Some thoughts about what is cool and branding.

I read the article about the culture of cool and why we hate hipster and they remind me of some of my friends. I have one friend in China who is really cute and popular. We all think she is from a higher class because she always wears the newest fashions and always talks about beauty and makeups. Until one day we came to her home and found out that she’s actually from a home that is not that rich. Both her mom and dad are workers in a factory. And I started to think why she would act like that, wearing beautiful clothes and just chasing the popular so that everyone thinks she’s cool. But actually, there is no such thing as “cool”. She is like chasing a shadow on the wall, but the shadows keep changing because of the sun. Chasing popular and trying to be cool really is a hard job. You will spend a lot of time and money on this. For example, you bought dark red fashions last year because the popular color last year was dark red, then this year the popular color becomes yellow. So you buy a lot of yellow fashions and throw away some of the old clothes. But maybe after 5 years, dark red becomes popular again, and you buy a lot of dark red fashions again. You don’t even remember you actually had them before.

For me, there are two ways for people trying to be cool. One is trying to know the fashion, the trance and catch up with all the popular culture. The other is the opposite. You do whatever different from the others, and if you are lucky, people will think of you as “being cool” rather than “weird”. Most of my friends are the first type. But when I think of the second type which is trying to be “different”, they are not actually “different”. Fashion is a circle and you will not go over with it. You consider yourself “cool” and “special”, maybe a month later all the people start to imitate your wearing. So that’s the point of the video we watched in class.

As hipsters, at first I did not know what it is. So I searched on line and found a lot of pictures. I was surprised that I actually think they are normal. I don’t think they are wearing something different. Maybe not many people on street will wear things like that but I have seen a lot of people wearing like hipsters and posting their photos on line. In Japan this style is actually kind of popular. But when it comes to the behavior, I haven’t met any hipsters by far.

For branding, I have to say I’m a person who believes in brand, but only in other countries not in China. As we all know, a lot of things are made in China. Sometimes I’m frustrating because these made in China products are way better than the products actually selling in China. There are just a lot of problems with the market. People make fake stuffs and sell them to the citizens. A lot of problems appear. The food industry, for example, is a big problem. Even the milk powder has problems and a lot of babies died because of using the powder. And this company is the number one big milk powder company in China. So I don’t trust any of the companies in China right now. So if I think of American branding, I buy more branding clothes than non-branding clothes. For example, if you see clothes selling in Walmart, they are just bad. If you buy a good one, you can always wear them. This is actually saving a lot more money.