It’s how you wear it
This is a guest post by Matthew Barrison. His blog is really interesting and can be found at WorkingDefinition.com
A casual visitor to this site may find it a bit pedantic or brand obsessed. Fair enough. However, since brand = lifestyle aspiration, we must ponder things a bit more deeply. The main theme behind this aspiration is fitting in and bettering oneself, a task which I find to be truly American. And on that note, I bet that you have been thinking about what aspirational appeal the American brand holds these days. Part of me doesn’t get it, i.e. the long supply chain and its remote consequences, but another part of me understands it perfectly and sees the potential for re-calibration of the system. Thus we return to the theme of fitting in to better one’s self and progeny. The American brand has long been about just that; Ralph Lauren came from a family of immigrant Eastern Jews. For many people around the world, America still holds that promise; to many of our contemporaries, however, our recent actions have led them to volubly question our long held presupposition of preeminence. Nonetheless, we strive to re-articulate that brand by getting back to what is good, aspiration, a value of timeless fashion. Sure, we get swayed by trends a little, but at heart we are there to do good and look sexy all the while.