This article was first published on Huxiu Youth Cultural Content Public Account “That NG” (ID: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the faces, stories and attitudes of young people today.
In the 9th year of Emperor Taizong’s Zhenguan, the Eastern Assyrian Church sent an envoy to China: Fang Xuanling greeted him, and Tang Taizong received him and gave him the name Aroben, which means “a person sent by God.”
This is the first record of the spread of Christianity in China with a definite historical record. These Nestorian missionaries who translated the Bible and built monasteries were also called Nestorians in China.
In the fifth year of the Apocalypse of the Ming Dynasty (1625), a stone stele was unearthed in Xi’an with a cross and the “Da Qin Nestorian Popular China Stele” on the front, and praise Written in 1780 Chinese characters and attached with several Syriac crosses, it caused a sensation among the missionaries at that time. At present, the early history of Nestorianism in China is mostly cited as a reference.
Picture Source: David Castor
Due to various reasons, their idea of spreading the gospel was not fulfilled.
But more than 1,300 years later, a piece of clothing has completed Jing Seng’s unfinished business, allowing hipsters to learn “Fear Of God-Fear of God”, and its name is Essentials.
However, there is a price to be a hit — that is, getting sprayed.
Picture source: hills-select
If we say that “all members north” is a refined summary of China’s winter fashion environment, it gives people an easy insight into the convergence of young people’s winter clothes. Then, the Essentials in the jacket is the real fashion background color on this land.
Therefore, when the warm wind blows over the earth and people take off their heavy down jackets, Essentials will become a prominent school and become synonymous with summer romance and fashion.
PictureVideo source: Weibo
As the secondary brand of the high-street brand Fear Of God, it takes the mass route and provides people with cheap fashion solutions, so that the shy people in the pocket can experience the person in charge with a small amount of money The texture of Master Jerry’s works has experienced the purity of God-fearing.
So, just like you can always see young people with e-cigarettes hanging from their necks, you can also find traces of Essentials in every crowded Chinese street.
This statement is not a random fabrication. Douyin blogger @坏强尼 did a field survey on B1, Sanlitun South District, Beijing on March 21 this year. He found that there were 5 Essentials passers-by wearing the same brand as him on the road about 5 minutes in a lap.
Picture source: Douyin@坏强尼
Its popularity does not limit the field. With the insight of the Internet, you can see its popularity in countless information streams:
From the streets of Beijing to the office buildings in Shanghai, from the fields of platycodon grandiflorum to the frontier of live broadcast on the Internet, Essentials will never fall in every corner where the tentacles of fashion can extend.
In the self-contained KOL’s recommended narrative, Essentials is an artifact that can become handsome with one-click, and is a hip-bone shaft that connects ordinary people with fashion. And the reason why it can be matched in a variety of wild fashionThe formula is used as a panacea because it is too much like a religion:
The symbol composed of words is a symbol of great recognizability and mystery; from fashionistas to village masters, the design that everyone wears without error and the low sale price are the ways it attracts believers; and The reputation of the main line Fear Of God and the endorsement of its designer Jerry are the source of its sacredness. Under the combined influence of these characteristics, it has become a belief in consumerism and a set of fashion codes.
The people’s pursuit of Essentials has led to speculation, and quickly pushed its selling price of clothes of less than 1,000 to 800 yuan in the secondary market to 3,000 to 4,000 yuan.
Because of its sufficient supply and simple design, Essentials has become a cash cow for many people: On the one hand, there are more and more retail clever ghosts who get the goods through direct mail through overseas platforms and sell them on the secondary market to make the difference; On the one hand, fake dealers are becoming more and more rampant in imitating.
Among them, the competition among fake dealers is the fiercest, and this intensity is mainly reflected in publicity.
Now open Douyin and search Essentials, and you can find countless commercials shot by counterfeiters. Most of these commercials are well-written and exquisite pictures. Watching them fight each other, you can even smell a ribbon that is black. Humorous “inner volume” taste:
“When I watched them holding a measuring ruler to examine the spacing of Essentials letters, holding a magnifying glass to polish the letter radian, holding an iron to finish fabrics, and using the word’reducibility’ to modify and improve freshness At the time, I thought of “China on the Bite of the Tongue” and ingenuity. In a daze, I even forgot that they were making fakes, and even wanted to shoot the crime and call them the god of Ess.”
A fake commercial that shakes my soul
Picture source: Douyin
When the fake clothes are made to look real and the channels are full of goods, the price of the entire Essentials market becomes erratic like a pirate ship: there are hundreds to thousands of clothes for a piece of clothing, and they all say themselves it is true.
This situation, according to Li Yunlong’s words, is that the entire Essentials market is fucking messed up.
When Essentials became a necessities for the phenomenon-level hipsters, a new symbol of consumerism began to rise. But at the same time, its rise has also aroused more people’s questioning and ridicule, and it has been sprayed into smelly and rotten garbage.
The first thing that bears the brunt is its design. The mystery design idea of removing the LOGO as a new product has become the biggest flaw in the hearts of critics. In their view, this is just using consumers as fools, without sincerity. It’s bad money.
Picture source: Edge App @yao言乱说
What makes the fashion pioneers uphold the fundamentalism and trend doctrine even more angry is that there is noSincere gadgets are not only bought by people, but they can also be smashed: in their opinion, they are indifferent to dressing, hurting their love, and shaping a street ugly state.
Therefore, they took out the most insulting vocabulary in the field of fashion, “copy people”, and roughly classified those people wearing Essentials, and criticized and ridiculed their dress stories.
Picture source: Edge App @上海travis
In this age when people try to get rid of the word “outdated” and pursue the rising Internet index, decoupling from Essentials has become a major issue for some people:
Some people use it to shine shoes and post on video platforms to show their determination; some people will hide it silently, and then change it when wearing it; others will silently delete the shopping cart to avoid being ridiculed And the risk of ridicule.
Whenever I see this picture, I wonder if Essentials is a piece of clothing or a pure-blood ID card for a pet.
In the kingdom of fashion, no brand can escape the abuse after the explosion.
From Bape’s ape head to Givenchy’s big dog head, to later Supreme, Off-White and Essentials, every fashion brand that broke the circle has changed from a sought-after niche brand to a chain of fashion contempt. A part of the human centipede.
In every fashionable witch hunt, you will find that “wearing clothes with your head” is the political correctness in this field. But what is confusing is that this evaluation standard itself is a difficult concept to prove. The more realistic truth is that this kind of rhetoric is more like a sharp weapon to attack each other. As long as others want, you can become a copy of what you wear and don’t know how to dress.
What’s more interesting is that if a brand is still a niche, their cookie-cutter screen printing can still be interpreted as a fashion motto that represents avant-garde attitude, which is sought after and praised. Once it becomes a popular thing, former consumers will use disappointment and bad money for a second interpretation.
That’s about it
The logic behind the transformation of brand status is nothing more than a game after the division of fashion classes.
Although if there are no celebrities and media as a platform for a certain product, it is difficult for the public to distinguish what is a beautiful product, and it is difficult to accept the value of an emerging aesthetic, and even the forerunners will fall into the predicament that the world does not understand me. But when the niche taste becomes the popular choice, it also leaves them no chance to prove their extraordinary taste.
This kind of entanglement, according to the sociologist Simmel, is derived from the class attribute of fashion: from ancient times to the present, almost all fashion and aesthetics are spread from top to bottom. Once popularized, fashion groups will be shaped. They will also say goodbye to the old fashion, because only the new fashion can differentiate them from ordinary people.
Picture source: NYT
When it comes to chasing hot brands, whether it’s Essentials, all villains, or 90The popular trend of the whole people in wearing suits in the era. Behind these simple, rustic and even clumsy pursuits are people’s attempts to “become better”. For more people, this is a happy experience.
There is a difference in aesthetics, but happiness should not be distinguished by high or low. From this perspective, every ridicule and ridicule of the so-called “fashion underachievers” is tantamount to one fashion terrorism attack after another.
In the 1990s, there was a craze for all people in China to wear suits, and the latest wave of people has begun to chase outdoor casual fashion.
Times have changed, and many big shoulder pads blazers that were ridiculed as “farmers in suits” have now become vintage hotspots.
The information flow of the Internet every day always tries to tell you that high-end suits are more advanced than trendy brands, vibes are more fashionable than cityboys, and even tell you that if you don’t wear them well, you won’t find a good job, you won’t get true love… …
But in the final analysis, dressing is a big deal for trendy people, and it’s just a small thing for more ordinary people.
And when you try to use theory and insight to prove that your dressing taste is more correct, more pioneering, and more advanced than others, in an attempt to criticize others for how low they are chasing explosions——
Other people tilt their heads, and say “I don’t understand, just like it, just wear it, hehe” with a silly smile, which will make you speechless.