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.
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
A post shared by #BladeRunner 2049 (@bladerunnermovie) on
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.
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
Much of my social channels are filled with outrage and discussion about what is perceived as unreasonable behaviour.
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.
The recent collaboration between New York’s Supreme and Louis Vuitton seems like a natural fit. The reality is that luxury and streetwear have been dancing around each other for a good while.
Snide started it all
Snide was slang in the 1980s for fake or counterfeit. Hip Hop and the Caribbean-influenced Buffalo movement in the UK each used counterfeit and real luxury in their own way.
Daniel Day, better known as Dapper Dan was a was a Harlem-based craftsman and business man who dressed a lot of New York based artists from the golden age of hip hop. Dan’s first hip hop client was LL Cool J back in 1985. Dan’s style was luxe, the finest silks and furs were standard issue – think Puff Daddy before Puff Daddy. They went for customised outfits with their branding on which Dan provided. As the scene took off Dan incorporated suit lining material (which replicated the likes of the Fendi, Bally or MCM brands) and Gucci or Louis Vuitton branded vinyl to make one-off products.
He customised trainers, clothing and even car interiors. Dan’s own Jeep Wrangler had an interior retrimmed in MCM branded vinyl.
Much of the luxury branding Dan used was coming in from Korean factories which at that time supplied the fake trade. Now similar products would have come out of China. I took a trip to the South China City complex in 2010 where fabric suppliers would offer Louis Vuitton labels and Supreme tags side-by-side. I can only imagine that the Korean suppliers of the 1980s had similar markets in textile industry centres like Deagu. Outside of hip hop, Dan was the go-to tailor for all the hustlers in Harlem – so you can see how he could have got the hook-up into the counterfeit suppliers.
At the time hip hop culture was not in a relationship with brands who where concerned about how it might affect them. LL Cool J was the first artist to get a deal with Le Coq Sportif. Run DMC got a long term deal with Adidas after their single ‘My Adidas’ became successful. But these were the exceptions to the rule. So with Dan’s help they co-opted the brands to try and demonstrate success.
Over in the UK, the Buffalo collective of stylists, artists and photographers including Ray Petri, Jamie Morgan, Barry Kamen (who modelled for Petri), Mark Lebon and Cameron McVey. Buffalo was known as an attitude, which threw contrasting styles together and filtered into fashion shoots and influenced the collections of major designers including Yohji Yamamoto, Jean Paul Gaultier and Comme des Garçons. Even if you didn’t know what Buffalo was, you would have recognised the aesthetic from the likes of i-D, Blitz, New Musical Express and Arena.
Buffalo mixed Armani jackets with Doctor Martens work boots, or a Puma bobble hat. Petri used music to sound track his process and this was pretty similar to the kind of stuff that influenced street wear pioneer Shawn Stussy over in California. Motown and hip-hop to dub reggae was the sound which explains the Feeling Irie t-shirts created by the white surfboard maker.
If you thought Bros looked cool in their MA-1 bomber jackets and stone washed Levi’s 501 jeans – there was a direct stylistic line back to Buffalo – rehabilitating the items from their link to skinhead culture.
Buffalo permeated into the street style of the decade; influencing the likes of Soul II Soul. Meanwhile over in Bristol The Wild Bunch were yet to morph into Massive Attack. Two members headed to London; producer Nelle Hooper and Miles Johnson (aka DJ Milo who went on to work in New York and Japan). A shoot was organised by i-D magazine and they turned up wearing their street clothes alongside DJ Dave Dorrell and model / stylist Barnsley. At the time, it was considered to be ‘very Buffalo’ in feel, but Dave Dorrell admitted in an interview that they had just came as they were. Dorrell wore his t-shirt as ‘advertising’ for it.
The Hermes t-shirt and belt were snide, the Chanel Number 5 t-shirt sported by Dave Dorrell were being knocked out by a group of friends. Young people in London co-opted brands just like the hip-hop artists heading to Dapper Dan’s in Harlem.
Homage
From 1980, surfer Shawn Stussy had been growing an clothing empire of what we would now recognise as streetwear. Stussy had originally came up with the t-shirts as an adjunct and advertisement of his main business – selling surfboards. But the clothing hit emerging culture: skating, punk, hip-hop and took on a life of its own. It went global through Stussy’s ‘tribe’ of friends that he made along the way.
Stussy is known for his eclectic influences and mixing media: old photographs alongside his own typography. In a way that was unheard of in brand circles at the time, Stussy manifested his brands in lots of different ways. The back to back SS logo inside a circle was a straight rip from Chanel; the repeating logo motif that appeared in other designs was a nod to MCM and Louis Vuitton.
All of this went into the cultural melting pot of world cities like Tokyo, New York, London and Los Angeles. Stussy went on to do collaborations from a specially designed party t-shirt for i-D magazine’s birthday party to the cover art of Malcolm Maclaren records. Collaboration with mundane and high-end brands is baked into streetwear’s DNA.
(Neighborhood x Coke Zero was something I was involved with during my time in Hong Kong.)
Japan with its engrained sense of quality and wabisabi took the Buffalo mix-and-match approach to the next level. Japan’s own streetwear labels like Visivim, Neighborhood, W-Taps, The Real McCoy and A Bathing Ape (BAPE) took streetwear product quality, exclusivity and price points into luxury brand territory. That didn’t stop BAPE from making a snide versions of various Rolex models under the ‘Bapex’ brand.
Some two decades later Supreme came up in New York. The brand takes design appropriation and homage to a new level. Every piece Supreme seems to do is a reference to something else. The famous box logo rips from Barbara Kruger’s piece ‘I shop therefore I am’. From taking a snide swipe at consumerism to ending up in the belly of the beast took Supreme a relatively short time. This heritage of appropriation didn’t stop Supreme from using legal means against people it felt had appropriated its ‘look’.
In an ironic twist of fate, Supreme was sued by Louis Vuitton in 2000 and yet the 2017 collaboration looks exceptionally similar to the offending items…
North East Asia’s fast growing economies had been borne out of learning from developed market expertise, state directed focus on exports and ruthless weeding out of weaker businesses. Intellectual property was cast aside at various points. Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and China went from making knock-off products to displacing Europe and the US as the leading luxury markets.
Asian luxury consumers, particularly those second generation rich in China were younger than the typical customer luxury brands cater too. These consumers bought product as they travelled taking in style influences as they went. First from nearby markets like Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore and then Korea. This drew from a melange of hip hop, streetwear, Buffalo styling and contemporary western designers like Vivienne Westwood – as well as the more matronly styles of the traditional European luxury houses.
The luxury brands had to adapt. They brought in new designers who themselves were drawing from similar influences. These designers also collaborated with sportswear brands like Alexander McQueen and Puma or Jeremy Scott and Raf Simons for Adidas.
Luxury brands got seriously into new product categories making luxe versions of training shoes that could be charitably called a homage to the like of Nike’s Air Force 1.
Bringing things full circle
As the supreme_copies Instagram account notes the collaboration with Supreme and Louis Vuitton brings things full circle with the pieces having a nod to Dapper Dan’s custom work as well as Supreme’s own ‘homage’. Luxury brand MCM (Michael Cromer München), which Dan borrowed from extensively in the 1980s was restructured in 1997 with shops and brand being sold separately. The brand was eventually acquired eight years later by the Korean Sungjoo Group. Korea now has its own fast developing luxury fashion and cosmetics brand industry. Textile city Deagu which was the likely source of Dapper Dan’s fabric is now a fashion and luxury business hub in its own right. The Korean entertainment industry is a trend setter throughout Asia. For instance, Hallyu drama My Love From A Star drove breakout sales for the Jimmy Choo ‘Abel’ shoe.
The only question I still have is why did a move like Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Supreme take so long? The luxury brands spend a lot on customer insight, they were using social listening far longer than they had been on social media. They know that a customer wearing their jacket could have a Visivim backpack slung over the shoulder and a pair of Adidas Stan Smiths on their feet. Customers mix-and-match Buffalo style for all but the most formal occasions. For streetwear brands, collaboration is in their DNA and they get an additional leg-up in the quality stakes. More luxury related posts here.
I love sleep so Under Armour’s new performance pyjamas are ideal for me. Under Armour has managed to position itself as an innovator in a similar way to Nike. Under Armour was also smart to tap into sleep which is a consumer anxiety in our always on world. Under Armour is doing to clothing what Nike did to shoes. More related content here.
Usually the luxury industry uses Instagram as a marketing channel. Omega have used it to inspire product development and tap into a ready made market. More on the Omega Speedster Speedy Tuesday
Sony’s New OLED TV Emits Sound From Screen – Nikkei Technology Online – back in the 1970s and 1980s, Sony and Technics (Panasonic) experimented with flat audio speaker drivers. You can see the ancestor of the thinking behind sound from screen, by looking at the Technics SB-10 and Sony’s APM8. Sony’s accurate pistonic motion foreshadowed NXT’s ubqiuitous flat panel sound from screen technology. NXT originally was part of the UK speaker manufacturer Wharfdale. More information here.
Tommy Mottola Pens Open Letter To Mariah Carey | Idolator – “I would never have encouraged her or guided her to do something like a reality television show!!!!! I don’t get it!!… that does absolutely nothing for her integrity, her credibility, or her massive talent!! She should take a step back, think carefully and figure out what to do next.” I still don’t get why the music industry continues to go along with reality TV
Hackers threaten smart power grids – POLITICO – really interesting data that shows for many countries the cost benefit analysis of smart metering wasn’t proven. Guessing security costs weren’t considered seriously by many who thought it was a good idea
Babylon Health partners with UK’s NHS to replace telephone helpline with AI-powered chatbot | TechCrunch – Working with a number of health authorities in London, Babylon will begin a six month trial starting at the end of January to offer its AI-powered chatbot ‘triage’ service as an alternative to the NHS’s 111 telephone helpline that patients call to get healthcare advice and be directed to local and out-of-hours medical services. – more related content here.
