Stuart Hall’s work on representation is utilized in conjunction with Anderson's imagined communities to argue for the importance of distinguishing one’s community from the other, both culturally and within brand identity. As both believe that community is “distinguished by the space they are imagined in,” I seek to understand how brand identity helps customers find their chosen community and why it is crucial for emerging Chinese brands to have a clear representation of their identity and ethos.79 For both Bobblehaus and YanYan Knits, their Chinese heritage and identities are visible in more subtle ways. Emphasizing cultural identity, Hall argues that “all identities must significantly mark their similarity to and difference from something else,” strengthening community ties while differentiating self from others.80 Hall too highlights the notion that nations are formed, thereby becoming a symbolic community of representation and thus forming national identities.81 Hall also argues that identity is under constant transformation and is both in the process of “being” and “becoming.”82 Identity is thus constantly shifting and broadening, and new emerging brands must adapt to the time and place they exist in to reflect the multicultural identities that exist in society today while retaining their chosen ethos. Now, we are more and more eager for representation of ourselves in every sense, and clothing embodies part of that identity.83 With an increasing number of multicultural individuals, our identities are evermore fluid and nonbinary, emphasizing the need for brands and communities that reflect that understanding. Therefore, different emerging designers present themselves more specifically to their
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Hall, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: 1997, 80. Hall, Stuart, and Henry Louis Gates. “Nations and Diasporas.” The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation, edited by Kobena Mercer. Harvard University Press, 2017, 128. 81 Hall, The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation, 137. 82 Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, 70. 83 Wu, Juanjuan, Yue Hu, Lei Xu, and Marilyn R. DeLong, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 79. 80
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