Opinion – Bottega Veneta campaign is empty culture commercialisation

But so-called ‘loud moves’ in the marketing arena aren’t always positive. One comment on a post by Business of Fashion stated: ‘Bottega Veneta is trying so hard…What’s the link between BV [Bottega Veneta] and China apart from economic interests?’.

Bottega’s digital installation, which swept a mile long stretch of the Great Wall, was part of their pledge to donate funds to the site’s restoration. But many are still questioning the motivation behind the campaign.

Jessica Kosasih has asked the question many have pondered in the wake of Bottega’s stunt: Is the commercialisation of culture necessarily a bad thing?

Wrapping a heritage site in branding is certainly in poor taste, reducing the tangible lives and roots of a community to retail profit.

But Kosasih argues that culture is constantly quantified by monetary value, with communities across the globe playing into a fantasy held by tourists.

In Bali Indonesia, Kosasih describes ‘cultural dances’ that ‘are mainly held to entertain tourists and repeated without observing’ the traditions that used to be practiced. ‘This routinisation in order to earn more profits has resulted in a lack of real cultural significance for the locals who are performing’.

The concept of ‘authenticity’ that surrounds cultural practice and heritage is complex.

And while Bottega’s ploy to draw in South East Asian customers is certainly creative, the campaign serves as a reminder that landmarks, traditions, and even cultures themselves are being co-opted by the elite private sector.

Holidays like Lunar New Year – longstanding and deep seated in Chinese culture – are perhaps destined to no other fate.

Year upon year, practices that were introduced to bring people together, to provide light in dark times, or to celebrate and preserve cultures, have been transformed into money-making machines in an ever more globalised world.

Bottega claims their intention was to ‘honour’ the Chinese landmark with the digital installation. But the abandonment of red implies consistent branding was a bigger priority than honouring cultural tradition.

As Diet Prada said, ’luxury continue[s] to embrace the holidays and tradition of their worldwide clientele, [but] they’d do well to remember to research them a little more heavily.’

Wrapping Lunar New Year in bright green branding is not only lazy, it extends a colonial narrative that the West has the power to bring commerce and wealth; that the rest of the world should be grateful for the recognition and support of these capitalist giants.

Is it too much to ask that cultural traditions are the one thing left untouched by the wandering hand of consumerism? Or is it just a reality that the world’s financial winners will always call the shots on what’s sacred and what’s sellable?