Signals

Venezuela – Founded by 29-year-old fashion designer Alejandro Garcés, Garzez is a streetwear brand that looks to promote its country of origin. For his latest campaign Garcés has created garments reminiscent of tuki culture – a dance style native to Caracas, where dancers commonly wear colourful clothing and foreign logos.

In line with streetwear brand Vetements, which often parodies well-known labels, the collection includes reworkings of brand logos from Nike, Fila and Marlboro to make a statement about the current state of Venezuelan politics and the country’s faltering economy. Marlboro, for example, has been re-imagined as Malandro, meaning ‘a young criminal, punk or thug’ in Venezuelan culture.

‘My inspiration is humanity. I love all forms of cultural manifestation and I always look at them from the outside, with an anthropological point of view,’ Garcés told i-D.

First explored by LS:N Global in our Emerging Youth: Mexico market, designers across Latin America are using their garments as a platform to publicise the problems in their home country as well as taking a stand against the influence of global brands.

New York – Renowned chef JJ Johnson is relaunching Henry at Life Hotel with a new menu that focuses on African, Caribbean, Southern American and Asian cuisine. Inspired by his travels across Africa and Asia, as well as his own Afro-Puerto Rican heritage, dishes include the Afropot – featuring king crab, corn cobs, clams, mussels ­– and tamarind jerk barbecue chicken with soy-braised collard greens and plantain purée.

‘Regardless of where I’ve travelled in the world over the past five years, I’ve always walked away with a good culinary perspective of food through the West African lens,’ says Johnson. ‘Most people don’t really know what I’m talking about because they haven’t been to West Africa. So, I’m explaining that at Henry.’

Henry at Life Hotel joins a growing number of restaurants exploring the complexities of West African cuisine, which has until now, been largely overlooked by Western consumers.

Consumers are spending considerably more time in WhatsApp than in Facebook, according to data from AppTopia. While WeChat is ranked second in terms of the apps people spend most time on, the figures fail to take into account data from all of China’s third-party Android stores.

The figures do, however, demonstrate the pervasive potential of dark social marketing. In 2016, adidas experimented with this by introducing its own network of dark social influencers, known as Tango Squads. ‘It’s clear that WhatsApp is the global messaging app of choice,’ AppTopia spokesperson Adam Blacker told Forbes. ‘Apps having to do with communication take up most of our time spent on our mobile apps.’

While social media platforms such as Instagram are introducing measures to curb time spent online, WhatsApp has so far made no indication that it is working to cut down the amount of time users spend in the app. Read our Opinion piece for more on what technology brands can do to combat phone addiction.