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. With If you don’t like Mizrahi’s Target work, you’re a “brand racist”
We all know the old game of snob vs. reverse snob. When a guy at Vuitton says Coach “has nothing to do with luxury” and might as well be “selling iron ore,” well, that’s kind of snobby. The reverse snob from Coach of course decries the Vuitton guy as an elitist who needs to realize that “luxury has been democratized.”
These examples are from Fortune‘s recent recap of the eternal mass/class squabble in its latest issue. All pretty familiar, but noteworthy for Isaac Mizrahi popping up to defend himself from “critics of his work with Target.” His name for these people: “brand racists.”
Brand racists! That seem like a pretty harsh upgrade on snobbery, no? And actually, I’m pretty sure I read in one of the other recent mass/class articles somewhere else that Mizrahi’s Target success actually helped him to get Bergdorf’s (or something like that) to pick up his high-end line again. But maybe they just did it because they needed one line that had a mass-y connection to avoid looking like luxury bigots: designer tokenism, in other words.
Anyway, lux context aside, it’s actually kind of interesting to consider brand bigotry. Even those of us who claim not to pay attention to logos tend have very strong feelings about the ones we would never, ever wear. Three Adidas stripes may be fine, but put a swoosh on the same object and forget it; a polo shirt with an obscure brand’s icon is okay, but not with the Polo logo. Etc. Of course we all have our reasons for our biases, our lines of thought to assure ourselves that we’re acting on the basis of rational factors and rational factors only. Then again, bigots always think that way, too.
Really, though, I suspect brand bigotry is an underrated factor in the consumer/brand dynamic: How much are we motivated not by the brands we love, but by the brands we shun? If brand and identity are (or can be) tied together, isn’t the shun factor pretty crucial? If you have a very clear picture notion of the brands you simply won’t consider associating with, it makes shopping that much easier.
No wonder department stores are segregated by brand.
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Reader Comments
Reading this entry I’m reminded of Cayce Pollard, the protagonist of William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition. Cayce has a rather interesting medical condition – brand allergies. Of course certain brands have a greater affect on her then others – the Michelin Man being the end all be all of her medical condition. While I’m personally rather critical of Branding, there is no escape – that is unless we quite living in th 21st century. Reflecting for a moment as I sit typing this comment – I’m in fact not wearing anything that does not have a brand attached to it – however subtle that branding might be – and you’ve hit it on the nail, there are 101 brand names I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, and while I do my best to avoid gross displays of branding – I suppose that very tendency could sadly define my own brand identity. Damm damm damm – my anti-brand elitism is crashing down around me because of this post!
Leave it to a White guy to coin a term like “brand racist.” Most White folks seem almost paranoid about being labeled a racist. Why not “brand gay-basher” or “brand anti-Semite” instead? Seems just as silly.