Ged Carroll

Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.

Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.

Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.

Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.

Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.

More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.

  • Jump Around – 25 years later

    It’s hard to believe that the House of Pain’s Jump Around turned 25 last week. The iconic intro from ‘Harlem Shuffle’ used to be a call to the dance floor when I used to play it on Wednesday night sets at a late closing wine bar in the North West of England.

    The video fired my love of American workwear, previously I’d only really seen this worn on African-American  artists. I loved the form follows function, timeless style and burly nature of the garments. I hunted down supplies of Carhartt and Dickies in Leeds and Covent Garden – it’s kept me warm and dry ever since.

    More importantly it was emblematic of an Irish blue collar swagger that the UK Irish community just didn’t have. The closest thing we had was the shambolic Pogues or wit of Dave Allen which he welded like a katana in the hands of a samurai. We were much more heads down as the troubles in Northern Ireland and sectarianism impacted our lives.

    This was a spectacularly mean-spirited time; where the government used the police to beat the miner’s strike into submission and wilfully demolished the weak industrial base to build the financial services sector. Acid house and rave were created partly because the youth wanted to escape through hedonism.

    The post Good Friday Irish experience of Irish emigrants just a few years later was rather different. Britain was on its way to Cool Britannia liberalism – when being in an Irish pub, no longer meant keeping an eye out for Special Branch agent provocateurs or well-known grasses.

    Jump Around cemented Irish Americans in modern culture. While the community has diffused throughout the US and new migrants are more likely to be IT and financial professionals than construction workers, our mark has been made. More related content can be found here.

  • The World as Design: Writings of Design by Otl Aicher

    The World as Design author Aicher was a German designer. He is most famous of his graphic design and typography. His most famous font is Rotis  His impact was far wider. Aicher was a co-founder of the short-lived Ulm School of Design. Over its 15 years it developed a legacy that continues to echo through design education.

    He worked with prominent German brands including Braun, Lufthansa and ERCO the lighting firm.

    Aicher’s design language for the Munich Olympics was ground breaking. He designed the first Olympic mascot: Waldi a dachshund with multicoloured bands on his body. The posters for the Munich Olympics were hyper coloured designs that still had a system wrapped around them and now trade for hundreds of pounds.

    You can blame him for single handedly kicking off the use of stickmen pictograms on public signage in buildings like airports.

    Aicher and his colleagues at Ulm were about more than making things look pretty on their medium of choice, they thought about systems. Aicher’s holistic approach to systems influenced modern brand design.  Mark Holt, a co-founder of 8vo; who worked on everything from Factory Records to billing systems for mobile carrier Orange cited Aicher as a major influence.

    otl aicher

    Aicher’s book The World of Design collects a series of his essays across a wide spectrum of topics. Culture and political essays sit alongside examinations on the process of design and typography. Design and art do not exist in isolation but as part of the wider world. Something that you become keenly aware of as being central to his thinking – alongside his advocacy of reinvigorating modernism.

    Probably most striking is Aicher’s delivery and style of writing. He writes with absolute confidence as each item has been thought about, despite feeling like a stream of consciousness in the way those mulled over thoughts are put down. He also completely dispenses with capital letters, sentences flow into each other from a visual perspective. This gives his work a sense of urgency and authenticity – but doesn’t make it any easier to read.

    Theses essays felt as if they were born on the internet not written sometime before Aicher died in 1991, which says a lot about how fresh and contemporary his work still is.

     

  • Have we reached peak streetwear?

    At the end of January I wrote a blog post about the landmark luxe streetwear collection by Louis Vuitton and Supreme.

    I delved into the history of streetwear and the deep connection it shared with luxury brands. This linkage came from counterfeit products, brand and design language appropriation.

    This all came from a place of individuality and self expression of the wearer.

    obey

    I reposted it from my blog on to LinkedIn. I got a comment from a friend of mine which percolated some of the ideas I’d been thinking about. The comment crystalised some of my fears as a long-time streetwear aficionado.

    This is from Andy Jephson who works as a director for consumer brand agency Exposure:

    The roots of street and lux that you point to seem to be all about individuality and self expression and for me this is what many modern collabs are missing. To me they seem to be about ostentatious showmanship. I love a collaboration that sees partners sharing their expertise and craft to create something original. The current obsession with creating hype however is creating a badging culture that produces products that could have been made in one of the knock-off factories that you mention. Some collabs that just produce new colourways and hybrid styles can be amazing, reflecting the interests of their audience. But far too many seem gratuitous and are completely unobtainable for the brand fans on one side of the collaborative partnership.

    The streetwear business is mad money

    From Stüssy in 1980, streetwear has grown into a multi-billion dollar global industry. Streetwear sales are worth more than 75 billion dollars per year.

    By comparison the UK government spent about 44.1 billion on defence in 2016. Streetwear sales are more than three times the estimated market value of Snap Inc. Snap Inc., is the owner of Snapchat.

    Rise of Streetwear

    It is still about one third the size of the luxury industry. Streetwear accounts for the majority of menswear stocked in luxury department stores. Harvey Nichols claimed that 63% of the their contemporary menswear was streetwear. Many luxury brands off-the-peg men’s items blur the boundary between luxe and streetwear.

    The industry has spawned some technology start-ups acting as niche secondary markets including:

    • Kixify
    • K’LEKT
    • THRONE
    • StockX
    • SneakerDon
    • GOAT

    Large parts of the streetwear industry has become lazy and mercenary. You can see this in:

    • The attention to detail and quality of product isn’t what it used to be. I have vintage Stüssy pieces that are very well-made. I can’t say the same of many newer streetwear brands
    • Colour-ways just for the sake of it. I think Nike’s Jordan brand is a key offender. Because it has continually expands numbers of derivative designs and combinations. New Balance* have lost much of their mojo. Especially when you look at the product their Super Team 33 in Maine came up with over the years. The fish, fanzine or the element packs were both strong creative offerings. By comparison recent collections felt weak
    • The trivial nature of some of the collaborations. This week Supreme sold branded Metro Cards for the New York subway
    • Streetwear brands that sold out to fast moving consumer products. This diluted their own brand values. While working in Hong Kong, I did a Neighborhood Coke Zero collaboration. The idea which had some tie-in to local cycling culture and nightscape. Aape – the second-brand of BAPE did a deal wrapping Pepsi cans in the iconic camouflage

    Hong Kong brand Chocoolate did three questionable collaborations over the past 18 months:

    • Vitaminwater
    • Nissin (instant noodles)
    • Dreyer’s (ice cream)

    By comparison, Stüssy has a reputation in the industry for careful business management. The idea was to never become too big, too fast. The Sinatra family kept up quality and selective distribution seeing off Mossimo, FUBU and Triple Five Soul. Yes, they’ve done collaborations, but they were canny compared to newer brands:

    “The business has grown in a crazy way the past couple of years,” says Sinatra. “We reluctantly did over $50 million last year.”

    Reluctant because, according to Sinatra, the company is currently trying to cut back and stay small. “It was probably one of our biggest years ever — and it was an accident.”

    Sinatra characterises Stüssy’s third act as having a “brand-first, revenue second” philosophy, in order to avoid becoming “this big monstrosity that doesn’t stand for anything.”

    The Evolution of Streetwear. The newfound reality of Streetwear and its luxury-like management academic study uncovered careful brand custodianship.

    It’s not clothing; it’s an asset class

    Part of the bubble feel within the streetwear industry is due to customer behaviour. For many people, street wear is no longer a wardrobe staple. Instead it becomes an alternative investment instrument. Supreme items and tier zero Nike releases are resold for profit like a day trader on the stock market.

    Many of the start-ups supported by the community play to this ‘day trader’ archetype. It is only a matter of time for the likes of Bonham’s and Sotherby’s get in on the act.

    A key problem with the market is that trainers aren’t like a Swiss watch or a classic car. They become unusable in less than a decade as the soles degrade and adhesive breaks down.

    There is the apocryphal story of a Wall Street stock broker getting out before the great stock market crash. The indicator to pull his money out was a taxi driver or a shoe shine boy giving stock tips.

    Streetwear is at a similar stage with school-age teenagers dealing must-have items as a business. What would a reset look like in the streetwear industry? What would be the knock-on effect for the luxury sector?

    More information
    USA Streetwear Market Research Report 2015 | WeConnectFashion
    Louis Vuitton, Supreme and the tangled relationship between streetwear and luxury brands | renaissance chambara
    New Balance Super Team 33 – Elements Collection | High Snobriety
    New Balance ST33 – The Fanzine Collection | High Snobriety
    1400 Super Team 33 (ST33) trio | New Balance blog – the infamous fish pack
    How Stüssy Became a $50 Million Global Streetwear Brand Without Selling Out | BoF (Business of Fashion)
    The Evolution of Streetwear. The newfound reality of Streetwear and its luxury-like management by de Macedo & Machado, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (2015) – PDF

    * in the interest of full disclosure, New Balance is a former client.

  • Eatmybeat + more things

    Eatmybeat

    This week I was listening to: [Free Download] London Collective, eatmybeat, Drop a Tasty 21 Track Compilation  ‘Bonus Snacks Vol. 2’ Perfect for DJs | Magnetic

    Eatmybeat have put together a create collection in Bonus Snacks Vol. 2. The Eatmybeat compilation is an interesting mix of ambient soundscapes, old school electro and various strands of house music. 

    Ablet lightning audio adapter

    I was upgraded Bose QC25 headphones I use at work with a new audio cable. The Ablet Lightning Audio Adapter for Iphone 7 / 7 Plus is a great replacement cable, microphone and remote that makes doing calls an awful lot easier. Once the call is over, I just unplug and jack in with the original cable that stays in my iPod

    Blade Runner 2046 preview images

    Instagram announced a carousel function that shows up to 10 photos and videos in the one frame. The first one I saw in the wild was to promote the new Blade Runner film due this year

    Safari ready

    Kelly Moss Motorsport built a ‘safari ready’ Porsche 911 that evoked the old Rothmans Porsche rally cars of the 1980s, check out their series of pictures here. The original Porsche 911 RS SC prepared by Dave Richards Motorsport were the dream car of my teens, alongside the rally raid ready Porsche 959 that they also prepared.

    Rothmans 176 Porsche

    The grey colour reminds me of post-war vintage tractors from the likes of Nuffield. Porsche made some beautiful looking tractors in the 1950s – a useless fact that I picked up as a child spending much of my time on the family farm in Ireland and having a Dad who used to repair heavy agricultural and construction plant early on in his career

    Porsche Tractor

    Collecting Europe

    Collecting Europe – really interesting game that investigates consumer attitudes to boundaries and identity

  • Unreasonable behaviour

    Much of my social channels are filled with outrage and discussion about what is perceived as unreasonable behaviour.

    Tea Party Express at the Minnesota capitol

    Causes of unreasonable behaviour

    On one hand we had filter bubbles that allowed audiences to stay isolated, apparently only seeing the content which broadly fitted their world view. For the metropolitan elite, its a steady diet of virtue signalling. For the right it is the Illuminati / New World Order view of an aloof elite.

    On the other hand we have voices that break through and are generally viewed as unreasonable behaviour, or abhorrent by those in my social sphere.  The archetype of the breakthrough voice personifying unreasonable behaviour would be Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos is a complex character who has gone from post modern poet who borrowed from pop music and television without attribution, to technology journalist and a libertarian who has become a figurehead of the alt-right. Along the way his wardrobe has changed from a preppy sloan look to a supporting character from the original version of Miami Vice.

    Yiannopoulos is very adept at provoking a response from his opponents that rallies his supporters since they think it is evidence of the backlash from an omnipotent elite.

    Those on the right would point to figures like Kerry-Anne Mendoza, the editor in chief of The Canary – who has been accused of unreasonable behaviour in terms of sensationalist or irresponsible journalism.

    The underlying element is that everyone cannot agree on what the problem actually is. Silicon Valley is lining up to filter out the worst excesses of the right; partly because engineer political views and advertiser views are largely aligned.

    Generally engineers are degree educated so tend to be libertarian and socially liberal. They will support diversity and often work in multi-national teams. They are acutely aware of the power that their technology has which is why privacy tends to be most politicised amongst the tech-literate. Whilst large corporates would like to do what made the most commercial sense, there is a tension in Silicon Valley between this desire and the ability to hold on to engineers to do the work.

    At the other end of the spectrum right wingers are trying to crowd fund a lawsuit against Twitter for for discrimination against conservatives and violations of antitrust regulation. WeSearchr – the crowd-fund platform equate Twitter making a call is equated to discrimination in the American South during the 1960s.

    Ken White, attorney at Brown White & Osborn LLP and blogger on First Amendment issues, disagrees.

    “WeSearchr’s claims of censorship and discrimination are frivolous,” he told me in an email. “Twitter may be ‘censoring’ in a colloquial way, but it’s a private platform and not governed by the First Amendment. It’s free to kick people off for speech it doesn’t like unless doing so runs afoul of a particular federal or state statute, and WeSearchr hasn’t cited a plausible relevant one.”

    “Antitrust law is very complicated and it’s pointless to speculate about what WeSearchr thinks it means by citing it,” he said. “But antitrust law doesn’t say ‘it’s illegal to be a big company that dominates a field.’ Generally it restricts anti-competitive practices, and WeSearchr has never credibly identified any.”

    Secondly there is research done by Demos to suggest that those of use with more liberal values have a looser social bubble and are likely to be more aware of inflammatory commentary by those with more populist views.

    People with more polarized political affiliations tend to be more inward-facing than people with more moderate political affiliations. In short, the echo chamber effect is more pronounced the further a group is from the centre.

    Conversely, those who hold more extreme views will feel emboldened as part of an enclosed community of like mined people.

    What should be done?

    Demos suggests that the mainstream news as a point at which the different opinions are most likely to meet. However, the very subjective viewpoint of different mainstream news outlets imply that this isn’t likely to happen.

    The technology companies have made it clear that they will try and curb the worst excesses of the populist faction online. My sense is that it will fuel their sense of persecution  and provide a point to rally around.

    Should anything be done?

    More information
    Canary in the pit | Private Eye
    The Alt-Right Is Trying to Crowdfund Twitter’s Destruction | Motherboard
    Talking to ourselves | Demos