Walk with me: it was all a *meme*
idk man just thinking about spectacle
Sometimes it’s a juice. Other times it’s a celebrity mimicking the way celebrities are captured. Other times it’s selfie-style creative on fast fashion brand websites. And sometimes, it’s even a scheduled…looting.
Let’s take a journey on the meta-ness of it all, because being close to the thing feels like having it now.
Walk with me…
the juice no one could shut up about – Balenciaga x Erewhon – following in the tradition of the smoothie-industrial complex; if you can’t own the thing, you can own a piece of it – an extension of accessories, fragrance, makeup…the way brands have always done
…Because you could be her.
And the celebrity could be in on the joke too…they have internet access! Stars! They’re just like us:
ASAP Rocky + the paparazzi, for Bottega (a brand that quit social media, is still ubiquitous on there, and is now using a celeb to get the eyeballs…on social), his caption says it best:
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A FUNNY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHOTOGRAPHERS AND CELEBRITIES. EVEN DOWN TO THE RIGHTS AND THE USAGE OF PHOTOS, AND THE TABLOID HUSTLE, THERE’S ALWAYS SEEMED TO BE A DISCONNECTION BETWEEN FAMOUS PEOPLE AND THE PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO FOLLOW & FILM THEM. WHILE CERTAIN CELEBRITIES CALL PAPARAZZI ON THEMSELVES, OTHER CELEBRITIES MIGHT GET CONFRONTATIONAL WITH PHOTOGRAPHERS. WHILE A VERY SMALL FEW, SUCH AS MYSELF, DON’T MIND, AS LONG AS THEY POST THE GOOD ANGLES, OF COURSE.
SO, IN GOOD LIGHT OF GOOD ANGLED PHOTOS, MYSELF AND THE CREATIVE MINDS @ #BOTTEGAVENETA THOUGHT IT WOULD BE GENIUS TO BRIDGE THAT GAP AND UTILIZE MY EVERY DAY LIFESTYLE TYPE OF PHOTOS TAKEN BY CANDID PHOTOGRAPHERS WHILE I DO MY EVERYDAY THING. SO THIS SERVES LESS AS A CAMPAIGN AND MORE AS A CREATIVE TRIFECTA BROUGHT TO YOU BY BOTTEGA VENETTA’S MATTHIEU BLAZY, MYSELF A$AP ROCKY, AND THE TALENTED TABLOID STYLE PHOTOGRAPHERS INVOLVED. CHEERS & THANK U
Which reminded me of…
This week, Yeezy chose to roll out Season 6 on his wife Kim Kardashian West. She wore 16 outfits over the span of two days in Calabasas with a clique of paparazzi trailing her every move. She went to the 7/11, she ate some soft serve ice cream, and she popped into a FedEx. Kim tweeted every look—or at least the ones she could find in her phone—and the Internet lit up. Once Yeezy Season 6 fever hit a social media high, the brand went on to release all its products online for pre-order. It was the simplest, most pain-free reveal and rollout Yeezy ever executed. (Vogue)
and then I thought about this…
Because isn’t that what we do? Consume. One of my dear friends once unironically said “I am a consumer,” in a consumer interview and…
Behold, the Pyer Moss 10th anniversary ‘looting’ sales event. An uncanny commentary on looting sprees, an AI robot-woman narrator… Buy a ticket, get a minute to put as many clothes on your body as possible, and run out. But the catch is: you can’t post/capture content. If you’re in line for a sample sale and no one sees it on your IG story, were you ever there?
which reminds me of…
The infamous Telfar ‘reverse sale’…
…and the Alexander Wang 2016 Spring Breakers-y campaign:
Where am I taking you on this walk?
The cultural currency of the day is being meta. And it has been for a while. This is not a novel insight. But to what extent are we being fed the same stuff? Don’t we deserve better?
Because… remember when the Internet was a bunch of websites and now it’s just social platforms with screenshots of all the other platforms?
We create digital culture and have it sold back to us
Do brands even have identities of their own…and do they even matter when what cuts through is the noise is… photoshoots that are nearly the same in art direction, referencing different old paparazzi shots + a juice collab
Do we care?
Does a brand have an identity when the identity is trolling?
Ana Andjelic said it best in 2018:
The problem is, trolls don’t have an identity of their own. They are free-riders on the identities of others and capitalize on their instant recognizability and familiarity. And it’s a genius shortcut if there ever was one. Take the identity of say, IKEA, DHL, or whoever makes that New York City tote bag, and ridicule it (and those who buy it) by making a $1,950 version of it.
As a business model, it works — and as a brand-building model, it’s virtually bulletproof. Being reactionary and snarky means that you never need to come up with anything innovative or original. Ironic brands are seemingly beyond criticism. Everything they do is for the chuckle or the smirk.
And while we can’t shut up about the trend cycle being faster than ever it seems like everything we have to offer is rinse and repeat, I mean haven’t we been wearing ‘90s fashion’ since 2014? A prescient take from Kurt Andersen in 2012:
Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.
Which brings us to an evergreen banger, The Society of the Spectacle:
“Just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from being to having, post-industrial culture has moved that focus from having to appearing.”
And that’s really where we are, isn’t it? When it’s all about getting the look, the perfect dupe, succeeding is blending into the thing that’s repeatable and recognizable. Isn’t that the reason for the rise of e-book creators that promise they’ll get you rich if you just buy their book, the ‘7 TikTok hooks to repeat’, and the ubiquity of GRWM//DITL content? We can’t own the house but boy can we shop someone’s Amazon wishlist and pretend we do.
How can loud irony and quiet luxury live side by side?
Not to sound all…
But just thinking about it.
Here’s what you had to say when asked about how you feel about brands being meta. Via a totally #official IG Stories question button:
“It’s one thing to be self-aware, but too many brands are trying too hard to be ‘in’ on the joke” – Rob Engelsman
“Nah.” – Raihan
“Lol.” – Amy Fraser
Anyways. Sound off in the comments and all that.
This is a new format for me!
LMK if you’re into it – this is a live view into the way my brain works and makes connections and thoughts. Not sure if a semi-regular aggregation of links type dispatch is my style or the most productive thing, but I am enjoying writing newsletters semi-frequently.
I think I’ll call this series Walk With Me :)
The ironic, meta brand strategy makes sense when earnest "purpose driven" brands largely struggled to be true to their mission when their purported mission was anything other than "sell more stuff". It feels like very few of the authentic, do good, human-voiced brands survived post-Covid or post-IPO. I can count my faves on one hand. So a legitimate distrust of earnest brands led to the rise of snarky ones? I'm not sure which is worse!
I love this format!