Produced by |Tiger Sniff Youth Culture Group.
Author | kakakakapi
Editing, Cartography丨Slag County.
This article was first published in Tiger Sniff Young Content*** That NG" (ID: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the faces, stories and attitudes of today's young people.
For a long time, the public's reaction to "national fashion clothing" (hereinafter referred to as national fashion) has been quite subtle.
People have a love-hate relationship with brands that bear the title of "national trend", and some people even see national fashion as a fashion sewer.
The unspeakable design makes people feel like they are stuck in their throats, but the patriotic feelings of Jackie Chan are strong and surging.
In recent years, national tide brands have emerged in an endless stream, but only a handful can leave a good impression on the public. Finding a brand with a good reputation and can afford the banner of "national tide" seems to be clueless for a while, and I don't know where to start.
What kind of national fashion brand can be satisfied?
On the fashion contempt chain, few national fashion brands can rush to the front and rank seniority.
But now there is such a brand, which beats Balenciaga and has become the unparalleled "single equipment" in the hearts of many people, and even the root of the "hatred of wives" of many fashion veterans.
It's F426.
Recently, content filmed on social platforms with the theme of "School Sister Gone with F426 Kid" has become popular.
*The copy mentions that whether you are a RMB player wearing a balenciaga or rick owens or other brands with a unit price that can easily reach tens of thousands of brands, or a brother who can stand in front of the mirror for two hours with a perfect look, in front of the F426 kid who is only wearing an ordinary sweatshirt, all of them are vulnerable, and the charm value will instantly return to zero.
Many people have also "written the war" on social **, they wear limited-edition editions, runway models and other clothing that is defined as ruthless goods, and attach the following text under the posing picture, similar to "Can you beat the F426 kid when you go out on the street today", "Comprehensively suppress the F426 kid", "This can snatch Crush from the F426 kid", "Go out and match the F426 kid".
*The next is also full of all kinds of sharp comments, ridiculing that no matter how much they play and dress, they can't compare to the simple and good young man who wears F426.
On the surface, it seems to be another tense Internet tear, but the public has played stalks, but in fact, it is more of a question about the sudden explosion of this brand.
F426, a brand with the name of the national trend, is mostly priced in the range of 100 300 yuan, and its people-friendly pricing also allowed it to record a monthly sales of 500,000 pieces on the official store of Douyin last year.
It's just that if this brand is fine, it is indeed quite tasteless.
The clothing is dominated by logo-patch hooded sweatshirts, color-blocked baseball jerseys, and loose hip-hop sweatpantsThe design is not as good as the stunning, and most of the creativity is supported by the "F426" logo.
The style is ordinary and simple, and it is difficult to even find any memory points when you remove the logo. For many discerning people, this is clearly a labeling brand for pattern-making gap.
The brand name, which is often used in designs, comes from a fighter model that did not exist in reality that he dreamed of when he was young.
The empty form of naming dreams also continues to the background color of the brand.
As shown above, the F426's design is unremarkable, but it's also the result of the brand's owner's "no style" ethos.
"borderless" is enshrined as the core of the product, and this also means that any design, element, can appear in their brand.
The original intention of creation without restrictions, coupled with the design without any bright spots, the nihilistic brand spirit and the homogenization of serious products, F426, which has frequently fallen into plagiarism scandals, has been named the light of the national tide, which naturally attracts people's ridicule and disgust.
It is worth noting that the concept of fashion brands is a concept native to China.
In foreign countries, it is more often referred to as streetwear.
Compared to the haute couture that entered the hall of elegance, street brands, as the name suggests, were deeply rooted in the street community, and the audience was mostly the marginalized groups of society at the time. For example, the early black group wore sweatshirts in order to ** represent the white culture represented by the orthodox dress of the suit.
The last century was the era of street brands, and many old-timed street brands were born in this period.
If you count such brands, you will find that the soul of the brand is often inseparable from the soul of the brand that leads them to success. SimpleThe founder is the "1" at the beginning of a number, and the "0" represented by the design at the back.
Enthusiast-recognized street brand pioneers often sought inspiration in the counterculture of the time, with sports such as graffiti, hip-hop, skateboarding and surfing all being the cultural soil that nurtured the first street brands.
Shawn Stussy built Stüssy from surf cultureJames Jebbia founded Supreme, based on skateboarding culture
A-Ron, an early Supreme clerk, recalls that after the store closes, New York's well-known skateboarders, the so-called people of all religions, gather in the Supreme store. It's like a stronghold for them, and the marginal cultural attributes that each person brings are like the smell of alcohol and tobacco in the store, blending in the chaos.
Immersed in this subculture, James Jebbia is full of stories and inspiration.
In 1994, cinematographer Larry Clark turned his lens to Supreme for the film "Kids." This handbook for youth cultivation for New York's marginalized teenagers is a testament to the cultural landscape of the Supreme store.
Kids' audience began to emulate the look of the skateboarder in the movie, wearing cargo pant, oversized t-shirts, camouflage clothing, and more.
In fact, the easiest thing for street brands to pry into people's hearts is always the cultural story.
In other words, the founders of street brands, they are inspired by the fragments of the spirit of the times, and thus resonate with the soul of the people in the same state.
To this day, this logic is still the way many street brands become famous.
Corteiz, known as the second-generation supreme, is led by clint419, a second-generation British immigrant of Nigerian descent. He has led a number of phenomenal marketing campaigns, shouting "rulestheworld" to attract a large number of young people who are in the same survival situation, especially a group of British Drill culture audiences.
It seems that shouting slogans and printing slogans has always been the reason why people criticize the superficial design of street brands.
But just like graffiti, rap, and other products of street culture, one of the survival instincts that they write into their DNA is crying. And who would read out a long and chewy text while shouting a slogan?
In a way, you can even think of these brands as a huge publishing house, where clothing is just a carrier, slogans and images are peddling content, and the whole team is based on people.
It's hard to overdo Slogon with a design that has a lot of value, but it does have the right emotion.
The passionate Slogon and the creators live on the same cultural soil, follow the changes in the creators' lives, and export political ideas and empathize with social groups in the change of season after season.
The founders, like missionaries, continued to build up their prestige and credibility, and those who were impressed by their concepts and spiritual expressions automatically volunteered to come under the command of the sect.
In an interview with the first issue of Complex** Streetwear, Edison Chen once mentioned,Streetwear is not about clothes, but about the feelings of the creators, the real way of life.
Brendon Babenzien's commitment to and support for human rights around the world is reflected in the brand's entire chain. On the surface, it may seem like a logo with "Human Rights", but the design is only one part of the overall concept.
The previous street brands are subdivided, with different cultural backgrounds and different audiences, but the difference is that thanks to the creator's abundant desire for expression, the fresh vitality of the brand product design can often be felt.
So why is it that some national fashion designs that also borrow street imagery and create the concept of fashion are always easy to make people get tired of looking at and feel empty and boring?
People complain about the ugly national tide, probably two points, copy, and Hu design.
For many people, it is a thing that can put designers on the shelf of shame, but in the eyes of some designers, the attitude towards "plagiarism" is much more tolerant, and Yohji Yamamoto believes that in the iteration of plagiarism, it can help designers find style.
In fact, the main reason for the ugly situation of the national tide is only a small part of the moral accusations.
A large part of it is because people see at a glance that the manager of the national tide has not paid too much attention to those rough works.
The most common thing people complain about is the design method of those who use the Classic of Mountains and Seas as a cheat in the industry, such as finding some auspicious patterns of flying dragons and phoenixes dancing, adding cool pictures on Pinterest, and a collage of PS layers to create a so-called national tide.
And things like screen printing and logos, which are commonplace in streetwear, are also constantly overturning. Some look like they've found a clumsy font created by a third-rate calligrapher, while others look as simple as drawings made directly from the default font in a Word document.
The poor impression left by the ugly national tide has made people more and more tired of this concept.
Trying to express one's abstract assumptions that do not conform to the mainstream becomes more and more untenable in rough works, and unclear designs cannot gain real respect from consumers.
Looking back at the word "national tide", it is actually very problematic.
To some extent, it's no wonder that the managers can't do this proposition homework.
The use of the word "tide" in the Chinese context, in addition to referring to brain problems in Shandong's dialect, is more intended to refer to fashion.
But what is confusing is that the combination of the word Guochao is specifically referred to as "streetwear produced in China". It is more like an embarrassing positioning that can neither become a designer brand nor be willing to be an ordinary ** store brand.
This embarrassment, from status, to products to word of mouth, has been consistent.
The reason for this is that when lifestyles such as rapping and dressing in Western street culture have become the interest of Chinese young people, in order to seize this business opportunity, businessmen and managers generalize street culture as the rebellious style of Western bastards, which is one-sidedly reflected in clothing design.
The design method of creating an empty atmosphere often gives people the feeling that the old cadres are talking hooligans and sticking into the children's circle.
Of course, you can dismiss these absurd designs as just rotten, but when you see a lot of people doing rotten things "with their hearts", a deep question will come to your mind:
The national tide aimed at the wallets of young people, why is it so abstract like the national football team?
Any form of clothing in a street brand is actually an externalized display of contemporary youth culture.
It is difficult to have a concrete representation of the national tide, to a large extent, because it is deeply rooted in nothingness.
As a national fashion designer, his source of inspiration is often drawn from his own youth cultural environment.
If you search for the definition of the word "culture", the answer given in the foreign dictionary is, "In a social field that emphasizes practice and expression, which over time bear witness to the development of society and also acquire social significance." ”
Flipping through the interviews with the creators of many of today's well-known streetwear brands, they all mentioned that streetwear is about culture, not clothing.
Kyle Ng of Brain Dead echoed this in an interview, mentioning that when he bought band t-shirts and skateboarding clothes as a child, he didn't care about clothes, but about the lifestyle of musicians and skateboarders.
Street brands like those that began to flourish in the last century have already taken root in the multicultural soil.
Western street brands influenced by punk and hip-hop culture have also implemented the words rebellion and rebellion in the core of the brand.
Bobby Hundreds offers high-resolution artwork that encourages DIY people to make anti-Trump and anti-Nazi clothing.
The result is a vast system of counter-elite culture.
Even though street brands have frequently collaborated with luxury brands over the years, in terms of the imagery of the times, it is still enough to represent the utopia and Alcatraz of rebellious teenagers.
However, if Guochao explores local youth culture, what can it find?
Looking back on the lives of Chinese teenagers, it should be a cultural image that is constantly surging in the shape of a cocoon, but it seems to be more like an awl shaped according to local conditions, and at the forefront is the culture of being a subject.
High-quality schedule of work and rest", "high school is not about IQ, but time management", "high school schedule of only sleeping 6 hours a day", there are many strategies for students' time planning on social platforms, and the common point is to divide the time finely and try to fill all the study time;Most colleges and universities publish schedules that show students spending most of their 16 hours awake in class.
Students' spare time is crowded out of school, which has left them with no skills to explore other cultural fields, and it is difficult for localized subcultures to survive.
"Adolescence trapped in homework".
Recently, there have been constant cries about recess time being deprived and students being asked to study in the classroom.
As early as 2019, the Joint Questionnaire Network of the Social Survey Center of China Youth Daily conducted a survey of 1,908 parents of primary and secondary school students.752% of parents surveyed said that the phenomenon of "quiet 10 minutes between classes" around them is common, 64Seven percent of the parents surveyed hoped that teachers would not delay classes and would not occupy recess time.
In the after-school time, the education and training institutions that flourished in the first 10 years can prove that the students' time has gone to the top.
If we put the microscope of the times in the present, it is easy to see those who studied hard when they were young, but when they grew up, their academic qualifications depreciated, and they continued to work hard to pass the single-plank bridge examination.
For most people, they have lived since they were young in an environment where their parents told them that the most important thing in life is to study, and all hobbies that divide their study time are floods.
More seriously,Under the backlash of this culture, the desire for expression has also begun to be absent
Exams are used to achieve a sense of fulfillment in life, and the resulting mindset often has a profound impact on individuals. Previously, Wang Bing, a doctor of mental health at Peking University, mentioned in an interview that people who are good at answering questions must be good at figuring out the intentions of the judges, and when they become adults, they are environmentally sensitive and can distinguish the intentions of their bosses, but it will also cause them to be less afraid to express different opinions.
In this system, there is a clear boundary between right and wrong, and the expression of prudence is written into the context of most people's lives. Before expressing it, it is more about going through it in the mind first, whether it is in line with justice and correctness.
The high score on the exam paper is the spire of the white light, and the chaotic gray area under the spire is rarely stepped into.
As for culture, it is in the collision of one side and the other that it evolves. Communicate, dialogue, and communicate on an equal footing, and practice brings true knowledge.
Anyone who has ever played the game knows that the period of map development is time-consuming, and for the cultural field that has no concrete form, expanding any dimension also requires someone to explore it in a lot of time.
Unfortunately, the more time young people dedicate to schoolwork, the less room they have left for other interests. The failure to open up the path of exploration at a young age has further led to the lack of cultural potential of local youth.
If a trendy brand is compared to a tree, then the atmosphere of youth culture is the best fertilizer, and the current situation proves that the fertility of the soil is far from enough.
People who are overly influenced by the paradigmatic thinking template, once they have gained the power to control the reins independently, are often confused by cognitive biases and do not know where to go. It is also difficult for managers with similar upbringing to truly "express" it.
When young people no longer need to jump into the same interlocking and high-speed assembly line since childhood, and youth culture is constantly deconstructed and reconstructed in the process of localization, the first era of national tide can be opened, but this moment may have long ended, or it may still be in the future.
This content is the author's independent view and does not represent the position of Tiger Sniff. Do not do without permission**, please contact hezuo@huxiu for authorizationcom
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