Kapital - hippies, Japanese farmers and post-apocalypse survivors

[RedVelvetWounds]

*sees IG backlash against racist Dolce & Gabbana campaign*

me: Yeah yeah! Get em! **** em up!

*sees IG backlash against Free Tibet message and Chinese people say "bomb Hirmoshima"*

me: oh no

It truly is a bit sketchy how much I care about certain issues and how much I don't care about others. Weird how the mind works.

 

[KaleidoscopicK]

Looking at just the first part of the comments it seems as though they are mostly made up by angry Chinese people. Does this mean that I will be able to pick up second hand Kapital pieces at great prices soon enough? ???

I assume you were being playful in your response, but unless you learn how to navigate Chinese social media platforms and social media websites, I doubt it.

This makes me sad, my mother's native tongue is Cantonese and once the Communists took over they made Mandarin the national language. My mother immigrated to the US because of them, her grandfather was wealthy and the stories of the torture they did to him ...

Hong Kong is one of the only places that still speaks Cantonese (only 5% of China speaks it now) and if China takes over HK I wouldn't be surprised if the language was completely wiped out. What was the national security law they passed?

As a Cantonese person, the realization of this really hit me a couple of years ago, and I feel a little sad when I hear about this on the news.

When I was in middle school and learned about how different languages have died over the ages, I never imagined that my language could be one of them - it always felt about 50/50 for me.

Times have changed.

 

[Spehsmonkey]

I feel like I’ve been on the side of “Kapital hasn’t gotten so boring” in this thread. But, aside from the idiotic and disrespectful Free Tibet posturing, it’s such a bummer to see Kapital make suuuuch cheap aesthetic choices. I’m referring in particular to the whole 90s-2000s skater rip-off thing they’re doing, which feels like the primary lazy nostalgia aesthetic of our day (right next to cowboy cosplay). Funny how everyone is dressing up as what one might have back then called posers…

Old Kapital obviously made references to past aesthetics too, particularly with all the cowboy references. But that predated any stupid cowboy trend and was far from an attempt to ride a generic cowboy cosplay resurgence.

I’ve posted elsewhere before about how it feels like everything that becomes a trend now is a lazy reference to a past era. Obviously every generation and subculture has done some referencing of some past thing and mixing something new out of it—let’s call it the equivalent of salt in cooking, since everyone uses it. But it seems our trends are salt-forward, like we build the dish around the salt instead of the other way around.

Also, it seems then that the aesthetic is the subculture, and the center is hollow, whereas skaters or cowboys or 90s hip hop heads or whoever the hell we all want to copy now were actually people who dressed that way to signal that they were part of a community doing something other than just playing dress up (again, thinking all salt, no substance). Not making an authenticity claim here, in case that wasn’t clear. Rather, it’s about how boring and stupid it seems to have these fleeting aesthetic trends searching for the next hit of nostalgia without being tied to anything meaningfully interesting of their own even within the realm of fashion and aesthetics.

 

[hoodog]

I assume you were being playful in your response, but unless you learn how to navigate Chinese social media platforms and social media websites, I doubt it.

Sorry bud but I think I lost you there. Could you please elaborate?

 

[dieworkwear]

I feel like I’ve been on the side of “Kapital hasn’t gotten so boring” in this thread. But, aside from the idiotic and disrespectful Free Tibet posturing, it’s such a bummer to see Kapital make suuuuch cheap aesthetic choices. I’m referring in particular to the whole 90s-2000s skater rip-off thing they’re doing, which feels like the primary lazy nostalgia aesthetic of our day (right next to cowboy cosplay). Funny how everyone is dressing up as what one might have back then called posers…

Old Kapital obviously made references to past aesthetics too, particularly with all the cowboy references. But that predated any stupid cowboy trend and was far from an attempt to ride a generic cowboy cosplay resurgence.

I’ve posted elsewhere before about how it feels like everything that becomes a trend now is a lazy reference to a past era. Obviously every generation and subculture has done some referencing of some past thing and mixing something new out of it—let’s call it the equivalent of salt in cooking, since everyone uses it. But it seems our trends are salt-forward, like we build the dish around the salt instead of the other way around.

Also, it seems then that the aesthetic is the subculture, and the center is hollow, whereas skaters or cowboys or 90s hip hop heads or whoever the hell we all want to copy now were actually people who dressed that way to signal that they were part of a community doing something other than just playing dress up (again, thinking all salt, no substance). Not making an authenticity claim here, in case that wasn’t clear. Rather, it’s about how boring and stupid it seems to have these fleeting aesthetic trends searching for the next hit of nostalgia without being tied to anything meaningfully interesting of their own even within the realm of fashion and aesthetics.

Aren't we all just in the fashion community and the fashion community has always been primarily about aesthetics? What was the "core" of avant-garde Japanese designers in the 90s or Margiela in the early 2000s? Or Armani of the 80s?

 

[Spehsmonkey]

Aren't we all just in the fashion community and the fashion community has always been primarily about aesthetics? What was the "core" of avant-garde Japanese designers in the 90s or Margiela in the early 2000s? Or Armani of the 80s?

You missed the salt point I was trying to make, perhaps because the above was all so poorly written. My point is that it’s (1) a lazy rip-off of a subculture that wasn’t all about just looking a part, and (2) as a result not really doing anything aesthetically interesting in its own right (which you might consider the “core” or substance of fashion). When you have both together, it all rings a bit hollow for me.

 

[dieworkwear]

You missed the salt point I was trying to make, perhaps because the above was all so poorly written. My point is that it’s (1) a lazy rip-off of a subculture that wasn’t all about just looking a part, and (2) as a result not really doing anything aesthetically interesting in its own right (which you might consider the “core” or substance of fashion). When you have both together, it all rings a bit hollow for me.

I agree dress is increasingly disconnected from other parts of one's lifestyle. That said, streetwear is one of the few areas of fashion where the clothes are still connected to some other part of culture (e.g. music).

Agree that fashion is increasingly backwards looking, rather than forward looking. And agree that a lot of Kapital design feels streetwearish and boring (at least to me). I'm not that bothered by the idea of cosplay. I think other people on this board are much more invested in the idea of connecting your clothes to some deeper meaning, whereas I'm fine with wearing things just because they look cool.

 

[Spehsmonkey]

I agree dress is increasingly disconnected from other parts of one's lifestyle. That said, streetwear is one of the few areas of fashion where the clothes are still connected to some other part of culture (e.g. music).

Agree that fashion is increasingly backwards looking, rather than forward looking. And agree that a lot of Kapital design feels streetwearish and boring (at least to me). I'm not that bothered by the idea of cosplay. I think other people on this board are much more invested in the idea of connecting your clothes to some deeper meaning, whereas I'm fine with wearing things just because they look cool.

I’m with you on the last point too actually. It’s just in the context of all of the above that I’m using cosplay as a shorthand, in an attempt to be quippy that just turns out to be lazy and confusing perhaps.

 

[hoodog]

I love how this thread has suddenly come alive. Used to be me, @peachfuzzmcgee and a few other guys that maybe posted every other week or so and then @BandannAlmanac would come by and school us, be bitter and talk trash about Kap. But now - wow!

Oh, and just wear stuff you think looks good and makes you feel good. Don't attach any normative meaning to it. Overthinking this stuff takes the whole fun out of it.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

I'm a Kapital fan and I was involved in in Free Tibet campaigns way back when but Kapital's particular approach to this has been stoopid with two o's. As you'd expect really. Kiro Hirata has always been more than a bit of a dick, but we put up with him so long he was producing cool threads. As soon as he slips a bit and Kapital's game starts to get a bit tired, his dickishness starts to be more obvious and indeed perhaps he starts to fall back on it more to create a bit of controversy to mask the fact that the label isn't as interesting as it used to be.

 

[Symphony]

I love how this thread has suddenly come alive. Used to be me, @peachfuzzmcgee and a few other guys that maybe posted every other week or so and then @BandannAlmanac would come by and school us, be bitter and talk trash about Kap. But now - wow!

Oh, and just wear stuff you think looks good and makes you feel good. Don't attach any normative meaning to it. Overthinking this stuff takes the whole fun out of it.

kapital def is super interesting

 

[dieworkwear]

shoot your shot homie

 

[Symphony]

shoot your shot homie


View attachment 1643818

Wait, if there’s no market value then he should hand that **** to me for free then

 

[Timbaland]

Coming from a US perspective, I think it’s particularly difficult to have a stance on China that hasn’t been affected by US anti-China (or anti “communist”) propaganda that’s been fed to us for years and years. In media, China is often painted as the ideological other to the US and is used as a boogeyman looming on the horizon ready to “beat” the US at whatever struggle or race we’re engaged in. A lot of dialogue then just moves into Sinophobia (not saying that is what’s happening here).

The US will criticize or declare outrage at other countries while committing those same actions themselves (or while having played a direct hand in destabilizing that country through meddling in their politics, enacting sanctions, etc.). If another country dares to imagine a form of government that is incongruent with US capitalism (e.g. any form of socialism in the global south), we’re quick to attempt to put an end to it.

This really isn’t a note on the Free Tibet stuff either, but I thought I’d just throw my two cents in.

Maybe it's a matter of where we live but I never really got the feeling of anti-China sentiment or propaganda in the US. I got that feeling about Russia with our history and the Cold War however.

Case in point look at the last administration (whose name I shall not speak). The president tried to "win" the trade agreements and heavily tariff their products and everyone called him an idiot. If there was anti-Chinese sentiment, wouldn't people be in favor of that? Or is it a case of people disagreeing with everything Trump said or did like calling him racist for wanting flights from China restricted when COVID was in it's early stages.

Nite: I'm not a Trump supporter I hate all politicians, they always pick their party politics over doing what is right. And my feelings about China are probably influenced by what happened with my mother and her family as stated in a previous post.

I do agree with your points in the 2nd paragraph about the US being hypocritical.

 

[dieworkwear]

Wait, if there’s no market value then he should hand that **** to me for free then

The plan? Convince Kiro to make a Free Tibet campaign that will piss of Chinese nationalists and Tibetan rights activists, thus plummeting the price of Kapital so we can buy smiley socks