THE BRAND NAME GAME

A quick glance at me will tell you I know nothing of fashion, but I do observe, and this is what I’m seeing: lots of people wearing: plain white t-shirts with the sole adornment of a large company logo.

What’s going on? Of course it’s nothing new for people to want to be seen wearing status-enhancing brand name goods. But forgive me if I’m wrong: weren’t the logos secondary to the actual design of the thing? Now the logo is all there is!

Looking around me in this cafe from where I write, there’s a profusion of these simple white shirts sporting massive frontal logos of companies such as Levi’s, Patagonia and Tommy Hillfucker or wahtever it’s called.

(image from society6.com)

First, let’s examine the notion of the plain white tee. To my mind, this brings up images of an undergarment. The thing you wear under your work shirt to stop the sweat patches from showing. Not a thing of elegance.

Secondly, it’s totally impractical to wear white. That’s just a dirt and dinner-medal magnet.

But aside from that, let me now take you to the board room of one of these big-name apparel companies, where the corporate sociopath CEO and associates are rubbing their hands together with glee:

“It’s finally come to pass! These sheep are so dumb we’ve now got them paying vastly inflated prices for totally ordinary garments we spend no amount of time designing, which function to advertise our brand to all the other sheep at no cost to us! It’s like a perpetual motion machine! The gift that keeps on giving! Money for old rope!”

So people, think again before you splash out on that North Face square rucksack sporting a massive logo the size of the entire surface area of the back. Do you really want to be doing the work for these already fabulously rich businesses?