These two Hong Kong people specialize in recording "meaningless" English slogans on clothes.

Almost everyone can find a piece of clothing with an English slogan in the closet. But in fact, not all slogans have practical meaning.

According to DAZED, on the social platform Instagram, there is an account @shanzhai_lyric that records the "meaningless" English slogan on clothes.

The two founders of the account, Ming Lin and Alexandra Tatarsky, are from Hong Kong. According to them, most of the clothing images with English slogans published in this account are from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan and Beijing. The market, and some from New York, Moscow and Vietnam.

Originally, this kind of clothing with English slogans is not unusual in the fashion world.

As early as the 1960s, Mr. Freedom, a boutique on King's Road in Hong Kong, began printing and selling T-shirts with Disney slogans.

Subsequently, this trend went further and further in the fashion world with the advent of designers Vivienne Westwood and Katharine Hamnett.

In 1970, designer Vivienne Westwood co-founded a punk fashion house, SEX, with Malcolm McLare, the partner of the then pistol band. Many of the DIY Tshirts they sold in the store wrote slogans such as "Destroy" and "God Save the Queen", which were warmly welcomed by rebellious youths who were tired of a conservative political atmosphere.

Katharine Hamnett has further popularized this trend of using clothing slogans to express ideas. When she met with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, she wore a slogan T-shirt with 58% DON'T WANT PERSHING (58% don't want a nuclear bomb), directly expressing her consent to the British government. The United States protested the establishment of Pershing II missiles in Europe.

To this day, the slogan on clothes is still used by many designers to express their political or social views.

However, in the content posted by @shanzhai_lyric, many slogans are unbelievable.

For example, a vest with "THE LAST LOVE SONG ON THIS LITTLE PLANET" or a short sleeve with the words "stand alone". In addition, the account has also published some slogans on clothing that have English spelling and grammar errors, such as "I am here, where you."

For most people, such a cottage clothing is disappointing, but the founder of the account has a different view. According to them, they did not intend to make fun of the wearers or manufacturers of these cottage products. On the contrary, they found that many of the clothing slogans expressing their positions were translated into Chinese, but they were more difficult to understand because of cultural differences. Feeling, and these "nonsense" slogans are different.

"We are delighted by the absurdity embodied in this slogan, because it is this seemingly meaningless 'nonsense' that truly reflects the confusion that most ordinary people in the world face today," Ming Lin and Alexandra Tatarsky explained, “Although these slogans don’t have some kind of appeal or can express some kind of thought, and even have some conflicts with English in accuracy, it can really impress us. They are described in some poetry. The modern people's casual attitude towards life, and the mix of different fields and languages ​​also reflects the state of people living in an information overload society."

Therefore, Ming Lin and Alexandra Tatarsky refer to these as “cottage lyrics”, and they hope to collect the “nonsense” slogans on these costumes and create an interesting “experimental poetry” file.

"The word "cottage" is most often translated into counterfeit, but its literal meaning refers to the wild village, the robbers, the desperate, the home of the poor, in other words, it represents all the people living on the edge of society," The account founder added, "And you can think of a Gio-Goi (British high street brand) T-shirt with 'Ketamine: Just Say Neigh' and a glittering cottage top with 'unkist GoodVibration!' It doesn't make any difference because their slogans are meaningless."