SAVAGE/GAME/TROPHY
What sport requires both great skill, courage, guts, and tenacity?
Professional 'bull riding' competitions.
The double entendre metaphor inspired STAFFONLY to name its Autumn/Winter 2021 menswear collection "TAKE THE BULL BY ITS HORNS". The collection continues to break down the barriers of familiarity in the brand's narrative, exploring the primal, wild human instincts and sense of competition implicit in modern professional roles, presenting an original, blood-curdling game of competition where impulse and reason intersect. They find that while the social division of labor has changed over the years, the character's unique attitude and competitive force have been perpetuated in new ways.
What do you think of when you think of a financial professional? A straight suit, a snow-white shirt, a deluge of information on multiple displays? With the subtle symbolic influence of modern society, the image of the typical elitist dress code lingers in our minds. The language of the camera in American Psycho almost expresses the frenzied pursuit of the ultimate perfection of a certain genre and the repressed wild expression of a repressed and seemingly indifferent individual. Drops of blood and wounds, cracks and creases, ties, and meticulous shirt gaskets seem to represent the typical image of an elite character full of contradictions in everyone's mind.
Black swans, grey rhinoceroses, unicorns, and financial predators... when it comes to describing specific phenomena or things in the financial markets, the original trajectory of the animal is often more apt. And when it comes to financial practitioners, it seems to be no exception: the behavioral patterns of gamblers and speculators seem to be followed by the PBR (Professional Bull Riders) bull riders. The bull rider tries to mount the hardy bull and stay steady on the mount in this crazy game, while the angry bull tries to bring the rider to his knees. A by-product of the winning narrative of holding on to the bull for as long as possible is the passion of 100% adrenaline, which may be more or less insidiously linked to the smart game between people engaged in financial gaming: as an individual who wants to ride on the back of a "bull" for as long as possible, often the winner is decided in a split second.
Hunting and trophies, chasing and conquering, the sense of achievement that people seek seems to have made a comeback in a more subtle and contemporary form after a long period of change, only that the 'trophies' have already been transformed from ears and horns to gold, silver, and even bitcoins; while the "chasing and conquering" of the information age seems to be more like a hidden undercurrent under the surface of the water.
TAKE THE BULL BY ITS HORNS,
The bull turns the tide when the time comes.
