Your recent purchases

[kunk75]

can you add a rep system specifically for the purpose of fuuma's posts?

christian's point remind of the whole not having a gimmick is my gimmick approach. he is probably right and to much of the populace, maybe a d&g tee shirt IS less grotesque than ccp drips.

[avout]

Thanks Christian and BSR for being way more articulate about this than I could be.

To conclude shortly, I'd say that this discussion is only about "distinction", in a bourdieusian way, and that I'm amazed that some people here truly think that they're better than those who wear D&G belts or carry LV bags. There's no difference between them and us. Sorry to state the obvious.

Exactly. Subtlety does not make things inherently better.

[kuugaia]

think about what you're juxtaposing here. this is the worst possible comparison, of course you will get strange responses.

Hmm understood. Being on this part of the world, I possibly have a less personal/emotional response to the Nazis compared to others here. My occupation really is to analyse logos and branding, and the swastika is just something that's easy to use as an example. But yes, note taken.

which could be rephrased as:
1) 'i know i belong to a group, i share the values and rules and behaviors of this group, and reject what is not approved by the group (or its leaders)'
2) 'therefore, my first criterion to choose an item is its group validation or forbidding'

Seriously?

Maybe its because I've just come back after a very long and bad day (or I'm reading your post wrong, because admittedly...your posts are hard to follow). But are you trying to regurgitate my post into whatever it is that you wrote up there? These kind of posts is what makes this place unbearable at times. You try to pigeon-hole every single person into some sort of definition or category (or, you take their post and philosophically wank with it). Half the time you're putting words into other people's mouths. I'm not really going to bother to say anymore than what I've already said; because it'll probably be twisted into me saying I stalk Faust (or whoever's) posts and wait to see what he approves of before I go shopping to validate myself in front of the internet. Where to kop list of approved brands? /endrant. If I did read your post wrong, I apologize.

[Fuuma]

Not alone, but the references used does.

So we agree that Rick Owens and his references to fellatio/suicide, drag queens, the camp of John Waters, Iggy Pop and drug addicts in general, the movie The Warriors, pissing in your own mouth, goth-industrial, LA gutter punks and skaters and finally Nike is the worst designer ever? Of course these references are not alone, they are also made with the subtlety of a sledgehammer-operated dildo.

[Faust]

can you add a rep system specifically for the purpose of fuuma's posts?

christian's point remind of the whole not having a gimmick is my gimmick approach. he is probably right and to much of the populace, maybe a d&g tee shirt IS less grotesque than ccp drips.

Maybe you have spent too much time in marketing. But it's the bane of this world, to the smart and the cynical everything is marketing.

[ErnstLudwig]

epiphany: a subculture has a recognizable dress code

[KingJulien]

kuugaia he's paraphrasing pretty well-established social theory, that wasn't an attack on you.

[beardown]

Beardown, isn't your point of view a bit naive ? How can you think that no logo is not a kind of logo ?
What is the purpose of the logo ? To make the brand easily recognizable.



Did you ask yourself why they don't need to do it ? Because they do it otherwise.
All the brands that you're talking about have a lot a characteritic - and stable - features that make them very easy to identify in a clink of an eye. I totally aggre with Avout.
In this case no logo is logo - only a bit more complex, or subtle, not sure though.
And I won't say anything about MA+, who puts the logo right in the middle of some of their clothes...
But, of course you'll say that the people around you have no idea of the charasteristics of the clothes that you wear, hence won't recognize them, hence the "logo status effect" won't work.

First of all, before I start making quite a few references to the absurd, I want to point out clearly that this all sprang from a few people agreeing that the identity of the brand and many of the products from Chrome Hearts is loud and gaudy. My point was that in comparison to the visual identities, it's way more consistent with Affliction and other watered down, mainstream pop culture brands.

And I'm afraid that's exactly how I feel (still) and I summed it up very succinctly with a visual aide for those who are scratching their heads over the comparison:



And now it's boiled down to this notion that not having a logo is the same as having a logo, so I figured I'd post it again.

I feel like I'm speaking literally and you're speaking philosophically.

Suggesting that 'having no logo' is the same as 'having a logo' is absurd in my eyes. You're talking possibly in terms of subtle recognition delineation. I'm speaking in terms of obvious consumerism where products are bought and sold specifically because of a simple, recognizable icon and that's what consumerism boils down to on many levels.

If you have 10 brands side by side in a market of the same product without logos, it's the same as having 10 side by side that are branded with recognizable icons, type and logos that are specifically put on the product to differentiate it from each competing brand?

That's the argument here? That it's all the same because the ones without obvious logos are, by not having logos, are technically the same by the very absence of a logo?





and finally:


Some of you are creating a philosophical problem out of a very defined, simple scenario! I actually kind of like it! Though I disagree with the sentiment.

This could go on forever but I'll sum up my feelings by taking it back to the original context of the discussion:

Chrome Hearts (disclaimer: in my opinion) has horribly gaudy design on many of their products with loud, obnoxious branding that cheapen the actual value of whatever goods they produce. And that branding, the identity and their logos are all consistent with much cheaper, much more mainstream, identifiable brands that are produced in sweatshops in China and sold to retail outlets who specifically cater to people who are looking for that aesthetic of a lowest common denominator where status is immediately defined visually by the logo/identity and what it represents to the mass consumer.

As far as my personal situation with brands I wear in my microcosm of 53,000 people (mostly blue collar with a 10.3% unemployment rate in a stunted economy) I stand by the comment that when I go out into public, nobody would ever look at what I wearing and recognize/identify any of it.

Christian, I'm sure that's different from you, living in one of the largest, most culturally rich cities in the world with a population of 2,153,600 where physical boutiques make a lot of these higher end brands immediately available, but please indulge me in suspension of disbelief for the sake of argument.

I knew that this discussion would boil down to being dismissed as pretension or ego or a superiority complex. That's kind of the go-to argument when discussions start to get abstract or absurd but I've never suggested that the brands I like are superior to the brands others prefer. But I would gladly admit that I believe my tastes are better wearing something subtle and tastefully designed and well made. Isn't that why I indulge in the products I indulge in? Isn't that why everyone chooses what they choose? It suits them better or they relate to it more than the other brands/items? I can't really identify with any particular 'group' or 'subculture' in my immediate vicinity but then again, by choosing to not associate with any particular niche or group, then certainly that must mean I'm doing everything I can to belong to one.

Because, you know, philosophy and shit.

Since we've gone way beyond the realms of the original discussion and the boundaries seem to get more absurd with each post, I feel like I've said all I want to about Chrome Hearts and how I feel about it personally. I'm sorry that people feel attacked or angered or upset about my perspective. I guess that can be a danger of associating too intimately with a brand or a product.



edit: Sorry...this image is supposed to represent comedic relief in a discussion that felt way too serious. I'm hoping that's clear and not seen as a personal affront to anyone.

[cjbreed]

[seenmy]

Aviator thankyou andrew been after this for so long

soloist cords

[Majax]

To conclude shortly, I'd say that this discussion is only about "distinction", in a bourdieusian way, and that I'm amazed that some people here truly think that they're better than those who wear D&G belts or carry LV bags. There's no difference between them and us. Sorry to state the obvious.

Well, yes and no, I'd say... I basically agree with what you and Fuuma say about "good taste", but to a certain point only.


Maybe I'm wrong but, as it comes to my mind... If you assume "good taste" is nothing but arbitrary (social) distinctions, i.e. pure conventions, don't you have to endorse a purely relativist position as far are as any aesthetic judgment is concerned?


Maybe you would assume it, but I don't. I mean, for example, I don't think it is fair and correct to say that the only difference between, let's say, Cezanne and, let's say, any cartoonist is purely conventional, depending on the way the intelligentsia historically came to adopt this or that distinction strategy.


Why that? Hum, here comes serious business and I may have a few ideas, but if I already managed to bore you, I'd like to stop before I bore myself (I also realize my English is not good). Furthermore: I'm about to come to defend such a think as a "universal criteria", something that really does not sound good to me... Once again tricked by words... I don't trust them.

[Faust]

Wtf ate you doing, seenmy. We are talking here!

[Analytic Philosopher]

Obviously it is false to assume when encountering an individual to judge his/her character through dress.

Is it really, though? Now, if by character, you mean something like the totality of an individual's character, then you're obviously right. It seems wrong to think, for example, that just because someone likes Crocs that she is a bad person--one does not have enough information to make such an inference. However, it doesn't seem wrong (at least to me) to think that because someone likes Crocs that he has bad taste--one might be wrong, of course, but the inference, at least, seems okay. If we properly restrict our area of inquiry into those aspects of an individual's character that directly relate to whatever we're looking into, then what's the problem? As you point out in your next sentence,

And yet, I don't think it's completely unsubstantiated to make assumptions based on what groups of people [and individuals?] wear.

Neither do I, and I'm not sure why anyone would. One, of course, must do so cautiously, but I see nothing wrong with it per se. To quote liberally from Jerrold Levinson:

One’s taste, in the sense of personal preferences in matters aesthetic, arguably not only partly reveals who one is or what sort of person one is, but also partly constitutes who one is or what sort of person one is. Let us term the totality of such aesthetic preferences an aesthetic personality. It seems fair to say that one’s aesthetic personality is a proper part of who one is and of what defines and distinguishes one as an individual. As such, it is something that contributes to one’s integrity and enters into one’s identity, in the familiar loose, if not metaphysically strict, sense of the term. And the largest, arguably most important, part of an aesthetic personality would seem to consist in preferences among what is available for experience within the artistic domain.

The quotation obviously doesn't deal directly with fashion, but it's obvious how one can say the same kind of thing with respect to how people dress.

[Faust]

Yes, I mean the totality of character. Hence the following sentence.

[trentk]

Why that? Hum, here comes serious business and I may have a few ideas, but if I already managed to bore you, I'd like to stop before I bore myself (I also realize my English is not good). Furthermore: I'm about to come to defend such a think as a "universal criteria", something that really does not sound good to me... Once again tricked by words... I don't trust them.

I'm interested. Elaborate.