Why did I chose style over fashion as a term here? Before the internet fashion meant a series of serial clothing trends. Before the second world war, this went across both young people and adults depending on their income.
After the war, you started to see the rise of teenagers as a distinct consumer group with their own fashions and disposable income. Over time youth as a concept began to become attenuated and society started to discriminate against older people.
As I write this some of the luminaries of streetwear are in their late 50s and 60s. Shawn Stüssy will be 68 this year and was designing streetwear for Dior for their fall and winter 2020 collection. I know the Dads of college age kids who still skateboard and working in the creative side of advertising I still wear streetwear myself.
Japan’s style bible Hail Mary features models and style icons who are at least that age or even older.
At the same time, culture and fashion have become massively parallel. On the one hand you have brands selling timeless workwear, on the other you have companies like Shein and Boo.com who have been turning out new fashion ranges in a matter of weeks by carefully scrutinising Google search data and social media content.
All of this has created massive waste, despite the supposedly environmentally concerned high anxiety younger generations who feel that they are facing an existential crisis.
Fashion doesn’t neatly cover all of these tensions that are driving the apparel industry at the moment. And I haven’t even talked about body positive extending sizing that suppliers are now starting to address.
At the time, when the stabbing of three little girls happened in Southport, I was in Merseyside. Even though I was just miles away from the town, it felt like another country. The locals I was with and I watched on with detached shock as riots unfolded on newsfeeds.
The general sense was that ‘it couldn’t happen here’ But it had. This was usually followed by ‘despite what people see, this isn’t the kind of people that we are’. Yet Merseyside has long had a well-deserved reputation for organised (and disorganised) crime. Apart from a pier and a sea view that on a clear day allowed you to see oil rigs on the horizon, Southport is very similar to most of Merseyside. Rumours had swirled on neighbourhood WhatsApp groups about the attackers background. Secondly the vast amount of rioters being prosecuted, were not neo-nazis from out of town but local trouble-makers whose guiding idea was the joy of the fight. The police were able to arrest many of them as easily identifiable known faces. Pair the trouble-makers with good weather and an inciting incident and chaos ensued. There is continued latent anger for various reasons just waiting for an excuse to break out and the Southport stabbings were a vehicle.
The thin membrane of civility was punctured. The chaotic nihilism on display mirrored the 2011 riots, with less opportunity for profitable looting. Southport is ‘everyneighbourhood’. It represents an underlying volatility in UK society that is deeper than the hundreds of rioters on Merseyside. There is probably more Southport in many people than we would care to admit.
US Firms Warn Against ‘Unprecedented’ Hong Kong Cyber Rules – Bloomberg – technology firms have warned that proposed cyber regulations could grant the Hong Kong government unusual access to their computer systems, highlighting the latest challenge to Western tech giants in the city. The Asia Internet Coalition, which includes Amazon, Google and Meta is among the bodies that have in recent weeks criticized new rules that officials say are designed to protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. Critics argue the proposals give authorities overly broad powers that could threaten the integrity of service providers and rock confidence in the city’s digital economy.
Brands Love Influencers (Until Politics Get Involved) – The New York Times – With the presidential election looming, some marketing agencies have started to pitch advertisers on new tools that grade the so-called brand safety of social media personalities. Some of the tools even use artificial intelligence to predict the likelihood that a particular influencer will discuss politics in the future. A tool recently introduced by Captiv8, a marketing firm that helps advertisers like Walmart and Kraft Heinz connect with influencers, uses artificial intelligence to analyze mentions of social media stars in online articles, and then determines whether they are likely to discuss elections or “political hot topics.” The firm also assigns letter grades to creators based on their posts, comments and media coverage, where an “A” means very safe and a “C” signals caution. The grades incorporate categories like “sensitive social issues,” death and war, hate speech or explicit content.
7-Eleven owner receives Japan’s biggest ever foreign takeover approach | FT – huge for Asian grocery retailing. 7-Eleven is the neighbourhood grocery store for Japanese and many other countries across Asia. In Japan, 7-Eleven is the dominant brand, combining it with Circle K would radically change the marketing dynamics. In a market like Hong Kong it’s effectively a duopoly with Circle K. The approach is likely more about 7-Eleven’s US filling station network. Expect the Asian business to be sold on (to private equity) if the deal goes through.
China will launch first satellites of constellation to rival Starlink, newspaper reports | Reuters – A Chinese state-owned enterprise (Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology) is launching the first batch of satellites for a megaconstellation designed to rival Starlink’s near-global internet network, a state-backed newspaper reported on Monday.It matches Beijing’s strategic goal of creating its own version of Starlink, a growing commercial broadband constellation that has about 5,500 satellites in space and is used by consumers, companies and government agencies.
The IT director is seeing a return to power and its thanks to the power of hackers and AI. The smartphone, the resurgence of Apple and SaaS saw IT decisions become more organic thanks to increased access to online services that provided better features than traditional enterprise software companies and the rise of knowledge working. IT teams found management of mobile devices onerous and faced hostile users.
Michiko Fukahori of the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology at ITU TSB – 8th Chief Technology Officers (CTO) Meeting
This meant that the IT director became less important in software marketing. A decade ago marketing had pivoted to a bottom up approach of ‘land and expand’. This drove the sales of Slack, Monday.com and MongoDB.
Two things impacted this bottom up approach to enterprise innovation:
Cybercrime: ransomware and supply chain attacks. Both are not new, ransomware can be traced back to 1989, with malware known as the AIDS trojan (this had much cultural resonance back then as a name). Supply chain attacks started happening in the 2010s with the Target data breach and by 2011, US politicians were considering it a security issue. Over COVID with the rise of remote working, the attacks increased. The risk put the IT director back in the firing line.
AI governance: generative AI systems learn from their training models and from user inputs, this led to a wide range of concerns from company intellectual property leaving via the AI system, or AI outputs based on intellectual property theft.
The most immediate impact of this is that the IT director is becoming a prized target on more technology marketers agendas again. This takes IT director focused marketing from back in the 1980s and the early 2000s with a top-down c-suite focus including the IT director. This implies that established brands like Microsoft and IBM will do better than buzzier startups. It also means I am less likely to see adverts for Monday.com in my YouTube feed over time.
This doesn’t mean that the IT director won’t be disrupted in other parts of his role as machine learning facilitates process automation in ways that are continuing to evolve.
Brands plan for a quiet Pride Month | News | Campaign Asia – The hesitation around Pride may also be related to executives’ increasing reluctance to speak out on social issues more broadly. Wolff pointed to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, which found that 87% of executives think taking a public stance on a social issue is riskier than staying silent. “Essentially, nine out of every 10 executives believe that the return on investment for their careers is not worth the support during this turbulent time,” said (Kate) Wolff. “This is clearly problematic for both the community and the progress we have made in recent years.”
Chinese Firms Are Investing Heavily in Whisky Market | Yicai Global – Although international liquor giants have developed the local whisky consumption market for many years, the market penetration rate of overseas spirits in China, including whisky, is only about 3 percent. This means domestic whisky producers will need to develop new consumption scenarios, Yang said. Whisky consumption in China centers mainly around nightclubs, gift-giving and tasting events held by affluent consumers, Yang noted, but in these scenarios, imported whisky brands with a long history tend to be more popularly accepted,, so it will be difficult for domestic rivals to compete. According to the latest report from alcohol market analysts IWSR, China’s whisky market was worth CNY5.5 billion (USD758 million) last year, having grown more than fourfold over the past 10 years. It is expected to reach CNY50 billion (USD6.9 billion) in the next five to 10 years.
Yoox Net-a-Porter exits China to focus on more profitable markets – Multi-brand luxury clothing sales platform Yoox Net-a-Porter is closing its China operations, this against a backdrop of other brands also pulling out of Chinese e-commerce including Marc Jacobs fragrances. The corporate line from Richemont was “in the context of a global Yoox Net-a-Porter plan aimed at focusing investments and resources on its core and more profitable geographies”.
Ignite the Scent: The Effectiveness of Implied Explosion in Perfume Ads | the Journal of Advertising Research – Scent is an important product attribute and an integral component of the consumption experience as consumers often want to perceive a product’s smell to make a well-informed purchase decision. It is difficult, however, to communicate the properties of a scent without the physical presence of odorants. Through five experiments conducted in a perfume-advertising context, our research shows that implied explosion, whether visually (e.g., a spritz blast) or semantically created, can increase perceived scent intensity, subsequently enhancing perceived scent persistence. It also found a positive effect of perceived scent persistence on purchase intention. In conclusion, the research suggests that implied explosion can be a powerful tool for advertisers to enhance scent perception, consequently boosting purchase intention.
Mat Baxter’s Huge turnaround job | Contagious – interesting perspective on his time at Huge. What I can’t square it all with is what we know about marketing science and declining effectiveness across digital media
On my LinkedIn, I couldn’t escape from the Cannes festival of advertising. Partly because one of the projects I had been involved in was a shortlisted entry. One of the most prominent films was Dramamine’s ‘The Last Barf Bag: A Tribute to a Cultural Icon’. It was notable because of its humour, which was part of this years theme across categories.
震災復興から生まれた刺し子プロジェクトをブランドに！ 15人のお母さんの挑戦！ – CAMPFIRE (キャンプファイヤー) – ancient Japanese craft – KUON and Sashiko Gals are part of a new generation of designers keeping the traditional Japanese technique of sashiko alive. And together, they are bringing the decorative style of stitching to our favorite sneakers (including techy Salomons!). Sashiko is a type of simple running stitch used in Japan for over a thousand years to reinforce fabrics. It’s typically done with a thick white thread on indigo fabric and made into intricate patterns.
Nationalism in Online Games During War by Eren Bilen, Nino Doghonadze, Robizon Khubulashvili, David Smerdon :: SSRN – We investigate how international conflicts impact the behavior of hostile nationals in online games. Utilizing data from the largest online chess platform, where players can see their opponents’ country flags, we observed behavioral responses based on the opponents’ nationality. Specifically, there is a notable decrease in the share of games played against hostile nationals, indicating a reluctance to engage. Additionally, players show different strategic adjustments: they opt for safer opening moves and exhibit higher persistence in games, evidenced by longer game durations and fewer resignations. This study provides unique insights into the impact of geopolitical conflicts on strategic interactions in an online setting, offering contributions to further understanding human behavior during international conflicts.
The West Coast’s Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico | WIRED – “Not so long ago, bike theft was a crime of opportunity—a snatch-and-grab, or someone applying a screwdriver to a flimsy lock. Those quaint days are over. Thieves now are more talented and brazen and prolific. They wield portable angle grinders and high-powered cordless screwdrivers. They scope neighborhoods in trucks equipped with ladders, to pluck fine bikes from second-story balconies. They’ll use your Strava feed to shadow you and your nice bike back to your home.” – not terribly surprising, you’ve seen the professionalisation and industrialisation in theft across sectors from shoplifting, car theft and watch thefts so this is continuing the trend.
OpenAI Just Gave Away the Entire Game – The Atlantic – The Scarlett Johansson debacle is a microcosm of AI’s raw deal: It’s happening, and you can’t stop it. This is important not from a technology point of view, but from the mindset of systemic sociopathy that now pervades Silicon Valley.
Apple Intelligence is Right On Time – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – Apple’s orientation towards prioritizing users over developers aligns nicely with its brand promise of privacy and security: Apple would prefer to deliver new features in an integrated fashion as a matter of course; making AI not just compelling but societally acceptable may require exactly that, which means that Apple is arriving on the AI scene just in time.
‘Rare, vintage, Y2K’: Online thrifters are flipping fast fashion. How long can it last? | Vogue Business – as secondhand shopping becomes increasingly commonplace, this latest outburst brings to light the subjectivity of resale. What determines an item’s worth, especially in an age of viral micro-trends and heavy nostalgia? Is it ethically moral to set an item that’s the product of fast fashion — long criticised for not paying workers fairly — at such a steep upcharge, and making profit from it? If someone is willing to pay, does any of it matter?
Very Ralph is a documentary that celebrates the career of Ralph Lauren. What’s interesting is Lauren’s lack of expertise in fashion and design. Instead Very Ralph captures Lauren’s childhood ability as a stylist and art director to eventually create a Ralph Lauren world. Very Ralph became a descriptor of a style and a lifestyle. It’s a very unique way of brand building that you usually see from the likes of Muji rather than many luxury brands.
If Apple could have a ‘Very Ralph‘ moment their role in luxury tech would be cemented beyond the Mac and the iPhone. Charlie Rose’s seminal interview with Ralph Lauren is also worth watching.
Living wake
A generation before me in Ireland, living wakes were a thing. Usually it was when a member of the family was migrating to the United States, Canada or Australia. Michelle ‘Mike’ Ng’s living wake was because she had state four cancer. The film is an emotional rollercoaster.
Miss Goddess of Beauty
A lot of what keeps Hong Kong (and Singapore for that matter), is the hundreds of thousands of domestic helpers who run middle class households. They cook, care for the elderly, clean the homes, do the shopping and bring up the children. While being cheery and sociable people they largely remain unseen and unheard; except for Sundays when they congregate in public spaces.
Despite the western view of beauty pageants as objectifying women by MEN, Miss Goddess of Beauty is different. It allows these women to to be seen and creatively express themselves. The entire event is organised by the community of domestic helpers. Although the ladies are predominantly Filipinas, there is at least one Indonesian participant in the pageant – a solidarity built on a shared experience in Hong Kong.
Quentin Tarantino on going to see The Matrix
Tarantino recalls how the TV spots, rather than reviews or word-of-mouth drove the viewership of The Matrix. The power of advertising to build a world that excited the heck out of the audience before they saw the movie.
Vicki Dutton (or Vicky Dutton) was a fashion pioneer. Dutton was married to an Irish-born British civil servant working under the first Lee Kuan Yew administration of a self-run Singapore. She was a Malay woman living in Singapore.
Singapore was recovering from the Japanese occupation, but there were still a large amount of social and economic problems:
Poor housing and overcrowding
Unemployment
Poor labour relations
Organised crime
These challenges also provide opportunity for some people. And so Singapore saw the start of a vibrant media and fashion industry.
Bright lights, big city
The Singapore of Vicki Dutton had been moving at a rate of knots and the only constant was change.
Growth and peak
What we think of as modern Singapore is a relatively recent construct. When Sir Stamford Raffles arrived on behalf of the British Empire in 1819, the population was about a 1,000-strong. Of which only a few dozen were ethnic Chinese. In the next five years the population grew ten-fold. Two years later and there were move Chinese than Malays due to migration. From the end of the first world war to the beginning of the second world war, Singapore actually declined in importance as the US and Japan rose to prominence.
During the second world war, Singapore suffered horribly with the regimented Sook Ching killings taking place across Singapore and Malaya designed to eliminate resistance before it took hold.
Remaking
The second world war shattered the illusion of the British Empire in Asia, as its military might was taken to pieces by the army, navy and air force of Imperial Japan. But this opened up new possibilities for Singaporeans. Europeans were no longer a breed apart. This drove a re-examination of local traditions by Singaporeans.
Post-war saw a rebuilding of lives and preparing for a Singaporean future. By 1959 Singapore was self-ruled.
But this process brought turmoil including riots and communist terrorism. Singapore joined the newly created state of Malaysia, but a few years later was ejected.
Re-examination of local traditions
Vicki Dutton was a woman of Malay heritage married to an Irish man. She was cosmopolitan enough to move within the upper-echelons of Singapore society at the time. She had also travelled to Europe and had access to the latest trends coming out of events like London and Paris fashion weeks.
In edition, the regularly contributed to Singapore’s fashion magazines as a writer.
Dutton was able to model her own creations as well as having the talent to design and make them.
While she did have privilege, she also held progressive views, commenting that locals could be as pretty and equally well dressed as Europeans. Their skin tone being similar to many Spanish people. She became famous in Singapore and beyond for blending local styles with western cuts. The cinched waist popularised by Christian Dior quickly found its way into Dutton’s work that then clothed the well-to-do of Singapore and beyond. Dutton was famous for interpreting the kebaya and the sarong for a fashionable look.
Vicki Dutton’s creation made it to Paris fashion week, thanks to a Singapore government that wanted to promote the country and its nascent industries.
Over time, Vicki Dutton’s contribution to Singaporean fashion was forgotten and only recently brought back to the attention of the public through Channel News Asia’s programming focusing on forgotten pioneers.
You can even see Dutton’s influence in the work Pierre Balmain did in 1972 to create the iconic kebaya and sarong based uniform for Singapore Airlines.
Tragedy of Pulau Senang
Pulau Senang is today largely peaceful. As an island off the coast of Singapore it is now used as a live firing range by Singapore’s air force and their navy. The name translates to ‘isle of ease’. Back in 1960, the island served a very different purpose. A work camp for organised criminal gang members was set up by Vicki Dutton’s husband at the request of the Singapore government. This was supposed to serve a few purposes
Ease the over-crowding at Changi prison
Give criminals an opportunity to return to society
Provide useful skills
The first few years of the camp was successful and apparently rehabilitated some 200 secret society members. Here’s what Reuters said about what happened on July 18, 1963:
A BRITISH PRISON SUPERINTENDENT AND THREE GUARDS WERE HACKED TO DEATH AND 28 WARDERS WERE WOUNDED IN 30 MINUTES OF SADISM AND TERROR ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON IN THE SUN-BAKED PENAL ISLAND OF PULAU SENANG (ISLE OF EASE), TEN MILES FROM SINGAPORE.
A HEAVY ESCORT OF POLICE TOOK DETAINEES AWAY FROM THE ISLAND AFTER MORE THAN 300 OF THEM WENT ON AN INHUMAN RAMPAGE. THEY GOUGED OUT THE EYES OF MR DANIEL S. DUTTON, THE SUPERINTENDENT, AND HACKED HIM SLOWLY TO DEATH WITH NATIVE GARDENING TOOLS. MR TAILFORD, HIS DEPUTY, WAS STABBED IN THE TEMPLE AND IS IN A SINGAPORE HOSPITAL IN A SERIOUS CONDITION.
One can only imagine the turmoil this must have caused. Dutton eventually left Singapore behind and lived for much of the rest of her life in the United Kingdom.
Six hundred pairs of Nikes in a custom-built house
The six hundred pairs of Nikes are owned by a Japanese lady who now is head of marketing for Ugg in Japan. Previously she’d spent over 20 years in sales and marketing for Nike. Her house was designed around her shoe collection and the double height ceiling in the room to host the six hundred pairs is worth watching for alone. There are more than six hundred pairs. Some of the stories about the six hundred pairs of shoes are fascinating such as how Nike Air Max 95s were responsible for thefts and muggings in Japan.
Tom Ford
Everyone needs a Tom Ford in their life. From personal life hacks to interior design and grooming all in the space of a few minutes. This sounds as if the interview as done around about the time that Ford was bowing out of his fashion and beauty businesses.
Gibbs SR toothpaste
Along with Close Up and Aquafresh; Gibbs SR toothpaste was one of the toothpastes I remember most from childhood. Unilever bundled it eventually into Mentadent and it was quietly taken off the UK market in 2018.
I didn’t realise that Gibbs SR toothpaste was the first advertisement shown on British television. UK law had changed the previous year allowing for commercial television. The creative behind the ad was Brian Palmer of Young & Rubican (now VML).
So, I was listening to the Uncensored CEO podcast Jon Evans when he had Les Binet and Sarah Carter on. One of them mentioned that the above ad was tested recently and scored top scores. It might be novelty, but is unlikely to be nostalgia that drove this test score. What’s more interesting it that Y&R managed to get the creative so high performing decades before the kind of tools that we have now.
Hyper-reality
Keiichi Matsuda took what Apple would call spatial computing to its logical conclusion in this 7 year old film HYPER-REALITY. There are a number of clever aspects to it. Watch when the device reboots in the supermarket and the glyph wearing criminal who escapes identification by the system.
In reality, hardware will restrict how useable that these products will be. Which is the reason why the Apple Vision Pro looks so cumbersome. More related content here.
John Glenn
Great interview with Mercury and Apollo programme astronaut John Glenn covering different aspects of his experience as an astronaut. We hear how astronauts became so involved in the engineering and safety aspects of the Mercury and Apollo programmes.
