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One of the hardest things to market around sober culture is a sense of indulgence. There are obvious benefits to ordering an adaptogenic soda in lieu of a crisp and amberous Negroni in a low-lit restaurant, but it’s not seen as a traditionally sensual thing to do. Don Draper did not brood into a tumbler of peach-flavored Betty Buzz, and The Sex and the City girls did not set the world to rights over cans of Kin Euphorics’s Picklesecco. It hasn’t, until recently, felt decadent, let alone romantic.
Tom Holland–who has spoken candidly about his fraught relationship with alcohol and the freedom he has experienced since stopping drinking–is seeking to change that. Last night he inaugurated a premium line of low-alcohol beers, branded around a sophisticated New England aesthetic with images of beautiful people lounging poolside and playing cards. He arrived at Bero’s launch event in Manhattan with his girlfriend Zendaya. She looked like a tall glass of Merlot Edge Hill Hazy IPA containing less than 0.5 percent alcohol in a spaghetti-strapped Louis Vuitton column cut from burgundy leather with vertiginous So Kate Louboutins and one cylindrical Bulgari pendant dangling from an attenuated necklace. The hair and the face and the poise unscathed from the nefarious effects of alcohol.
The specific shade of that dress–somewhere between Sabato de Sarno’s Ancora red and what Pantone’s trend forecasting hub has identified as Windsor Wine–is fast becoming one of the most popular colors of the moment. “The appetite for deep rouges is omnipresent,” said British Vogue’s senior shopping writer in a recent article. “Google reported that interest in maroon is at a five-year high, while searches for burgundy are up 666 percent on global shopping platform, Lyst.” If last year’s enthusiasm for alcopop-reds were suggestive of adrenaline, fireworks, danger, and rage, this season’s full-bodied evolution speaks more to elegance, class, occasion, and perhaps even indulgence.
