Temper goes trending and casts a net upon all that is throwing tantrums in the world of China Fashion and Urban Culture across a variety of global sources. This makes for a collection of largely non-original content dipping its toe into the deep indigo-dyed pool that is the ocean of Middle Kingdom fashionable slash cultural astonishment.
Image: Screenshot from Chinese Instagram slash e-commerce platform 小红书 ( xiǎo hóng shū or Little Red Book)
1. We’re Lovin’ It
McDonald’s latest promo initiative in China is called, wait for it… Chicken Food Fashion Week. Bet you didn’t see that one coming.
At the core of the campaign, we find a fashion show courtesy of contemporary menswear designer Angus Chiang, who created his eponymous menswear label in 2015 with designs inspired by Taiwanese culture and featuring futuristic pops of color. While leveraging his strength in bright color usage, the young talent also drew inspiration from McDonald’s spicy chicken hamburger and the fast-food titan’s trademark red and yellow streaks.
Dao Insights gets cluckin’.
Image: Still from director Zheng Yifei’s first full-length feature film “Trashy Boy” — Zhang Haichao (left) and Zheng
2. One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure
“Trashy Boy” was the dark horse of this year’s FIRST International Film Festival, China’s leading independent film festival held in the northwestern city of Xining, Chinese state-run online magazine SIXTH TONE reports.
For his first feature-length feat, Director Zheng Yifei follows his childhood friend Zhang Haichao as the latter tries–and fails–to establish himself as a hip-hop star in his hometown in northwest China’s Gansu province.
But his helplessness has turned him into a cult hero. The 25-year-old’s doomed struggle to fulfill his dreams appears to have struck a chord with many young Chinese–a generation that has come of age amid rampant youth unemployment, widening inequality, and one COVID-19 lockdown after the other.
SIXTH TONE tells the full tale.
The “Diversity & Casting” art installation lands in the Jiangnan Cloth + Collection Store. Image via ThePaper.cn
3. Installations and Inspirations
As China’s Gen Z gradually grows into the main force of fashion consumption, more and more brands are beginning to change their communication strategies to meet the preferences of this new generation of consumers.
As a Chinese designer brand, Jiangnan Cloth has always explored the fine line between the “artistic life” and the “art of living.”
This time around, January’s “Diversity & Casting” art installations created by Xi’An-based brand Jiangnan Cloth (aka Jiangnan Buyai or simply JNBY) and PINWU STUDIO uses a variety of common materials such as stretchy cloth and plastic bags. Each installation comes with its own audio set-up, bringing consumers a vivid artistic slash alternative interpretation of ordinary day-to-day happenings.
State-run media outlet ThePaper.cn brings you the deets– unfortunately only in Chinese.
On a charming side note: In May last year, Jiangnan Cloth found itself in one of Dante’s circles of hell. Chinese netizens took to social media to criticize the inappropriate English and weird (to say the least) patterns printed on the brand’s children’s clothing. Featured “slogans” like “Welcome to the Hell” and “Let Me Touch You” didn’t sit, shall we say, “quite right” with adults. Apparently some other gems included mentions of Satan and sacrificial stuff. Mmmkay.
Two more of JNBY children’s clothing “masterpieces” that sparked consumer outrage in May 2022. Image via Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter
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Perpetually in pursuit of the greater good that is “China Fashion”, van Paridon set up The China Temper to help promote the dynamite dynamic fashion scene sprouting within Beijing, Shanghai, and China overall. Catering to anybody and everybody who reads English and/or Chinese, Temper covers all the basics and bases. From China's street style scenery to its budding photographers, internationally renowned designers, and underground quirks plus phenomena: We present one hot-hip-happening current collective weaving The New "Made in China" tag.
The term “Made in China” is undergoing the ultimate 21st Century makeover. Escorted by the increasingly strong influence of a new thinking among China’s younger generations, regarding individuality and the expression thereof, the fashion scene in the Middle Kingdom is exploding. And stretches far beyond what meets the eye. It’s appliqué, one might say.
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