When Justin Bieber headlined Coachella in April, his first concert in four years, the stripped-down performance style made global headlines. Yet in Vietnam, excited social media chatter also focused on the singer’s “Puffa shorts” from Lu’u Dan, an Asian-influenced label founded by Vietnamese American Hung La.
Bieber’s outfit is part of a larger story: Vietnam’s export-dependent economy is beginning to leverage intellectual property to move up the value chain.
Vietnam’s booming cultural scene is sitting between a top-down drive by the government to elevate culture to a policy priority, and a bottom-up push by a generation of young creators empowered by rising consumer spending and cheap internet access. The companies that manage this talent hope that culture, like everything else in Vietnam, can be reengineered as an export product.
Last Year’s Resolution 68 affirmed the private sector as Vietnam’s “most important driving force.” It dominates commentary about General Secretary To Lam’s reform push, dubbed Doi Moi 2.0, a reference to Vietnam’s 1980s economic transformation.
Yet Resolution 80, passed in January, could end up being just as important to the growing cultural economy. The measure established culture as an indispensable foundation of Vietnam’s sustainable development, a coequal pillar alongside the economy, society, and the environment.
