Thoughts?
>>18624317
>>18624317It's one of those brands that is fun to look at but pretty much unwearable.
It's like the key example I constantly bring up when talking about world building & storytelling in fashion gone wrong. Acronym's "The Cut" featured here:https://vimeo.com/159828594Is still the high mark for the genre. Fashion at the end of the day is not a video game. If you're going to mess around with story telling and world building it has to be done in a very delicate manner. The Cut is one of the most superb examples of this. It also doesn't take itself particularly seriously which is absolutely key for Techwear. Acronym understands their references and inspiration veer deep into the territory of geekdom & pastiche. By virtue of that you can't do the serious sort of posturing Hamcus does. It just doesn't work. That's for serious clothes-makers like Yohji Yamamoto. When you are making pseudo video game cosplay clothing you have to be lighthearted about it. Hamcus instead has their own public wiki for their internal lore and world building. They drop these huge write ups where they've created all these stories, locations, and factions. They talk about it on social media. They take the whole thing dead serious. It's very literally like world building for a video game and it just comes off as so incredibly convoluted, insipid, and cringe when it's for a fashion company. I don't even think die hard fans of the brand are interested in this stuff. I tried to read some of it and it's not only not translated well (If you're a Chinese brand without strong in-house translators why would you attempt something like this?); but I think even if it was translated properly, it's simple minded schlock not dissimilar to something an inexperienced fourth rate Dungeon Master would cook up for one of their first campaigns.
>>18624355If you're going to take something like this so seriously and put so much effort into it you almost need a dedicated sci-fi writer, that's the only way I could possibly see it working out. Even then it's a big fucking stretch because it's all so stupid. At the end of the day they're selling clothes. They're not selling a video game or even something like an ARG. Most people would at least give the company props for trying something different but I would never go that far. It's a doomed concept that should have been axed before it ever made it this far. Like I said at the start of this post, something like "The Cut" is perfect. That's how you do fun sci-fi story telling and world building for a fashion brand. I'm sure Hamcus has studied the fuck out of Acronym so I find it incredulous that they didn't figure this out on their own. Maybe they felt forced that they had to do something totally bold and different but to me it just falls completely flat and makes me never want to take the clothes seriously.Which is a shame because the clothes themselves are obviously really intricate. I don't know how the quality is but it's obvious the founder has close ties to a really great factory in China that's willing to make really weird, crazy, intricate stuff which is rare. But the concept for the brand is so stupid and bad it ruins everything. They genuinely would have been better off just doing the absolute bare minimum (lookbooks, an editorial or two per season, that's it) like plenty of other brands have.
>>18624359Another company that comes to mind with this conversation is the now defunct Guerrilla-Group. In case you couldn't tell I obviously hate this type of shit and feel Acronym is one of the only companies to genuinely stick the landing. But if you HAVE to do this kind of intricate video-gamey thing, GG was a company that handled it really well. They really understood how crucial brevity is with this type of thing. They would do this sort of weird sci-fi video game type story telling and world building as well but it was always highly edited. They would just give you a taste and not push it much further than that. They would never drop a whole fucking google doc with descriptions of every imaginary faction they've dreamt up for their brand.In fact the absolute best way to do this type of thing would be to create all the lore, do the world building, design the clothes, then reveal NONE OF IT. You keep all of that to yourself. The clothes obviously have this sort of narrative woven into them, maybe they have graphics or details that allude to the idea that they're part of some bigger world or story. But you don't actually publish your "lore bible" and share it with the world and expect anything to happen besides for it to be mocked and for your clothes to be viewed worse for it. The Japanese brand Chloma is an excellent example of this. I think internally they have undoubtedly created an entire world, story, and cast of characters that are behind their clothes. But do they tell you about any of it? Absolutely not. They understand how to execute something like this flawlessly. Their clothes look like they came straight out of a video game but they would never outright say some shit like "This jacket is worn by the dark faction in the mystical realm of tir na nog, you can read about their founding and order on this page of our site". That's Hamcus. That's literally the type of stuff they do and it just doesn't fucking work for a clothing brand at all.
>>18624361>In fact the absolute best way to do this type of thing would be to create all the lore, do the world building, design the clothes, then reveal NONE OF IT. You keep all of that to yourself. The clothes obviously have this sort of narrative woven into them, maybe they have graphics or details that allude to the idea that they're part of some bigger world or story. But you don't actually publish your "lore bible" and share it with the world and expect anything to happen besides for it to be mocked and for your clothes to be viewed worse for it.>The Japanese brand Chloma is an excellent example of this. I think internally they have undoubtedly created an entire world, story, and cast of characters that are behind their clothes. But do they tell you about any of it? Absolutely not. They understand how to execute something like this flawlessly. Their clothes look like they came straight out of a video game but they would never outright say some shit like "This jacket is worn by the dark faction in the mystical realm of tir na nog, you can read about their founding and order on this page of our site".The Dark Souls of fashion...
>>18624317video rel is kinda cool. can't be bothered to read any of the lore though. also a lot of the pictures on the official website are edited/colour corrected out the ass which is annoying when trying to imagine what the clothes will look like in real life so i have to look at other websites
>>18624355>>18624359>>18624361holy fucking nuclear autism
>>18624387you're on 4chan, get over it plebbitor
>>18624317>>18624318Look like post apocalyptic twink clothes
>>18624317>>18624318Cosplay
>>18624355>>18624359>>18624361nice
cool stuff but it its like techwear times two, it will be very hard to wear any of this without people asking who you're dressed up as.
>>18624355Acronym's only story telling is about how Errolson invested in a dildo company with his skank lesbian gf and it went bust. The only people buying that shit the last few years are hardcore Asian incels who see Errolson as one of them who made it. Almost all the guys who used to rep Acronym 5 years ago dropped the brand (pic very related) and moved on to other Asian owned brands like Visvim and other overcompensating crap to try and flex with. Hamcus is polyester Chinese junk but actually better made than Acronym, that is how poorly made and untested Acronym is, because Errolson doesn't need to to sell to his paypigs.
