I Took the Viral Stanley Cup to Fashion Week
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I scored the juiciest, most in-demand accessory at New York Fashion Week. It wasn’t a new intrecciato Bottega bag handcrafted in some storied factory in Italy. Nor was it a butter-soft leather jacket from the latest Phoebe Philo drop, with a price tag equivalent to a mortgage payment. No, it was a pale pink 40-ounce Stanley Cup with a thick protruding straw, officially named the Adventure Quencher H2.0 Travel Tumbler, that retails for $45. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the hottest thing at Fashion Week, but it certainly has been the hottest accessory on social media.
Stanley, a camping and outdoors company famous for creating insulated bottles over 100 years ago, has seen their chuggers blow up on TikTok. Recently, Stanley Cups collaborated with Starbucks on a collection of searing pink and red cups that became so popular that they have become a new resource for scalpers, ending up on StockX, a platform typically reserved for rare sneakers, for $250 and up. On eBay, I found one for $355, which the seller ensured “CUP IN HAND! I am selling the cup. There are a lot of scammers on eBay trying to sell pictures of the cup. Don’t be fooled!”
There she is.
amazon.com
$35.00
The recycled aluminum vessel has inspired countless think-pieces and mini-investigations, including in The New Yorker and The New York Times and The Atlantic, all attempting to trace and make sense of its virality. The official Stanley TikTok has a fun way of integrating their fans into their page: In one video, which has been viewed over 56.6 million times, a woman shows how her car caught on fire, and yet, the Stanley Cup has remained intact in its cup holder. (Stanley later gifted her a new car, which they also put on social media).
The rabid obsession with the drinking vessel has translated to plenty of big-time moolah, too. Revenue for the brand has increased from $73 million in 2019 to a whopping $750 million in 2023, according to CNBC.
The zaftig mug is a craze very much outside of fashion’s epicenters. I watched a video on TikTok showing a ferocious pilgrimage to Target for an exclusive Starbucks x Stanley Cup drop. It included a post-apocalyptic mob of women running towards their goodies like New Yorkers at a sample sale for The Row.
The cup is great for chugging in an SUV, with its plump container resting easy in a cup holder. And it makes sense slapped down on an office desk. But what about its fashion appeal? Is it comfortable to haul along to a fashion show? And, more importantly, does the status of a Stanley Cup still hold up? Would sipping sink water from it while sitting front row at Thom Browne, watching model Alex Consani shed a jacket that took months to hand-stitch to a recitations of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” enhance its power or diminish it? If no one notices your Stanley Cup, do you even have one? And if they do notice it and hate it, what does that mean?
My first day with my new appendage, I took an electric Citibike from south Brooklyn to the Eckahus Latta show in Tribeca with my new cup nestled—except for the straw—into my vintage Y2K-era Louis Vuitton Citi Multipli bag. At stoplights, I’d lean over and take a swig. By the time I got to the show, there was a thin layer of water sloshing around at the cap. No big deal.
The real tidal wave of commotion happened when I entered the building. I was swarmed by a small group of friends and colleagues who saw the top of the Stanley Cup peeking out of my bag, almost as if it were a swaddled newborn peekabooing its tiny head from a blanket. Cue the cries of "Is that a Stanley Cup?" and "I cannot." I relished the attention so much that by the end of the show, I was carrying the cup around with lumpen pride like it was some kind of trophy.
The next day, I checked what bags I had in my carryall arsenal. Was it possible to chic-afy this Stanley Cup? I grabbed a Michael Kors-era Celine PVC bag from spring 2000—a collection that essentially revolves around a hot-bodied oligarch’s side piece stepping off of a helicopter.
I plopped my filled-to-the-brim cup into the clear bag and headed out to fashion week, showing off the Stanley’s buxom steel bod to the world.
The Stanley Cup was a hit: a mini celebrity or maybe a sideshow freak. Showgoers loved to take photos of it. Interview editor Taylore Scarabelli gleefully wrote “subverting the basic bitch” in response to a photo of me sipping from it. She has a point. The Stanley Cup has so far been relegated to mass market basic bitch-dom. But there is always a chance that it might be on the arms of downtown girlies or on runways in a few seasons.
Fashion has a history of glomming onto ironic trends and transforming them into something cheeky and chic. There was the UGG craze, which managed to seep its way from sororities onto the feet of fashion women and later integrate with brands. Telfar, Y/Project, Collina Strada have all released their iteration of the sheepskin boot.
And let’s not forget the bulbous resin Crocs, which went from the hooves of Mario Batali to the runways of Balenciaga, where they were transformed with violent girthy platforms and adorned with brutalist spikes, and Simone Rocha, where they were twisted into a confectionery, bedazzled lady clog. The fashion potential might be realer than you’d think: The former Chief Marketing Officer of Crocs Terrence Reilly is now the President of Stanley.
Bringing the Stanley Cup to fashion week was admittedly a party trick: a conversation starter, and one dripping with irony at that. Perhaps, though, I’m just an early adopter of fashion’s next obsession. Maybe there is a fashion collaboration in the near future. After all, it serves as an incredible easel to be freaked with; a tabula rasa of sorts, and a heritage item in its own right. Fashion is always thirsty, after all. Drink up.
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