My name is Mark Yuan 元晟宇 (晟=sheng) 원성우，and this is my first blog post which I'd like to share with you what this blog is all about. Before I begin, I want to thank one of my closest friends for the past 12 years, my brother of a different mother, Terry Liu 劉曉非 劉老闆 for joining me on this journey as a business partner when I first had this idea. For those of you who have met him in person, you know he’s got a unnaturally gigantic head which I will fully count on being intelligent and productive. LOL. Also, I want to thank our long time class mate and a great friend, a brilliant artist and designer, Mo Qian 錢墨 錢老師 for seeing the potential of this project and lending his talents to bring forth our first few collections. 子曰 ：”三人行，必有我師“。 Confucius says "when there are three people walking together, there is bound to be one who can teach me". I look forward to learning from and sharing this experience with both of them. Whether anything comes out of this project, the simple fact that we all believe in this one idea and want to make that vision into a reality together from scratch is both truly phenomenal and encouraging to me.
Flaming Lantern 火燈籠 is an Asian culture inspired T-Shirt brand we will create and launch. The brand is to promote Asian cultures, both ancient and pop, through creative and subtle interpretation and illustration of Asian philosophy, ideals, accomplishments, attitudes and virtues with powerful images, elegant designs and iconic or clever words/phrases. We want to create a brand that us, Asian American would be proud to wear both as a fashion statement as well as a cultural statement. We do not wish to create anything with offensive in-your-face or kiss-my-ass attitude, but only with subtle display of our culture through artistic communication and understanding. We seek not to divide, but to unite people of different ethnicity and backgrounds through appreciation of Asian culture via art and fashion. We truly aim to be both fashionably tasteful and culturally uplifting.
Yes, it is a new brand only a small selected group of people know at the moment. No, it has no recognition in the fashion world! It certainly has a long long way to go to be in the same company of Diesel, Bape or Paul Frank, etc. But with our ingenuity, hard work and your continuous support, we can change that. Although we will have to start small, but we dare to dream BIG! We hope one day, every Asian living in America, whether you are Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Vietnamese or whether you are an immigrant or a foreign student or just working here, to be proud to own and wear the Flaming Lantern brand. Eventually we want to bring our Asian culture inspired T-shirt to non-Asian market so people of other backgrounds can learn and appreciate our culture through art and designs.
This Flaming Lantern Blog is to document the birth and development of Flaming Lantern. We want to share every step of this journey through thick and thin, with you: our friends, family and supporters. 要大家為我們見證這過程中酸甜苦辣，喜怒哀樂--我们成长的经历。 We hope we can build a community here to guide us, remind us, critic and support what we do. To watch us grow, learn, make mistakes, correct them and then move forward. With your help, we hope we will be able to launch the brand soon and continuously bring great t-shirts to people like you who love Asian culture and want to express it proudly.
There are many reasons why we want to create an Asian culture inspired t-shirt brand here in the U.S, and some of them are purely based on the love of our culture and and others represent great business opportunities. I will discuss them in a separate post so you know where we come from and what the brand will represent.
I hope you will allow us to keeping sharing our stories with you by being a regular guest at this blog! 請您多來到我們的博客來作客 http://flaminglantern.blogspot.com/. 多多留言﹐多提意見。 有了大家的支持﹐我們更加的有動力﹐更有方向。沒有你們的支持﹐我們的努力也失去了意義!!!
Please drop a line if you like what you see here or have a comment. And if you support what we do, please bookmark this blog and join us on facebook, Flaming Lantern.
Thanks so much for reading! May this be an exciting beginning for many great things to come!!!
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1 comments:
First comment! Good luck to you all!
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