TREND BITES
Party in a Box
The Lucky Voice Party Box offers two mics and a huge database of songs to choose from on a subscription basis. It costs £50 but used just once, it will save you twice that on drinks and booth hire. All you need now is neighbors who won’t call the police!
"Yama-Girls" Head for the Hills
French outdoor apparel company Aigle has recently embraced the Japanese Yama-Girl (mountain girl) fashion and lifestyle trend and created an entire “Love Trek” line for these nature-bound ladies together with designer Yuri Yosumi.
Surrealist City Lodge
Berlin's coolest art hotel Propeller Island draws adventurous travelers and creative locals, providing its guests with 33 distinctly designed luxurious rooms to choose from. Imaginative decor provides an experience like no other, with one room covered in kaleidoscopic mirrors and another with slanted floors and a floating bed.
Supper Clubbing
Supper Clubs have taken root in New York because of culinary visionaries like brother-sister team, Kari and Tyler Morris of Morris Kitchen. Kari and Tyler host a monthly Supper Club, producing thoughtful meals from their apartment in Brooklyn. For forty dollars, one can dine on a five-course feast with cocktails and wine pairings while getting to know the rest of the carefully selected guests.
CULTUREBLOG ~
February 2011 / Style
How Do Brands Create Value Post-Recession?
• A social experience. Hosted Supper Clubs in NY allow strangers to connect and form relationships over dinner; in London, the Lucky Voice Party Box offers access to a database of 8,000 karaoke songs along with a microphone, for partying at home.
• Functional high style. In Tokyo, the "Yama (Mountain)-girl" movement has inspired new styles in outdoor wear; on the Paris Metro, inexpensive WESC headphones in trendy colors are 'du jour'.
• A unique spin on the conventional. Berlin’s Propeller Island hotel has 33 uniquely funky rooms; while the feel of an old style Hong Kong market is recreated in DNA Galleria.
• A sense of craft or "hand". Yellow Owl Workshop offers DIY resources 'for low budgets and high expectations.'
• A feeling of control. The Indian Government has finally allowed mobile phone number portability, opening up our Delhi blogger's choice of carrier; while our LA blogger is using Edmund’s "True Cost to Own" calculator to avoid impulse spending.
The last two years have been tough for brands, and not only in pricing terms: much has been made recently of how consumers are seizing control of the brand agenda, by means of social platforms like Twitter. As ethnographers, our objective is to explore the human universals underlying brand engagement. The consumer’s current quest for more personal value is an opportunity for brands to re-engage their consumers and re-assert their value on a deeper level beyond the merely monetary.
CityReport:
DNA Galleria is a new retail mall concept that has an old style Hong Kong market feel with a modern twist. DNA opened in March of 2010 on Chatham Road, in the Tsim Sha Tsui area of Kowloon. The mall is primarily aimed at the 18-35 year old local and the mainland tourist market.
The Galleria is spread out over three levels with a total floor space of over 15,000 square feet, offering a range of affordable women’s wear, menswear, accessories, handbags, shoes, giftware, lifestyle goods and sportswear.
The mall hosts over 130 individual shops, boasting more than 250 brands, with many stores being local brands making their first foray into retail or small distributors selling direct to the public.
In this mall format, consumers are presented with the exciting shopping experience Hong Kong is famous for, yet in an organized manner catering to all their style needs. The developer, Park Group, has also produced the successful premium Knightsbridge shopping centers in Singapore and Wuxi China, and cited Tokyo’s Shibuya 109 as a key inspiration for DNA.
The average salary for young Hong Kongers is considerably less than in other developed countries, being approximately 8,000-15,000 HKD (1,000-1,900 USD). DNA aims to meet the needs of this demographic. The value of DNA lays in the average price point of goods in this mall, ranging up to approximately 1,500 HKD (190 USD) for apparel/fashion items. However, you can generally expect to get pieces for much less, making temptation hard to resist!
Both the indie design scene and the alternative shopping scene are slowly but surely taking hold in Hong Kong. In terms of price point accessibility and willingness to support local designs, young Hong Kongers have been very responsive to this new retail concept.
In reaction to the success of DNA, the developers are now looking to open further branches of the galleria in Hong Kong and on Mainland China as well.
Where can style and fashion value be found in Hong Kong? DNA Galleria.
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- “Yama-Gaaro” (mountain girl) and “Power-spot” (spiritual place) are new trends seeing young women or Yama-Girls flocking to the mountains for health, fitness and even spiritual purposes....
- Design, quality, durability, and performance remain the primary criteria most look for in a new car. That said, with added-value perks such as voice-recognition systems...
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- Freelancers are time-rich and cash-poor at this time of year, so while waiting for the phone to ring I need my diversions to pay for themselves...
- For this video blog, I visited Valentina who toured me around Propeller Island, a unique Berlin art hotel...
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