Cultural Appreciation vs Appropriation

The differences between Cultural Appreciation and Cultural Appropriation are very clear. Cultural appreciation is when a brand or a designer has an interest in something other cultures do or designs they have. That designer or brand takes time to educate themselves about what they have an interest in and show it the correct way, by advertising it with the people of the culture and so forth. Cultural appropriation is when a brand or designer steals designs from another culture without educating themselves beforehand. Those brands and designers disrespect a culture and the people of that culture. A brand that shows cultural appreciation is a luxury skin care brand that is owned by Ozohu Adoh called Epara. The brand came about because she suffered from persistent follicular eczema, and she started looking at the ingredients her African forbears used. She planned on having it as a commercially sold product but now it’s being sold in luxury stores. My opinion on the brand is that the skin products are very good, my mom actually uses the brand and she said she won’t use anything on her face because of the Shea butter and other ingredients in the products.

A brand that showed cultural appropriation is Gucci with their indy turbans. The Turbans that Gucci made offended the people who believe in the Sikhism religion. If I was Gucci, I would have looked more into the meaning of the turbans because to the Sikhism religion their turbans aren’t an accessory, it is a religious article of faith that is viewed as sacred. I would also try to connect to people from this culture to see whether or not it’d be appropriate to label it as an accessory, and maybe just a regular clothing item. The final thing I would have done differently is have the people that believe in this religion as the face of the line.

With both topics being so similar, yet so different it makes it easy to tell when a brand is showing cultural appreciation and when they aren’t. The models for Epara match the culture of the brand, the owner did her own research to have an understanding of what is actually used compared to somebody who just claims something being from a culture. As consumers the best way we can show more cultural appreciation is to take the time to educate ourselves on other cultures outside of our own. If we understand other cultures, and show appreciation that the culture of the world would change, it wouldn’t feel as if everybody is disrespecting their culture, but instead people of different cultures would appreciate the acknowledgement from other cultures.