Wednesday, April 05, 2006

ReThink Consumerism – not just your mainstream shit, but the street culture too

So I passed by the cross-section of Queen’s Street Mid and Ice House Street in Central the other day, and I saw one of the upcoming stores is BAPE – A Bathing Ape.

This is probably the most successful street fashion brand on the planet. Started by this Japanese dude Nigo in Harajuku some years (a and half decade??) ago – long enough before Gwen Stefani knew about it – this was the cool brand when I was a teenager in junior high. Its graphics were exclusive, limited, hip, mixing the American style of pop culture with the Asian creative talents, expressed in the form of the universal teen language: T-shirts. Today it’s got its chain stores with hair salon and café, and marching across the Pacific Ocean all the way to NYC (their NYC store opened last year, I think). And don’t get me wrong on this one: that’s cool too. Good to see Asian brands doing well in the world stage, even though they are not from HK.

But here is the thing: one reason the Bathing Ape does so well is that everything is limited, for better quality control and, most importantly, a price that is almost “dysfunctional”. I mean, if I am not mistaken the price of a tee from BAPE has always been about 600-1000 HKD (which is about 80-125 USD), or it might be cheaper now if it’s bought from the official store (because they were only available from all the independent importers in HK who jack the prices up like teenagers are goldmines). But dude, would you spend fxxking thousands dollars on a fxxking cotton t-shirt? I mean, unless you tee is made with Indian silk with gold stitches and hand painted by Japanese tattoo artist, there is no way I am gonna pay that price. And I am gonna be honest here: I can’t afford it. So call me a hater all you want, but even if I can afford it, I got a little more sense than that. (I’m Rick James, bitch!)

But of course, the street culture got its own thing to say: we are limited so that we can control our quality, and though that makes the products pricey, it also makes us cool. And given that the Japanese got their own magic brush that seems to be able to make everything so much better – at least so it seems to most of the street fashion heads in N. America and Asia – they got all their power to be pricey. In fact, some of them deserve to be pricey, really, ‘cause its quality. And I’m cool with that.

And by street culture I don’t mean the Sean John t-shirts with Sean “Comb” John written all over, or the phat farm shoes that are made like shell toes. But brands that make products with creativity, inspiration, respect, and might even bring out a message, a mission, a tribute to those inspired them – does BAPE still got that?

But if you are one big street fashion brand (Mongul?) like BAPE, you can afford to be the shit ‘cause you are, right? You know, people dig it. So BAPE and their owner Nigo just keep opening up like starbucks, and that’ll still be street culture. YEA RIGHT. Not when you are now planning to open up in the middle of central, right opposite to Harvey Nichols and Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Not when it’s in Central (just so y’all know, Central is like the Financial district in NYC, or any other so called CBD – Central Business District in the world. A lot of bankers and banks and even more bankers, like the streets in Matrix) and you well blended in a sea of hi-end fashion stores like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel, and whatever the fxxk those companies that sell leathers are. Because here is my point: when a street fashion brand is trying to reach up to the top of the fashion world like that, it ain’t the street no more. So how much do you think it would live up to the expectations of quality control, being hip and got cool graphics, and, the most important part of this street culture, got the intentions and messages in the products? I mean, most of its profits gotta be now going to the rent, to the commercials in magazines, and to sponsor celebrities who think they are in the culture. And yea, they are still limited so they got the official reason to rip your ass off while the product designed in Japan is made in China. So fxxk the street culture, we got the real business deal over here, son: We moved out of the streets, bitch.

In fact, just as the BAPE is sponsoring and teaming up in designs with artists like Pharrell Williams, it’s a classic example of “culture/consumerism” – a phenomenon that as consumer products team up with cultural figures for better sales, it’s reshaping the culture (partly for its own good) and so that the culture reshapes around the products and so, becomes the culture. This was probably the best argued in Naomi Klein’s book No Logo. For example, think about Nike and how it sponsored superstar like Jordan so to create the super craze on basketball shoes in 80’s- 90’s, and how Nike has been since very late 90’s and early 2000 sponsoring street artists/brands like Stash, Futura, Stussy, and numerous others that I lost track of to keep their air force 1’s and dunk’s alive. As they sponsor the street culture for better sales, because they see how a big part of the street culture is about sneakers, a.k.a. “kicks” for us sneaker-heads, Nike is reshaping this sneaker phenomenon in street culture so that people are even more crazy over their pari of limited-250-pair-artist-special-colorway-15th-anniversary shoes they got on, and at the same time, pushing its image of cool to its max on the streets, and all of a sudden it’s ok that they use child labor that we all know about (we went to college too, ok, we know how to think independently): I mean, they changed their policies of outsourcing to factories and no more human rights violations right? Just keep making the hottest colorways and we will forget the rest.

Fxxk no: it’s not ok. But I gotta admit, it’s so damn hard to ignore this big part of me that’s attracted to these products, like Nike and Adidas. But it’s not my point to talk about the big corps here. It’s just an illustration of how brand shapes culture to fit the brand better. So on choosing those big brands or not, I’ll leave it up to you to decide your own stand, for I am not the best person to criticize what they had done here. (if you are really interested, read No Logo). But what I am concerned about is how street culture brands bearing the name of street culture are moving away from the streets while telling you, “we are more hip now, ‘cause we move up the ladder to the high end world”. It’s simply a disguise. For BAPE, because they have done it extremely well in this brand/culture manipulation -- better than Nike indeed to a certain extent -- it’s even more important for us to think what they are doing, because they might be turning themselves into one of those big corporation machines that don’t have the street culture essence anymore.

And they have done well partly because the street culture has a smaller circle than the mass that Nike was aiming at, so it’s been easy for them to pinpoint and focus on who to team up with. And the result is an extremely powerful push in the sales for both BAPE and the artist. So powerful that sometimes I think Nike copied BAPE’s model of marketing. Back in the days when BAPE sponsored and teamed with DJ Shadow and James Lavelle from Mo’Wax, that was cool. Then the HipHop heads start to dig them in around 2001 – 02, at least among the cool ones like De La. That was cool. Then Jay-Z and one of my favorite artists Pharrell. That’s cool too. (don’t forget here though, that Pharrell had moved up the ladder too, I mean, the guy even got onto cover of iD). But Omarion and Bow wow and Usher wearing Bape Sta and Bape Hoody? …. dude, I don’t know.

The street culture and its fashion is always about being the alternative to the mainstream, so that literally, the kids on the block can make his statement out of his fashion style. Be it the graphic message on his tee, or the limited colorway of his kicks that you can’t get at foot lockers, fashion is the strongest statement. But fashion is only a tool in here, not the essence: you are using fashion to make a statement because you got something to say, a.k.a. I ain’t comfortable with the mainstream and here I am, telling you how I’m gonna be different. And the beauty of this is everyone is an individual, to a point that it’s individualism to the max, and it’s freedom of expression with respect for other human beings. Because people want to be unique, people are getting more and more creative, constantly raising the bar for esthetics, and in fact, this is the what has motivated the street fashion world to be ever evolving, and so it got different themes that send out the messages to the communities it represent.

I might sound like cynical anti-mainstream-just-for-the-sake-of-it type. Maybe I am. But I certainly don’t wanna just follow the crowd when they are crazy about something – let’s step back and chill and think about what’s going on.

So, it don’t even gotta expensive gears, but it gotta be cool – we are talking about esthetics here, not just bling bling. It doesn’t make you street if you wear the BAPE that everyone wears – and it’s not because the “everyone wearing so it’s not limited no more” – because the BAPE ain’t got the street essence anymore like it used to, because they are selling everyone the same old tee, same old shit while trying to tell them “man, that’s still a lot of design talents here”. So if you think you are counter-culture and thus, cool, because you copped a pair of bape sta, sorry, you ain’t there yet.

So when BAPE store opens in central, y’all street heads better recognize – recognize the fake. DAMN!

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

i think that once a brand starts coming up from "underground" and gets recognized by the mainstream culture as "hip" or "cool", it loses it street appeal. once they start mass producing that stuff, *china cough* the consumers who started the trend would then move on to the next "big thing" or whatever u call it. example. how many people do you know actually have the original first generation ipod? hmm, not many. but, they started the trend. people catch on, and when everyone gets one, it becomes the norm to have something like that. those who have the original ipod have probably moved onto the next "underground"thing.
its all about marketing, and how the lead consumers will always be willing to pay for the extra "special" and "limited" names tagged onto whatever they buy.

4:17 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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10:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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6:32 AM  

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