Massification and Diffusion

Call out a fool if you must, but it is true one often prepares smiles on the streets here at doorway entries and along the walkways for expected greetings from cardboard cut-outs. The shop-assistants in these parts are required to keep on their feet and engage passers-by; a hesitant customer can be hooked by a warm smile and polite greeting, they think. Of course the drones are often dead on their feet and instead sit bowed on stools flicking phones or snatching some shut-eye. The kind shop-keepers like, the reliably alert and prompt ones, must be worth their weight in gold. Being a tall, strolling White in a fine hat, one certainly does not want to appear arrogant or contemptuous in the face of that generous fanfare from this people. The error however does trip up even the most astute and sharp flaneur swinging through the arcades collecting some breath of aircon from the better establishments. And necessary to add, it is not simply pretty girls one wants to oblige and meet half way, not by any means. Often the boys call out one thing and another, just for the heck of it, the natural pleasure of a Howdedoody? (Some will wonder reading—these are country folk remember please, with spirits out-flowing to the world around them and those that pass by.)

         In both cases footing up for lunch today fine young life-size lads with inviting smiles all in glossy colourful cardboard reaching out.

         As noted previously, the author has recently had his “Billboard” piece published up in the cold of Calgary, Canada, a sequence of flash which delivers a brief survey of the t-shirt fashions on the streets of Singapore. Here in Malaysia on the other hand we are spared the higher form almost entirely—certainly in the quarters preferred by this Scribe—and find instead what in the industry is termed massification and diffusion product. Drab, lower grade items in inferior fabric from the middle-range sought-after labels like Converse, CK, Hilfiger, Fred Perry, the NY whatnot &etc. Good these threads for the juicy markets of India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, up-country China and the rest of those battling in the global scramble. There was no danger of these articles diluting the brands, the shiny and bright from the High Streets of the fashion capitals would never lay eye on suchlike on dirty, broken pavements like these.