On 11 February, the popular mobile game Honor of Kings announced its collaboration with Harper’s Bazaar magazine for a campaign to celebrate the “colours of China”. According to Bazaar’s editor Simona Sha, Honor of Kings and Harper’s Bazaar worked together on a palette based on the characters from the game.
Many characters from the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game are based on either historical or mythical personalities from Chinese history and legends. For that reason, the teams brainstormed to take colours from certain character designs from the game to create a palette of Chinese style. Each of the 18 colours has a classical Chinese name such as juetou (“爵头”, the red of a finch’s head) or gaoyu (“缟羽“, feather white).
The two parties invited 9 celebrities for cosplay fashion shoots. Currently, 4 shoots have been released, including actress and singer Yang Chaoyue as Chang’e, actress Tian Xiwei as Xishi, musical actor Ayanga as Luban and actor Wang Xingyue as Li Xin. The cosplay of Lu Bu and Diao Chan, the star-crossed lovers from the 14th-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, will be released on Valentine’s Day.
The popularity of the game and its characters, working in tandem with the star power of the celebrities created quite a buzz online. On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, the topic “Tian Xiwei cosplays Xi Shi’s new skin” (#田曦薇cos西施乘鲤谣#) reached number 11 on the Hot Search list with 40.31 million views. While the topic “Kings x Bazaar paint colours of China together” (#王者芭莎共绘中国色#) did not make it to the Hot Search list, but it amassed 65.05 million views over time.
It is also not the first time Honor of Kings has teamed up with the fashion magazine. In April 2023, the two partnered to create a set of two skins for characters Yang Yuhuan and Gongsun Li. With ELLE also bringing a fashion shoot to Zootopia at Shanghai Disneyland, it seems a trend of fashion magazines collaborations with IPs is forming.
