is in a moment of crisis: there’s been a month-long breakout on a chin that needs immediate rectification, a comfortable and cool work shoe… does it exist?! There’s a wedding that needs an outfit, can she do a cropped tee?

I love being invited into these conversations about ruts, about dilemmas. I love connecting in this way. In these moments I feel like my hours and hours of research and scrolling are immediately useful. Because I know how to find the answers to their problems. When asked “how do you know all these things” I usually shrug, and say “I don’t know, I just do.”

But I do know how. I look at all these ‘things’ ALLLLL the time. Growing up, it was out of curiosity, I found pleasure in it. I still find pleasure in it, but I also get to bathe in ‘all the things’ for work, daily.

You’ll see a lot of DWP moments from me. It’s a thing.

Personally, when I feel stuck in a rut I like to ‘fan out’ (full disclosure I stole that from a team member and it’s related to how our AI model works lol). I look for inspiration from friends, much-loved creators, newsletters. I let the social media algorithms take me on a journey. I create moodboards and edit these into wishlists.

And on that note, my other favourite fan out: wishlist data.

As the shopping editor at Carted, part of what I do for work is look through items that people are saving to shopping wishlists.

I should reassure everyone at this stage—there’s nothing identifiable in this data. Just raw product information. Your secrets are safe from me.

Deep in the bowels of Carted there’s what we call “The Feed”. It’s not a feed as you know it per say. And it’s not visible to users (although I know what you’ll ask for next…).

To the untrained eye it looks very boring. Ok, even to my eye it looks boring. Like rows on a spreadsheet. Millions of rows to be more precise. With many, many, many columns. Numbers, attributions, details I glance over. But if you know where to look, it gets juicy. The columns that show URLs, product names, retailer names, the unique number of times a specific product has been saved. And more! Oh my gosh, it’s good!

KK’s own personal Feed.

It’s the BEST place to get lost. I find the most amazing things—all the things people are wishing for.

It’s a log of all the items that people who love to shop (my people) have researched, swooned over, are thinking deeply about purchasing, have purchased and will purchase again. These items have all been saved with love.

And in brilliant news, I am allowed to share a snippet of my internal March round up here with you. Maybe you’re in a rut too, maybe fanning out sounds like just the trick. Or maybe you’re a curious researcher like me :)

From The Feed

1. Madewell sits in our Top 10 most saved brands on Carted and this was the most saved item on the list for March. When I clicked through I was surprised to see that this bag is actually still only available on pre-order and won’t ship until June!! Shows the pull of the brand and also the deep commitment to the woven bag look we’ve seen popping up everywhere for the past 12 months.

In the last quarter we saw an almost 600% increase in woven bags saved! This is a cute summer version that’s not overly beachy/folky. And actually, I have added it to my own Bag list (operational hazard!).

2. The most-saved white t-shirt on Carted, all time, worldwide.

Uniqlo is up there too, but this is hands-down the winner by a margin. If you’re looking for a reliable white t-shirt, this could be it given this one is clearly peer reviewed and approved.

3. We have seen this beautiful item ALL OVER our feeds. It’s not surprising it’s our most-saved piece of jewelry in March. I’ve seen this styled as a necklace, belt, brooch— it’s a hard working item for so many of you!

Angie Uh

does is BRILLIANTLY here. We’ve generally seen an increase in silver being saved to Carted, but also resin, chunky styles, a move away from the fine gold pieces that we’re so accustomed to seeing everywhere now. It has actually driven me back to my own personal jewelry archives (lol—a box stuff at the back of my closet, not so fancy) and I’ve rediscovered a long-forgotten silver bangle from an ex. Memories!!

4. We saw a 120% increase in saves of shoes with buckles since February. On trend according to predictions from the likes of Vogue et al. I love my Ganni buckled flats, but what we’re seeing is a little more refined.

This beauty was saved on Carted

5. The top two most saved beauty items come as no surprise given we’ve seen a 150% increase in ‘personal care’ (#1) items saved to Carted this year. It fits with the qualitative data we collect that shows people are spending less (broadly), but investing in items that have longer-term usage. This (#2) has been everywhere and recommended to me by a few people I’ve interviewed recently. Stayed tuned as

Allison Bornstein

talks about it too in our soon-to-be published chat.

6. This was a surprise when I found it in the top five most saved beauty items in March. Maybe it’s a case of IYKYK?? I have this and this from VB and have used them on repeat.

Let me know in the comments if you’d like more of these letters, and I’ll see what I can do to make it happen. Like—most popular list names?

Yours,

Shop Girl.