The Outside View: Cultural Hybridity and the Future of Fashion
Rapper Pharrell Williams’ arrival as creative director of Louis Vuitton men’s completes the transformation of luxury fashion into a cultural industry for some.
Others see it as a victory of celebrity marketing over creativity.
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In truth, it is a blending of the two, a tacit acknowledgment that it is hybridity driving luxury and fashion forward.
Hybridity is the unexpected clash between dissonant worlds, cultures and imaginations as well as the reconciliation of tradition and innovation. And that is what allows the industry to remain resolutely creative, alive and anchored in today’s changing and culturally mosaic world.
Global brands have no choice but adapt to our less and less Western-centric world. Demographically, Chinese and Indian people already represent 40 percent of the world population, white people will become a minority in the United States in 2045 and the world is growing more racially diverse as a result of increasing migration. Non-white ethnic groups will account for about 25-30 percent of the luxury spend in the U.S. market by 2025, versus 20 percent in 2019, according to a Bain & Co. report.
Western brands must anticipate the rising national pride and cultural confidence of developing countries like India, Brazil and South Korea. In China, national consumption is increasing and a brand’s Western origin is not a key driver anymore. Emerging Chinese fashion designers such as Chen Peng or Feng Chen Wang are acclaimed by the younger generations for their capacity to blend Western fashion with traditional Chinese inspirations. And young Chinese luxury consumers expect more collaborations between the two worlds.
In the U.S., minority consumption is on the rise and Black consumers show a strong preference for Black-owned fashion brands and brands that culturally resonate with Black culture.
Global brands must face the growing racial sensitivity in the U.S., following the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the political controversies about the claim of African cultural heritage assets stolen by European colonizers (referred to in Marvel’s “Black Panther” movies).
Our world is becoming a cultural hybrid and young people thirst for fresh alternatives.
More than 900 million tourists traveled internationally last year, with 8 million students studying abroad.
“Squid Game” became a phenomenon.
K-pop has moved into the U.S. mainstream and outperforms all around the world, from Indonesia and India to the Middle East and Mexico.
Bad Bunny, who hails from Puerto Rico and sings in Spanish, is the most streamed artist on Spotify globally.
International brands must now address this cultural shift to stay relevant with the hybrid Gen Z — the most ethnically and culturally diverse generation of all time.
In the past, fashion designers were keen on getting creative inspirations from foreign cultures. Cultural hybridity is part of fashion’s DNA and, in that sense, the industry was a pioneer.
The work of designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Jean Paul Gaultier has shown a fascination with “exotic” cultures — mostly Africa, Japan, China, India.
More brands are now metabolizing foreign inspiration into their design or localizing their communication, although some initiatives may seem constrained by the growing injunction made to brands to embrace diversity and inclusion, or by the desire to flatter local national pride, especially in China.
Chanel recently brought its Métiers d’Art show to Dakar, Senegal, in tandem with local embroiderers and craftspeople, after having conducted the very first fashion show in sub-Saharan Africa.
Spanish brand Loewe launched a new bag collection inspired by antique Chinese monochrome glaze ceramic, in collaboration with a Chinese local artist. They hosted an exhibition at the ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, which flattered the China pride and successfully released the collection globally.
In 2021, Chinese artist Xu Bing — famous for his calligraphy blending Chinese characters and Latin alphabet — designed the label of Château Mouton Rothschild, illustrated each year since 1945 by Western master artists that have included Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Salvador Dalí. Xu Bing’s iconic Square Word Calligraphy, blending complexity and concision, tradition and modernity, resonated admirably with the wine itself.
Yet, hybridizing cultures is not always an easy task.
In recent years, the debate on foreign cultures and fashion has sharpened over the difference between appreciation and appropriation. Last year, Dior was accused of “culturally appropriating” the Chinese horse-face skirt “Mamianqun,” popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties, described by Dior as an “iconic Dior silhouette.” Besides the backlash on Chinese social media Weibo, several protests of Chinese students from the diaspora surged in Paris and other European cities. Dior did not respond to the controversy, but pulled off the skirt from online sales.
Brands obviously have to pay tribute to their multicultural inspirations. And beyond that, they should conceive of cultural hybridity as the confrontation of their own creative world with multicultural inspirations that they need to metabolize in order to give birth to something resolutely new.
Would Lautréamont’s famous quote, adopted by the French Surrealist poets — “As beautiful as the chance meeting, on a dissecting table, of a sewing-machine and an umbrella” — apply to Pharrell William’s 2011 Timberland black boots featuring the double C Chanel logo?
Collaborations with artists, celebrities, influencers, streetwear labels and between luxury fashion brands themselves have become the main expression of hybridity in fashion luxury.
The first major cross-culture fashion collaboration can be traced back to the lobster dress designed by Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli and Spanish artist Salvador Dalí in 1937, now housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Since 2010, collaborations have become a steady trend, but is the creativity always there?
Last year, they were at a fever pitch with Gucci and Adidas, Balmain and Barbie and Burberry and Minecraft. Balenciaga’s platform-sole Crocs and “The Simpsons” sweatshirts and leather Ikea bags epitomize this attempt to condemn fashion elitism and break the boundaries between luxury and the profane world.
The blend of hip-hop with luxury — predominant among collaborations — has become an established concept.
And if many collaborations are still driving sales, we also observe a collaboration fatigue among Millennial and Gen Z consumers, who expect authentic creativity from luxury and fashion brands. Interestingly, hip-hop culture found a new breath in China, where the rebellious messages from Black people’s anger over racism and poverty were transposed into celebrations of free expression, a highly emotional topic among young Chinese people. Last year, the collaboration between whiskey brand Chivas and Lisa, the Thai rapper member of the South Korean girl group Blackpink, was praised locally as she perfectly blends Western values of individual freedom, Confucian values of self-improvement and the “positive energy” of Chinese ideology.
In order to stay connected with the young generations, fashion and luxury brands should broaden their cultural horizon: explore untapped subcultures, geographies, time periods, artistic inspirations and savoir-faire — all around the world.
I believe cultural hybridity is the future of luxury and fashion — the condition to keep the industry’s imagination and freedom alive.
Laurence Lim is founder and managing director of the Cherry Blossoms Intercultural Branding marketing agency, which is based in Hong Kong and New York City.
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