What happened Burberry kicks off the new year with a community-focused and collaborative offline exhibition. From December 31 to January 9, the British brand is partnering with young Chinese talents to present the Burberry Generation one-year anniversary exhibition at TX Huaihai, a youth cultural hub in Shanghai. The Burberry Generation project, launched in November 2020 for the China market, spotlights the pioneering forces in various fields, including music, art, sports, and technology. Over the past year, the project has resulted in 11 installments featuring collaborations with over 30 content creators. These featured young talents have co-created a wide variety of artworks with Burberry, in the spirit of brand founder Thomas Burberry’s ethos of exploration and going beyond. Curated under three themes, namely “Reconstructed Garden,” “Variation,” and “My Balance,” the exhibition presents a variety of artistic forms including sculpture, photography, as well as virtual and digital art. At the Burberry Generation exhibition, apart from the showcase of creative pieces, there are interactive workshop sessions to engage the local community, as well as an immersive, large-scale CGI art installation in partnership with New York-based Chinese visual artist Shane Fu. The Jing Take The marriage between fashion and art is nothing novel for Chinese audiences, especially when it comes to the booming brand exhibitions in the post-pandemic era. However, Burberry has been committed to establishing “Burberry Generation” as a platform supporting local up-and-coming talents. The project not only displays these young faces’ works and helps them gain growing exposure, but more importantly, builds a community where they can draw inspiration from each other. This opportunity allows them to maintain their nature as free, drifting, and marginalized while encouraging these creative minds to break boundaries, which aligns with Burberry’s spirit of “going beyond.” Discerning luxury players like Burberry have realized that China’s younger generations are scouting beyond sleek campaigns to find inspiration and knowledge in branded content. Though many brands have been trying to leverage the art hype in China, only those with novelty, consistency and authenticity will maintain their relevance to target audiences. The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media.
