fashion politics, 2002

From an article by Duncan Campbell in The Guardian way back in September 2002.

Kenneth Cole, the New York clothing, footware and accessory company, has launched a major advertising campaign based on statements on key political issues. In the most controversial advert, carried in leading US newspapers this week, a young man carries a newspaper headlined 'Holy War' under his arm while wearing the company's pinstriped suit, brown shirt and blue tie. The slogan reads: "Mideast peace is the must-have for fall." 

Another advert shows a model in jeans, sweater and scarf with two small boys playing with toy guns behind her. "Gun safety... it's all the rage," it reads.

"There seem to be a number of companies doing this now," said James MacKinnon, senior editor of Adbusters, the Vancouver magazine which describes itself as "the journal of the mental environment" and specialises in deconstructing advertisements and media messages. 

"They usually use very softball, very mild social messages," said MacKinnon. "Kenneth Cole clearly recognises that people want to feel as though they are buying into some social value as they buy belts and shoes. Who doesn't want Middle East peace? Putting something like 'Ending the occupation in Palestine is the must-have for fall' would be actually saying something." 

MacKinnon said that the trend of using social messages to sell fashion was started by Benetton, which ran an a series based on the idea of a multi-racial "united colours of Benetton". One advert featured a dying Aids patient. 

"This is just an empty stunt to stir up an empty controversy to sell an empty brand," said MacKinnon. 

A more thoroughgoing analysis can be found in "Gendered Security/National Security: Political Branding and Population Racism by Patricia Ticineto Clough and Craig Willse, writing in Social Text, available here.

Borrowing from the advertorial genre, the Kenneth Cole photos and text make the theme of security a matter of fashion, just a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center, and a few months before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Through the gendered codes of fashion, the photos and text link national security to personal security, proposing that the for-mer is essential to the latter, and that the latter might be gendered in sucha way as to concern women in particular and — in the visual treatment of the white woman and black woman as equivalent and interchangeable — all women in the same way. 

Alas, I cannot find the images referred to, but here's a more recent KC "gun control" ad, from 2011.

American Eagle Kufiyas on Times Square

Thanks to Nazli for alerting me to this, and sending me these photos, taken off the huge screens at Times Square, just a few days ago. I assume the screens are from the "77kids NYC Style Lab" that occupies the entire lower level of the American Eagle Outfitters' Times Square flagship at 1551 Broadway, which opened on July 20.

Yep, kufiyas go kid fashion. Kufiyas at the center of US commercial/popular culture. Is American Eagle trying to feed off of the incredible energy of the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring? Is American Eagle trying to co-opt and market street fashion affiliated with the top news stories of the year? You betcha. And will this stop activists around the world from wearing their kufiyas? Hardly.

Here is the ad for the 77kids line, that is up right now on the American Eagle 77kids website. Funnily enough, although the kufiya is featured in the ads, I can't find it for sale as an accessory, either for boys or for girls. Hmmm.

Coke & Pepsi and the Egyptian Revolution (+, yes, kufiyaspotting)

Like all companies trying to make money in the new Egypt after Mubarak, Coke & Pepsi are trying to ride the revolution. (Thanks to Robin for calling them to my attention.)

Check out this ad from Coca-Cola, with the theme, "Make Tomorrow Better." We see the middle class youth of Egypt (the presumed revolutionary subjects) ushering in a new dawn. Note that the focus is entirely on Cairo's downtown, which has both been a site that the upwardly mobile in neo-liberal Egypt have been fleeing for the upscale satellite suburbs, and which is also the focus of plans for gentrification. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, note the penultimate shot, which shows Tahrir Square, with a crowd (meant, of course, to evoke a demonstration, right before the last shot of a young person drinking a bottle of Coke.



Then check out this Pepsi advert. Again, the middle class youth of Egypt are the subject. They are shown to be adding color (literally) and life to Cairo's downtown (which has, in fact, been renovated in recent years). They possess the trappings of advanced modernity (flat screen televisions, laptops) and also evoke the youth of the revolution. This young woman carries the iconic cellphone (the "twitter revolution") and, yes, yes, you guessed it, she wears the requisite iconic accessory of the revolution, the kufiya.

And towards the end of the video, youth begin to gather at a street intersection in what looks like it could be a demonstration, and from a balcony looking over the intersection, a young man gives an enthusiastic revolutionary salute, with a can of Pepsi in his hand.

The overall theme is "express yourself." Among the lyrics of the song are the lines, "you are the new, you are the unique," and "tomorrow is waiting for you." And here's the vid:



Don't be too surprised, or dismayed. Both Coke and Pepsi attempted to ride the waves of the sixties counterculture and oppositional movements in the US.

Here's a "psychedelic" ad from Pepsi, from 1969.

And one from Coke, featuring Lady Soul Aretha Franklin, from 1968, when she had only recently crossed over, as a sign of Black Pride.

Big capital will, of course, inevitably, try to profit from the revolutionary fever...

Update (one hour later): Just a bit after I posted the above, I came across an article from Al-Masry Al-Youm on the same subject (although less critical), entitled "Soft-drink giants ride wave of post-uprising optimism." “It’s about empowering youth to come up with ideas and do something about them,” said Karim Khouri, managing director at Impact BBDO, the agency that designed ads for Pepsi.

That (Sudanese) Target Ad

You've all seen it, that Target "dorm dance" ad, with what must be one of the best dance tracks and vocals ever in a mainstream advertisement. And you think, yes, every cool song, and especially now, the coolest world fusion tune, must, immediately and invevitably, be turned into a marketing tool.



(And if you are some nostalgist who imagines this never happened in the sixties, check out The Rolling Stones shilling for Rice Krispies, below.)



The song is "Calabria," by DJ Enur from Denmark, and features vocals by Natasja Saad, a Danish dancehall/reggae vocalist whose father, it turns out, is from Sudan. I can't claim there is anything remotely "Sudanese" about her singing, which is pure dancehall.

But she seems to be trying to look vaguely Sudanese in this photo, no?

On the other hand, here's Natasja in a more typical "dancehall" look.

Natasja was not just a star in Denmark, but also "the first non-Jamaican reggae/dancehall artist ever to win the Jamaican 'Irie FM Big Break Contest,'" according to wikipedia.

Here's the "official" video, in which Natasja appears. Pretty typical dancehall fare, I guess: one guy in a suit, ogling all the beautiful semi-dressed female bodies.



Natasja was killed in a car wreck in Jamaica in June 2007. "Calabria" was already a global hit by that time; in January 2008, it hit Number One on Billboard's Hot Dance Airplay.

And for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake when it comes to Jamaican patois (as I certainly am), here are the lyrics you hear on the Target ad:

Easy now no need fi go down (2x)
Rock that run that this where we from

Whoop Whoop, when you run come around,
Cu(z) I know you're the talk of the town, yeah

Best shown overall, shiny and tall,
One touch make a gal climb whoever you are,
Brass hat, hatter than fireball
Whoop Whoop!
You not small you no lickle at all