Spicylover992
When I passed through the newly opened Uniqlo in St.Catherine, I was thinking about the last snap up of Kaws- the collection of collaboration with American artist Kaws. And I heard that the new collection— +J line this year (collaboration with Jil Sander) has caused another panic buying.
Besides the collaboration of two fashion brands, there is another kind of collaboration, which is the combination of a brand and a folk art/culture form, also prevalent nowadays.
Here is an example in China:
Florasis (花西子) “Huaxizi” is a Chinese cosmetic brand founded in 2017 and this year it releases the new collection of Miao collaboration cosmetic. Miao is an ethnic minority in China with the population of approximate 9.5 million. Miao is famous for its silver design, but this kind of handicraft is rarely seen in our daily life and many people know it just through TV series and in tourist spots. Miao silver design is facing the problem of being lost.
According to this situation, Miao silver design needs more promotion and Huaxizi just seized this chance.
In the collection you could see the unique flower and butterfly totem in the silver package and the silver detail is beautiful and meticulous.
On one hand, many people hold the view that this collaboration has raised the vitality of a traditional culture and it is a good way for Chinese people, especially young generation to know this minority culture. And the collection has also received good reviews abroad. On the other hand, for Huaxizi, the traditional culture element increases the sales and it helps to establish a good brand image.
This win-win situation just reminds me that some strategies of protecting indigenous and minority language also include the idea of “collaboration” : dual language pedagogy, translanguaging, exploring more language forms, like poetry, holding some cultural festivals/events, etc.
And if we turn our attention to the fashion industry, we may find that the language/culture collaboration is everywhere. For example, the new bag collection of Loewe, a famous Spanish luxury brand, is called “Ikebana”, which means flower arrangement in Japanese. The design of the bag was inspired by the flower container in Japan in the 19th century. The collection attracts a number of people to search “what is Ikebana”, including one of my friends, and after searching, she told me that Ikebana is so exquisite and she wants to learn Ikebana from a Japanese teacher. It sounds so crazy, but, think about your Korean learning friends, maybe the reason is just a fascinating Korean TV drama!
According to Van Herk(2018), ethnolinguistic vitality has something to do with institutional support, power and prestige of languages, demography ad community choices (pp. 162-163). And from my point of view, the effective promotion of one language may benefit the learning population, (even from domestic to the world), and the power and prestige of this language, and maybe other aspects.
So I am wondering if the collaboration with the fashion industry(or other commercial forms), which young generations love could be transformed to a new way to revitalize indigenous and minority languages?
However, like every coin has two sides, “collaboration” is not always appreciated.
According to comments on the internet, the collaboration of Huaxizi and Miao has also sparked controversy: some netizens suggest that the commercial strategy will hurt the core of Miao culture; traditional culture is put in a disadvantaged position in business; automated manufacturing just distorts the value of hand making, etc.
Likewise, the collaboration of language and the fashion industry may face a similar problem. Besides the risk it may take, the collaboration may just serve as an “access” for people.
How to provide people with sufficient resources? How to teach? and how to maintain this learning enthusiasm? In Van Herk (2018), it is also stated that “Revitalizing languages is expensive, requiring dictionaries, grammars, teaching materials, teacher training, and facilities.” (p.174). These should all be taken into consideration and we need further research to see if the collaboration is workable.
Here are my questions:
1)Do you have some favorite collaboration collections(or crossovers)? Any items.
2)Have you ever seen any successful collaboration of language/culture and another industry?
3) Do you expect the collaboration of language/culture and another industry? If the answer is yes, what kind of things should the leader be careful with? If the answer is no, could you please tell us your opinion?
References:
Van Herk, G. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Wa411A7og/spm_id_from=333.788.videocard.2
