Ged Carroll

Category: style | 時尚 | 유행 | ファッション

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.

  • Assembly process video + more stuff

    Porsche 911 GT3 assembly process video

    I am a sucker for a manufacturing assembly process video. Over time I have shared videos showcasing Nokia’s largely automated smartphone manufacturing lines that they had before the Microsoft disaster and old time metalworking archive footage as assembly process videos. So I had to share this timelapse assembly process video for the Porsche 911 GT3. This Porsche 911 GT3 I am reliably informed is the car that petrolheads most want to own out of the 911 range due to it being available with a manual gearbox. It is almost as fast as the top of the range 911 Turbo S, has worse fuel economy and emissions.

    Around the 23 second mark you can see the start of the chassis assembly using a manufacturing cell of four robotic assembly arms. Then an assembled floor pan is placed into a jig for welding to begin. The jig fits upside down to allow welding on both sides of the car. What’s less clear if these are seam or spot welds. In the assembly process video we can see the modular nature of the manufacturing line that would allow it to be restructured relatively easy to match different production requirements. The classic give away is modular protective partition walling around the robots.

    A good deal of the movement that the robot arms are doing is checking and measuring the existing parts before additional assembly happens. At 50 seconds in the assembly process video, the car starts to look like a Porsche as the floorpan and front chassis are connected to the roof and rear quarter chassis. You can see only spot welds happening at this stage. It was interesting to see the doors go on before painting. Just before the first minute in the assembly process video we start to see the first human welders doing hard to get joints on the interior front bulkheads and where the roof pillars join the body. The door set up is resolved before the front wings are fitted to the car.

    The whole front end of the chassis isn’t shown being attached to the car and suddenly appears as the front wings are fitted to the car. The assembly line seems to move from station-to-station every four minutes or so. We don’t see the chassis being galvanised, but we do see the chassis being dipped in primer paint as part to the assembly process video. Automated spray booths are no common in car manufacturing. It was interesting to see how important inspectors running their hands over the paint work were to the process. I presume if there was a problem the car would be taken off the line and paint problems fixed manually. The front of the the chassis is not painted beyond primer by the robots in the assembly process video, yet suddenly seems to be painted when we get to 2:16 in the assembly process video.

    The engine, transmission drive train and suspension come on a jig and are mounted to the chassis in one operation. The assembly process video shows the wheels being put on manually. I suspect this is about industrial safety, not mixing up human and robot workstations. The doors are re-hung on the car during final assembly.

    Air Max Day

    Digital outdoor advertising that wraps itself around the corner of a building lends itself to fantastic 3D ad campaigns. The build of these boards seem to be in Asia. I know of ones in Malaysia, Japan, Korea and China. This advert for Nike Japan on Air Max day makes really good use of the format.

    A word of thanks

    Cathay Pacific has seen its brand battered by the Hong Kong government, so it did a nice bit of content showcasing the important work that its staff have been doing during the COVID-19 crisis in Hong Kong. I suspect that this is aimed at both internal as well as external audiences.

    Yuen Long

    To an external observer, one would believe that the triads only really exist in movies now rather than on the street in Hong Kong. Up until the 1970s criminality and corruption were a part of daily life. The Peter Godber scandal forced the British government to act, cleaning up the government and business and then launching anti-triad operations with the OCT department of what was then the Royal Hong Kong Police.

    By the 1990s and 1990s Hong Kong was less corrupt but criminals were connected with business life such as the Carrian Group financial scandal which saw a visiting Malaysian bank auditor killed and buried in a banana tree field and lawyer John Wimbush who apparently committed suicide by tying himself to the grate at the bottom of a full swimming pool.

    Criminals like Big Spender were robbing jewellery stores with AK assault rifles and you saw scenes like something out of the movie Heat playing out on Hong Kong streets. Kidnappings by the likes of Big Spender encouraged Hong Kong oligarchs to get closer to the Chinese government and invest in the pre-WTO China.

    In recent years Hong Kong criminals tended to only appear at times convenient to the government to intimidate and assault critics. This was escalated in 2019, when they came out in force in Yuen Long to beat commuters returning from college, work and democracy protests. This became known as the 721 incident.

    Its interesting to see Vice News covering this story three years later, I guess later is better than never.

    Rumination

    I am a bit late with this due to the Moviedrome taking so long to put together. Producer and analogue synth maker put together this 60 minute piece of music that reminded me a bit of Autechre and Phillip Glass.

    60 minutes of Ambient Drone at 60 BPM with all oscillators tuned to multiples of 60Hz. 

    This piece was recorded to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the National Autistic Society in the UK and World Autism Acceptance Week 2022. 

    Bandcamp page

    Find out more here.

    Heinz Australia

    Amazing animated video telling of the love for Heinz Baked Beans. Animation is ideal for FMCG brands like Heinz because if a different voiceover it can transcend cultures. This is something that we looked to do when I was involved with the plant based relaunch of Flora margarine prior to its sale by Unilever.

    Windows 95 launch

    I watched this and was reminded of my old employers Waggener Edstrom, whose claim to fame was orchestrating this launch, but this was way before my time with them. This was way before my time. At the time Jay Leno was a big time TV host rather than that car guy. The internet wasn’t really on Microsoft’s radar either, though you could get Internet Explorer 1 with a ‘Plus’ pack of more powerful multimedia features. This was peak Microsoft. What people tend to remember less was that Windows 95 was less stable than what had gone before until at least the first service pack launched a year later. We are starting to see echoes of this old Microsoft coming back with the bundling of Microsoft Teams with Office 365 to combat Slack and bundling of security products.

  • John Lee + more things

    China’s Choice for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Reveals Its Own Insecurity – The Diplomat – I thought that John Lee was likely to be Carrie Lam‘s successor when he was appointed her deputy last June. As others have observed, John Lee looked most likely to be the person in charge during vast parts of Ms Lam’s administration. While others said that CY Leung would want to run again (he probably does as his ambition knows no bounds). I didn’t rate CY’s chances, given how close he was to the Hong Kong business community. The only unknown had how many terms Carrie Lam might sit before John Lee took over. Now we know, despite Ms Lam wanting to spend time with her family since 2019, it wasn’t until Omicron infections increasing in the city that she was definitely a one term chief executive. John Lee’s appointment is a message to the city’s oligarchs as much as it is to the general populace of Hong Kong. Security isn’t balanced with commerce, John Lee will be focusing on a single dimension everything else is noise. John Lee is more likely to have strong connections with the 14K rather than CK Hutchison. There is a widespread concern expressed that the mainland government (with John Lee as its instrument) will take Hong Kong’s oligarchs assets away from them.

    China

    Chinese state media uses H-1B skilled worker visa for its journalists — Quartz – this looks like it would be relatively straight forward to deal with from a US immigration point of view

    China Is Challenging NATO Over Russia’s Ukraine War: Jens Stoltenberg – The NATO chief said the attendance of Asia Pacific partners was important “because the crisis has global ramifications,” not least due to the role of China in giving tacit support for Moscow’s invasion. – this is some of China’s worst scenarios playing out

    The Empire of the Golden Triangle | Palladium magazine 

    The Chinese companies trying to buy strategic islands | Financial Times – It demonstrates the complicated way that Chinese companies sometimes act in sync with the government and its geopolitical ambitions. – everything China is political in nature

    Energy

    Electric vehicle targets ‘impossible’ without changes to lithium pipeline | Financial Times – actually the article is misleading. It is impossible to meet vehicle targets with batteries, but the truth is that it always had been. Hopefully this will bring more of a focus on hydrogen infrastructure, hydrogen powered vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells

    Hong Kong

    Jacky Cheung and Nicholas Tse Star in ‘War Customised’ – Variety – After the squashing of the pro-democracy protests that flared up and turned violent in the second half of 2019, a Beijing-imposed National Security Law has changed many aspects of Hong Kong society, ranging from education to elections and entertainment. This has caused cinemas to withdraw certain films from release, the passing of a film censorship law that specifically includes security concerns, and the self-imposed exile of some filmmakers and talent. – interesting footer that I suspect will feature on many future Variety coverage of Hong Kong movies

    The Resignation of Britain’s Judges Is the Final Blow to Hong Kong – The Atlantic – The exodus of Hong Kongers and foreign city residents has reached such a level that even the city’s chief executive, who announced this week that she will not seek a second term, admits that Hong Kong is experiencing a brain drain. Her replacement will almost certainly be a former police officer who has been saddled with U.S. sanctions and who helped trigger the 2019 protests. His elevation would cement that, above all else, the authorities in Beijing view the issue of security as paramount, even at the cost of business interests, rapidly decreasing civil liberties, and professional accountability. If Hong Kong is to be thought of as a bridge linking East and West, Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said the infrastructure still exists, but the obstacles erected by Beijing have now rendered it a tough passage. “A bridge can be there, and people can use it and cross and mix and interact and benefit each other,” he told me. “Or a bridge can be there with barricades being put up by one side, and with people on one side not being allowed to use the bridge … I think that is what we are looking at in Hong Kong.”

    King of Kowloon: The Life and Art of Tsang Tsou-choi — Google Arts & Culture

    Ideas

    The Franciscan monk helping the Vatican take on — and tame — AI | Financial Times – “Algorithms make us quantifiable. The idea that if we transform human beings into data, they can be processed or discarded, that is something that really touches the sensibility of the Pope,” – interesting that there is less concern about the effects of automation

    How Putin aged into a classic oil state autocrat | Financial Times – On a visit to New York in 2003, Vladimir Putin pitched himself to investors as an economic reformer willing to engage western capitalists, telling us that Russia was more than just another petrostate and shared the values of a “normal European nation”. Those words ring hollow now that Putin is invading Ukraine, but he seemed sincere at the time. Having taken over a nation battered in the late 1990s by financial crisis and default, he was pushing privatisation and deregulation. – what’s really interesting is the degree of change over time. Everything seems to hinge on Putin’s great power internal narrative

    Korea

    Seoul’s lure as financial centre impeded by heavy-handed regulation, says mayor | Financial Times – interesting that Korea wants to target companies leaving Hong Kong

    Materials

    The great medicines migration: how China controls key drug supplies | Financial Times

    Retailing

    JD.com/Richard Liu: another tech boss bites the dust | Financial Times – Antitrust regulators picked market leader Alibaba as their main target, allowing JD to increase market share. JD fully controls its supply chain, warehouses and transport. That means it offers a slicker experience for customers than peers dependent on third-party services. That also makes it a big employer, another plus in Beijing’s eyes. Unfortunately, an asset-heavy business model becomes a weakness when prices and wages are rising. In the fourth quarter, JD posted a quarterly loss. General expenses rose 89 per cent. Fulfilment costs rose more than a tenth. China’s slowdown amid lockdowns in Shanghai and other big cities is a further threat to sales. Alibaba has already reported the slowest quarterly growth since going public in 2014 – the increase in general expenses needs more probing, why is it so high?

    No Amazon? No problem: How a remote island community built its own online shopping service – Rest of World 

    Security

    Possible Evidence of Russian Atrocities: German Intelligence Intercepts Radio Traffic Discussing the Murder of Civilians in Bucha – DER SPIEGEL 

    Chinese hackers reportedly target India’s power grid | South China Morning Post 

    S.Korea to Launch Homegrown Spy Satellites | Chosen Ilbo 

    Style

    The Death of Streetwear Culture is a Class Issue | High Sobriety – in its ‘80s and ‘90s heyday, by and large streetwear culture was driven by the kids from low-income neighborhoods in major American cities. The very term “streetwear” bears that notion—it’s a style born in the streets, in schoolyards, on handball and basketball courts, and on brownstone stoops. More often than not, streetwear heroes—athletes and rappers—came from the working class

    Wireless

    Samsung & Oppo join hands – cooperates on custom chips against Apple – interesting collaboration, partly down to Samsung losing out on mainland China phone sales

  • Chicano culture + more stuff

    Chicano culture

    Japan has had a small but vibrant Chicano culture scene for years. The Japanese have had a community on the west coast of the US for over a century and a love of the detailed sub-cultures of the US. Japan also influences cultures and consumers in Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong and even China. Add to that, the fact that Chicano culture is portrayed in shows that are streaming internationally like Mayans MC.

    In the west, this would be called cultural appropriation; but I don’t think that really captures what’s going on here.

    It is interesting that it is happening now, while Thailand is ruled by a military government; there is a sub-culture flourishing that probably looks rebellious and anti-authoritarian is very interesting.

    Korea

    Vice News did an episode on the families behind chaebols – Korean business empires called South Korea’s Untouchable Families. None of the content will be of any surprise to anyone who has read this blog or has an appreciation of modern Korean culture. The tale of how the chaebols where largely creations of the Korean government and in time managed to capture the country after the 1997 financial crisis is largely a matter of public record. The extra-legal nature of chaebols are the stuff of Korean dramas.

    The ‘chaebol negotiation rule’ of a three year sentence commuted to five years probation is also well known.

    What I found curious is how much emphasis they have put on Samsung, who have the most international reach and advertising spend. The Samsung semiconductor experience with workers suffering from cancer mirrors the experience of workers in fabrication facilities when they were based in Silicon Valley. So the risks involved in the chemicals and the need for protection would have been well known.

    Asianometry has also recently published a video on the Chaebols that takes a slightly different take on the rise of the companies, linking their rise with weak and financially challenged political parties.

    Japan – Tokyo Girl’s Collection

    I have written about Tokyo Girl’s Collection in the past. It is interesting to see that it was extended into the metaverse this year. The formula is still largely the same:

    • A large live event with entertainment
    • Models and dokusha-models. (These are chosen among actual readers of the magazines as “representatives”.  They are more attractive than average readers but not pretty enough to be actual models).
    • Online shopping and m-commerce of looks that the audience wouldn’t be able to buy locally if they live outside Tokyo

    Hong Kong deindustrialisation

    By the time I got to Hong Kong, the city’s industrial base had migrated north to the mainland. But I did get to see the massive packaging and printing factory that had been converted to the home furnishing shopping centre now called Horizon Plaza in Ap Lei Chau. As a child many of my clothes and toys had ‘Made in Hong Kong’ written on them.

    I got to see the massive buildings that used to have clothing factories in Fo Tan and the Sui Fai Factory Estate – a multi-storey building full of light industrial units. De-manufacturing encouraged the rent-seeking oligarchs that dominate Hong Kong today, for instance Li Ka shing started off manufacturing plastic flowers and other light industrial processes, but pivoted to rent seeking businesses property, telecoms and retailing.

  • Esprit + more news

    Esprit

    The rise and fall of Esprit, SF’s coolest clothing brand – Esprit appealed to the youth with a message of lefty, post-racial harmony. Wild prints, bright colors and baggy silhouettes reigned. Their tote bags and T-shirts hung from all the coolest shoulders, adorning fashion plates with the legendary Esprit logo. With the logo’s omnipresence at the time, it may as well have been Supreme for the teens of the late ’80s and early ’90s. – the article skips over some of the awful things that Esprit did to its Chinese emigrant workers in San Francisco.

    esprit
    Esprit Store in Gentings Casino, Malaysia by Ryan Lackey

    The success of Esprit was down to its ‘Europeaness’. It had a Benetton kind of vibe, because they shared the same advertising creative and a similar approach to interior retail space design and bright colours. Esprit eventually listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange but never got its mojo back. The clean logo was designed by John Casado, who had worked for Apple on the Macintosh icons and New Line Cinema

    China

    Chinese documentary prompts rare criticism of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign | Financial Times – Analysts said the negative reaction to Zero Tolerance suggests the decade-long campaign has not sealed public confidence in the party’s ability to investigate itself for graft, which remains widespread….“Getting caught doesn’t mean you are more corrupt than others,” said a former official at the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the highest government agency responsible for investigation and prosecution of criminal cases. “It just means you have bad luck.” – such a good read and reaffirms much of what I saw in China, prior to and during the early Xi premiership. The way it falls is arbitrary in nature and usually linked to power struggles

    Economics

    China’s ‘Common Prosperity’ to Squeeze Cash-Strapped Local Governments – WSJ – pledges on education, healthcare and public housing is expected to be funded by local governments whose main source of revenue is selling land to property developers, so you can imagine that’s going to work out well….. NOT

    Ethics

    For Olympic Sponsors, ‘China Is an Exception’ – The New York Times – At the bottom of the slope where snowboarders will compete in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, an electronic sign cycles through ads for companies like Samsung and Audi. Coca-Cola’s cans are adorned with Olympic rings. Procter & Gamble has opened a beauty salon in the Olympic Village. Visa is the event’s official credit card. President Biden and a handful of other Western leaders may have declared a “diplomatic boycott” of the Winter Games, which begin next week, but some of the world’s most famous brands will still be there. The prominence of these multinational companies, many of them American, has taken the political sting out of the efforts by Mr. Biden and other leaders to punish China for its human rights abuses, including a campaign of repression in the western region of Xinjiang that the State Department has declared a genocide. – at the end of the day, brands are more afraid of Chinese consumers and the Chinese government than they are of western governments and activist consumers

    Instagram and TikTok pull ads from startup Cerebral linking ADHD to obesity | NBC News – the lesson of this is correlation and casuality are different

    Germany

    Latvia slams Germany’s ‘immoral’ relationship with Russia and China | Financial Times and this which is largely down to Germany: EU gives China a nudge rather than a slap over Lithuania – POLITICO. Let’s see what Germany does about: Slovenia latest EU nation hit by China for backing Taiwan | World | The Times – Slovenia provides more products and components to German industry

    Innovation

    A remote village, a world-changing invention and the epic legal fight that followed | Financial Times – interesting dispute with Ocado

    In Depth: New Zealand Fruit Giant’s Kiwi Battle in China 

    Online

    Implications of Revenue Models and Technology for Content Moderation Strategies by Yi Liu, Pinar Yildirim , Z. John Zhang :: SSRN – We show that a self-interested platform can use content moderation as an effective marketing tool to expand its installed user base, to increase the utility of its users, and to achieve its positioning as a moderate or extreme content platform. For the purpose of maximizing its own profit, a platform will balance pruning some extreme content, thus losing some users, with gaining new users because of a more moderate content on the platform. This balancing act will play out differently depending on whether users will have to pay to join (subscription vs advertising revenue models) and on whether the technology for content moderation is perfect. 

    We show that when conducting content moderation optimally, a platform under advertising is more likely to moderate its content than one under subscription, but does it less aggressively compared to the latter when it does. This is because a platform under advertising is more concerned about expanding its user base, while a platform under subscription is also concerned with users’ willingness-to-pay. We also show a platform’s optimal content moderation strategy depends on its technical sophistication. Because of imperfect technology, a platform may optimally throw away the moderate content more than the extreme content. Therefore, one cannot judge how extreme a platform is by just looking at its content moderation strategy. Furthermore, we show that a platform under advertising does not necessarily benefit from a better technology for content moderation, but one under subscription does, as the latter can always internalize the benefits of a better technology. This means that platforms under different revenue models can have different incentives to improve their content moderation technology.

    Has Instagram Lost its Organic Reach? What to expect for 2022  – Fanpage Karma Blog – treading that same like that Marshall and Whatley found for Facebook in their Ogilvy white paper Facebook Zero

    Security

    AUKUS: Strategic drivers and geopolitical implications – Britain’s World – as much about cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and additional undersea capabilities as nuclear submarines

    What China thinks of possible war in Ukraine | The Economist – Both see a world order being reshaped by American weariness and self-doubt, creating chances to test and divide the democratic West. Chinese and Russian diplomats and propaganda organs relay and amplify parallel narratives about the benefits of iron-fisted order over American-style dysfunction. Joint military exercises demonstrate growing trust – but China will be very cautious and nationalists want the Russian Far East back where it belongs as part of China

    FBI considered using Pegasus spyware for US domestic surveillance | AppleInsider

    Technology

    Will China dominate the world of semiconductors? | The Economist 

    The scramble for semiconductors is our era’s industrial Great Game | Financial Times

  • Vivienne Tam + more things

    Vivienne Tam

    Vivienne Tam hosted a video fashion show for her clothes in Hong Kong. The key difference between this and other shows is that the Vivienne Tam show took place in the iconic Ngong Ping cable car across Lantau island.

    Vivienne Tam has a range had the usual mix of western cut and Chinese design motifs.

    Buzz Lightyear origin story

    The original film Toy Story had the reality of Buzz Lightyear being a toy versus his own beliefs of him being a space hero coming into sharp contrast.

    Move forwards 26 years and the character gets an origins story, making his fictional story more real. Disney continues to raid its catalogue. The story has references to both the Star Wars and Marvel universes as well as Pixar’s usual humour and easter eggs. A lot of this is down to the fact that the geeks conquered and creatively own Hollywood now. In fact the film is as much about this subtext, where reality and fantasy have been subverted as it is about Toy Story.

    Chris Evans (who played Captain America) has replaced comedian Tim Allen as the voice of Buzz Lightyear, which gives an idea of the change in tone.

    Jho Low

    Vice Media interview the Wall Street Journal journalists who wrote some of the major stories breaking 1MDB and the financier who managed it Jho Low. In a weirdly parallel aspect to the story Low used 1MDB money to help finance The Wolf of Wall Street movie. Low is reputed to be hiding out in China’s greater bay area, moving between Shenzhen, Macau and Hong Kong. If this is true, then he is likely to be under the protection of powerful officials in China.

    Low’s back story in Penang is fascinating and proves that it is easier to pull a large con than a small one.

    Cyberpunk design cues

    Casio’s new premium G-Shock GMW-B5000TVA-1 Titanium “Virtual Warriors” has definite cyberpunk design vibes. Even though it is a premium watch, it is also at odds with Casio’s more connected G-Shock models.