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English to Chinese: The Post-COVID-19 Rise of Conscious Luxury General field: Marketing Detailed field: Textiles / Clothing / Fashion
Source text - English The COVID-19 crisis in China has triggered a new reality where medical supplies are everyone’s current hard-to-get luxury items. Across the country, citizens are fighting over N95 masks, protective gear, alcohol-based hand sanitizers, tissues and toilet paper, and Fortune reports that masks “have become a symbol of protection.”
The Swedish breathing mask company Airinum, which is known for creative product designs that are popular with KOLs and celebrities, is out of stock on all its products. In fact, all N95 and surgical masks are sold out in greater China. This surge in demand has escalated prices, and the BBC reports that the price of a 20-mask pack on Taobao increased to $158 (1,100 yuan) on Jan. 21 from $25.60 (178 yuan) in November. These days, purchasing safety masks has replaced shopping sprees for items like Gucci sneakers and Balenciaga sweatshirts.
But, while the COVID-19 crisis has slashed profits for most brands, the luxury industry remains hopeful that Chinese consumers will return to previous levels of consumption after the outbreak ends. This assumption, however, is questionable.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Pauline Brown, a former chairwoman at LVMH North America, says that luxury shopping is “a psychological purchase,” and she rightly states that when “people are not feeling safe,” they aren’t eager to shop. Given the current paranoia, it’s unthinkable that Chinese consumers will return to their normal purchasing habits overnight.
There’s also the fact that many Chinese are discovering new realities. During the quarantine, different netizens have been discussing how they rediscovered life’s simpler pleasures and connected with their loved ones by escaping excessive consumption. It’s also worth noting that even prior to the crisis, elites were moving further away from conspicuous consumption and embracing a more balanced view of consumerism. Consequently, it’s to be expected that this new phenomenon would speed up that process.
But one thing is clear: The COVID-19 outbreak has made it difficult to establish persistent theories about consumption trends in a post-crisis China. Yet some patterns suggest luxury brands will continue to pay a high price.
Consumer purchasing behavior is changing in this crisis
Inflation and deflation both influence purchasing behaviors, so it’s not far-fetched to believe a health crisis could be an even more powerful regulator. A full decade after the Great Recession, CNBC reported that psychologically-scarred Americans were “still looking for a deal.” Moreover, a 2011 Euromonitor survey showed that 75 percent of American and British consumers had a strong interest in finding bargains, “with a majority of Brazilians, Germans, and French also keen on a good deal,” according to Reuters.
Ironically, while the recession changed the shopping patterns of American and European millennials for good, luxury brands had been mostly unprepared for those changes. “Luxury brands have made their own changes,” says CNBC. “Players like LVMH were caught off guard during the recession when flash sale websites like Gilt Groupe sprouted up, offering their excess inventory at a far steeper discount. Those brands had not previously had to focus on limiting their inventory or building an online presence.”
In China, thrifty spending habits were expected to rise anyway, thanks to novel inflation. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, consumer prices are up by 2.9 percent from a year earlier. Furthermore, the prices for certain foods such as apples have nearly doubled, while the price for pork, chicken, and lamb has gone up.
The “fearonomic effect”
According to a paper published in the BMJ Global Health by Sulzhan Bali, Kearsley A. Stewart, and Muhammad Ali Pate, “the fearonomic effect” during the Ebola epidemic impacted the private sector in Nigeria. As stated in their research, certain sectors such as health, aviation, and hospitality felt the biggest repercussions, but “no business was immune to Ebola’s fearonomic effects.” The economic impact was even stronger in other Ebola-infected countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) also analyzed this matter and assessed that the impact of the high-stressor epidemic for Sierra Leone was impressive, with tourist arrivals falling by 50 percent between 2013 to 2014. “To date, neither arrivals nor spending from international visitors has yet returned to their pre-epidemic peak, with inbound arrivals from Western markets hit hardest,” says a study by WTTC. In fact, four years after Sierra Leone was declared Ebola-free, the economy is still suffering, and the country still struggles to attract international tourists.
Similarly, after the Swine Flu (H1N1) pandemic of 2009/2010, different industries around the world reported economic challenges. An article published in Health Economics in 2013, shows that the Mexican tourism sector lost almost a million overseas tourists and registered losses of around $2.8 billion over a five-month period.
The Chinese market was already maturing before COVID-19 hit
Even before the COVID-19 crisis, there were various signs that the extravagant Chinese spending period was coming to an end. Considering that China had previously been a nation of savers that only more recently moved towards consumerism, this change is not surprising. Meanwhile, the country’s newest consumer generation, which has been slow to enter the market because it more closely mirrors Western values, represents another major blow to big spending.
Younger, educated, Chinese luxury buyers have a more holistic view of value. Their identities are no longer defined by logos and labels, and their enlightened understanding of the world brings with it an intensely conscious effort to connect with the world and find real purpose. Their anti-consumerist attitude has pushed health, culture, and experimentalism to the forefront.
Additionally, China’s ongoing social transformation has created a class structure defined by larger differences between rich and poor, and recent events show that the widening wealth gap is creating tensions in society. Therefore, parading one’s wealth ostentatiously is now less appropriate than before.
But there are some exceptions. Consumers who belong to the “aspirational class” and come from second- and third-tier cities will continue to chase brands and products that signal a base form of luxury. However, more sophisticated shoppers will find subtler ways to communicate their status and economic power. This change is in line with values promoted in Western societies where “responsible” luxury is the norm.
Translation - Chinese 在中国，新冠疫情使医疗用品成为了大众难以购得的奢侈品。全国人民都在争购N95口罩、防护服、含酒精的洗手液和卫生纸，Fortune报道称，口罩“已成为防护的象征”。
Sulzhan Bali、Kearsley A. Stewart和Muhammad Ali Pate在《英国医学杂志全球健康》（BMJ Global Health）上发表的论文中称，埃博拉疫情期间尼日利亚私营企业受到“恐惧经济效应”影响（The Fearonomic Effect）。他们在研究中指出，卫生、航空和酒店等行业受到的影响最大，但“没有企业能够免受埃博拉恐惧经济效应的影响。”利比里亚、塞拉利昂和几内亚等其它埃博拉疫情严重的国家经济受到的影响甚至更大。
Translation - English Cléo from 5 to 7 is about an attractive female singer overcoming her fear of death, from being the centre of attention to observing what's around her. The story is straightforward, yet breaking the traditional narrative structure of causality. The film is known for its handling of feminism and raises questions about how women are perceived in society.
Surprisingly, Agnès Varda took this film from the point of "reality" and maximized the camera's documentary function. One of the most striking aspects of the film is that the 90 minutes of the film corresponds precisely to the 5:00 to 6:30 hour period of Cléo's activity, which means that the time in- and outside the film is the same, strikingly challenging the illusion of time caused by montage. However, the editing divides the space in-film and then regularly cuts into the subjective perspective to create narrative fragments. This piece confronts the traditional concept of femininity and patriarchal ideology in mainstream films. It broke many classical film-making rules, such as the 180-degree rule, rules for the axis, movements and so on. It advocates capturing real-life directly with portable cameras, recording soundtracks on the spot, and rejecting any scripts and performances, which Varda herself was a strong supporter.
In Cléo from 5 to 7, Varda portrayed a female image gradually moving towards self-consciousness and awakening, presenting a beautiful female image that triggers visual pleasure. Still, this beautiful woman refuses to be "watched" and transforms herself into an active observer.
The film opens with a tarot card reading, which is the only coloured part, in sharp contrast to the leading character's black-and-white perspective for the rest of the film. This method means to show the audience that this is an objective, incredibly fatalistic narrative. The whole film is evenly divided into two chronological, contrasting parts. For the first 45 minutes of the film, Cléo sees herself through other people's eyes and determines who she is accordingly. In the beginning, the blond, well-dressed and graceful Cléo is anxiously waiting for the conclusion of a woman telling her fortune with cards. Cléo's anxiety comes from the possibility of cancer, which is a metaphor for the anxiety of most Parisians and all French people at that time. In the early 1960s, the trauma left to the French by World War II had not yet been cured, and the intractable Algerian War made many French suffer.
The camera follows this girl, all dolled up. Jump cut was used here to capture moments of her walking down the stairs, showing her schizophrenic state and disoriented panic at this time. Varda was confronting a beautiful woman and her emptiness on screen. The more attractive a woman is, the less confident she is, and the more she keeps looking in the mirror to prove her beauty. The insecurity, the eagerness to be recognized are in reality, products of a male-dominant society. The formation of her self-consciousness comes from Cléo's need for others to agree with her, though her true self is hollowed by the eyes of others (mostly men).
She looks at and judges herself through the many mirrors that surround her or use other people as her mirrors. Most people around her don't think much of her illness, even her lover thinks her act a mere cry for attention. They treat her like a doll or an unreasonable child, it drives her to rediscover herself to finally get out of her fancy clothes and walk out of the apartment. She takes off the wig (with a symbolic gesture) and changes into a simple black dress and sunglasses, finally being true to the girl she is again. When she walks out, Cléo's figure only accounts for a small part of the frame, the main body is replaced by the bustling crowd in the streets of Paris. She becomes a tourist, observing the crowd with freshly-found curiosity and trying to blend in. From here on, she is no longer the object of being gazed at; she becomes the subject of observation.
The other half of the film shows that she not only looks at herself but also at her surroundings; everyday life interests her, making her feel particularly novel. Her encounter with Dorothée, the model, and Raoul, the projectionist, produces a heartfelt exchange of words. Now Cléo is herself.
Cléo first sings the song "Sans Toi" in the apartment, then on the bridge in the park, she poses and hums it again. Singing twice is a sign of Cléo's growing self-awareness and self-confidence.
At this point, although Cléo is afraid that she may be about to die, her fear makes her genuinely come to life. Searching for the truth of life, the essence of self, Cléo finally turned from the woman being watched to the woman watching.
In the 48th minute of the film, she boldly breaks the aesthetic restrictions of "reality films". Cléo comes out of a bar at this time, the sound of the crowded street on the film track suddenly quiets down, leaving only Cléo's footsteps. The camera repeatedly cuts between Cléo's facial expression's objective view and the subjective view of her watching pedestrians on the side of the road. This sudden switch from the previous casualness presents urgency and tension. It guides the audience to quickly perceive the psychological state of the characters at this stage.
Meanwhile, the subjective view on Cléo neither lingers as long as before nor extends to other people or objects. It's a close shot of the character with a short period and a scene with passers-by approaching from afar. At this time, the audience can feel the fear in Cléo's heart. Then, Varda deepened this fear with a series of jump cuts that she's a master of. She all of a sudden added close-ups into Cléo's subjective shot: of the fortune-teller, of passers-by, of the young composer who composed for her but disagreed with her talent, of the clock that indicates time is running out, the lover who was indifferent to her, the handmaidens who control her life with superstitions, and the wigs that symbolizes her social identity. This group of forced close-ups can be understood as Cléo's inner flashes of thoughts, which strongly expresses her fear of cancer and disgust with the various social mechanisms that restrict her life, forming the film's psychological climax.
The documentary aesthetics and the disguise of psychological drama apart; in this film, we find that the remaining elements that constitute the theme and meaning are all of Varda's careful design. It's about a woman in the critical moment of life, breaking through all kinds of social repression, restraint, finding the true self, finding the integrity of life; and its heart of criticism pointing to various social mechanisms.
There are always contradictions/juxtapositions in Varda's films: between reality and fiction, subjectivity and objectivity, macro and micro. Varda said, "Just as pregnancy is a progress of contradictions (the impulse of life is magnificent, but completely contained by contradictions like nerves), all my films are based on this, on contradictions/juxtapositions." Varda always relates the natural elements of documentary to the films she structures, recording the objective reality and expressing her subjective world at the same time. Permeability between outside and inside, the continuous back-and-forth between the objective world and her subjective perception, are the distinctive styles of Vardar.
English to Chinese (Nanjing Normal University, verified) English to Chinese (University of Bath., verified) Chinese to English (Nanjing Normal University, verified) Chinese to English (University of Bath., verified) German to Chinese (Nanjing Normal University, verified)
German to English (Nanjing Normal University, verified)
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