Who's riding who?

For my money, there is no fashion statement in the world (with the possible exception of pre-aged jeans) that says "I am an ignorant, attention-seeking social climber" better than the Ralph Lauren 'Big Pony' line of shirts with giant logos on them.

Here, Big Pony is being modeled by good breasted terrible actress Han Yeseul

I am not the type of person who cares a great deal about fashion. I have a simple aesthetic. I don't like clothes with logos or words on them and I don't like non-functional things (decorative belts, buttons with no buttoning function) and I hate false aging of clothes. These last two peeves fall under the basic category of decadence. What moves me about the Big Pony thing is that it cuts to the heart of what people want out of brands like Ralph Lauren. They want to tell the world that they are the type of person that likes/wears/can afford Ralph Lauren clothing. These huge logos allow them to broadcast this message in a more efficient, desperate way. I imagine that the wealthy people who wear clothing more expensive than Ralph Lauren snicker to themselves when they see one of these tacky logos bouncing towards them, thinking 'Who does this K-Mart shopper think she is?' but to me the real folly is in the tastelessness of the striving, the form it takes. The same goes for the Burberry tartan

And the abominable rainbow-colored Louis Vuitton bags
The thing is that the item itself is nothing, only the logo and the cache that goes with affixing that famous name to your totem pole. Here's an illustrative story. My mother knows that Korean ladies love brand name luxury items, so she went shopping in America for some gifts for my wife. She bought her a Coach handbag that was made of the same leather as the photo below
I read the advertising copy that came with it and was surprised to discover the history of Coach, that the leather was patterned after baseball glove leather etc. Anyway, my wife loved the bag but was surprised that it was Coach. Every Coach item she had ever seen sold in Korea had the Coach logo all over it thusly.
It's not even about the social climbing, because that's no sin. It's the tackiness that gets me. If you want to social climb, why not do it tastefully, at least that way you might actually social climb up, instead of climbing all over the bars of your cage like a monkey in a zoo.

Why budget brands have ugly packaging

From an article about the superior, unadvertised Starbucks short cappucino on Slate. The author claims that the short cappucino is the best one, because it has the highest espresso-to-milk ratio, yet it is not even on the menu and if you order it the cashier will not yell it to the barista:

The difficulty is that if some of your products are cheap, you may lose money from customers who would willingly have paid more. So, businesses try to discourage their more lavish customers from trading down by making their cheap products look or sound unattractive, or, in the case of Starbucks, making the cheap product invisible. The British supermarket Tesco has a "value" line of products with infamously ugly packaging, not because good designers are unavailable but because the supermarket wants to scare away customers who would willingly spend more. "The bottom end of any market tends to get distorted," says McManus. "The more market power firms have, the less attractive they make the cheaper products."

Interesting and effective. While some people will never buy value brands, there are those, like me, my wife and much of my family, who will only buy value brands of certain products, mostly commodities and non-foodstuffs. The article continues, doozily

The practice is hundreds of years old. The French economist Emile Dupuit wrote about the early days of the railways, when third-class carriages were built without roofs, even though roofs were cheap: "What the company is trying to do is prevent the passengers who can pay the second-class fare from traveling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich."

Twice in one week

It isn;'t often that I'm reminded of the same Mr. Show sketch in one week (not true), but take a look at this Bud Light commercial

and then take a look at my previous post.

Today in sexualized commerce

Just an interesting juxtaposition of two pictures taken 30 minutes and 3 blocks of each other. Both show women in the same legwear using their bodies to sell. The first picture shows a nareiteo (나레이터, from the English 'narrator') dancing in front of the grand opening of a cell phone store. Nareiteo or narrators are a well known sights to anyone who's spent any substantial time in Korea. When opening a new business, most small businessmen will hire two girls to come, dance to very loud music and shout on a loudspeaker. They do it year round, and it is possible to see nareiteo in the dead of winter with gloves on, dancing under a massive outdoor heater.

In this picture, two girls dressed as angels, with little angel wings on their backs and heads, stand out front of the Skin Food, a Body Shop-style affair. In this case they are trying to attract women to the store, one would assume, so it's interesting that while there is no emphasis placed on the breasts or makeup, their legs are prominently displayed. I'll leave it to the experts to conjecture why.