A Word to the Wise
Credit Bottega Veneta
There is a preoccupation of LVMH, Kerring and others obsessed with selling to customers they don't have yet, namely the RAM (you heard it first here! Rich Asian Millennials) they are willing to sacrifice their scapegoats like Tomas Maier. In Classical times goats were traditionally sacrificed before a tragedy.
The focus on the Gen. Y & Z not know for their 'stealth' aesthetic is being targeted not for their own good but because they have £$%E! to spend on signifiers of status and allegiance and haven't quite got the access to tons of pop-culture vintage/pre-loved that the West has mountains of that targets our own youth market.
Witness Gucci's new campaign Pre-Fall 2018 that uses the student-led riots in Paris, 1968, the golden anniversary reference of riot and mayhem against the establishment and boredom, events that look quaint and romantic in comparison and disregard of the heated, crimes of hate that have taken place in the city in more recent years where and when the story is a little more complicated and not so easy to sell.
Golden Years? 1968/2018
Credit Gucci
That commerce needs new blood (money) and has chosen to rework and repackage some vague, nostalgic view of youthful overspill in recognisable clothes of yesteryear is not as silly and random as it may seem to people not born yesterday.
In the race to meet sales targets and move on and up all bets are off for PCness and appropriateness. The proliferation of all things FRESH, YOUTHFUL, FRESH, NEW, FRESH, CURRENT, FRESH NOW, FRESH, EDGY, FRESH, UP-AND-COMMING, FRESH and FRESH what feels dangerous (edgy and pretty) and safe (locked in the past) all at the same time? What can possibly be fresher than repackaging the West's glorious heyday of counterculture stereotyping and aiming at markets that have an even vaguer idea of it than those that can almost remember it (or are bored of tales of it)?
