I've heard several times over the last few months that fully two thirds of the U.S. economy consists of consumer spending.
What nasty little elf stuck this flea in my ear tonight? Why, none other than the J. Crew catalog.
Two models stare out at me. The woman attempts to spear me with a smirk of knowing derision. Her ploy fails and my eyes slide past her ratty blonde hair to the man. It looks like the talent scout had been saddled with the request: "Find a guy who looks like his face has been punched out of a ball of dough, yet still manages to look chiseled." He wears a thin, dark cord around his neck like some vestigial noose.
It's not the two freaks on the cover that caught and held my attention and then teased it out into wispy strands. It's the two words under the J. Crew name. Tucked right under that skeletal font in a calculatedly subtle way is "sultry preppy". What that *&%! is that supposed to mean. When marketing folks smack into a creativity brick wall, they must all fall back on labels. Put a word on it and it suddenly becomes what is denoted or evoked by the words. Labelling is good in a lot of ways. "Poison" means that it is bad. "Toilets" spells relief. What the hell are we supposed to make of "sultry preppy". I would've thought that "J. Crew" would be enough. Maybe the brand has been diluted too much. Maybe they're trying to break into a new demographic that is unfamiliar with the code "J. Crew" and needs to be intrigued and pseudo-informed by "sultry preppy". Hell, maybe J. Crew is changing its name to "sultry preppy" like when Datsun transformed itself into Nissan. For a model year or two, you'd see "Datsun by Nissan" or find a little "Nissan" tucked under the "Datsun". Should I be expecting a Sultry Preppy catalog in the mail? I hope not, if I ever want to be able to look our mailwoman in the eye. Speaking of Nissan, the Japanese are masters at the "word is it" marketing strategy. I would not be surprised to buy a can of Love Go-Go Happy Active Conditioning Water from a vending machine in Tokyo. Don't believe me? Then check this out.
The cover also trumpets that I'll "save" $20 when I buy $80 worth of their stuff. This does not strike me as an opportunity. First, it tells me that they're desperate to move their crap and that the poor folks who opened a vein to afford their products before the sale are SOL. Second, it would take only two cotton paisley shirts at $42 bucks a pop to win that savings. I could replace half my wardrobe for the price of those two shirts. Yes, I would then look like I didn't spend much money on my clothes, but at least I wouldn't look like I shopped at J. Crew.
However, fashion and clothing are not the basest form of capitalism. At least the stuff for which you fork over your dough has some utility. It keeps you warm. It shields you from the sun's carcinogenic rays. It covers your ass and hides the fact that it isn't as perfect as you might want it to be (not as perfect as the model in the catalog with genes and a production crew to make them look they way they need to in order to sell). It may win you a mate by squishing your boobs or broadening your shoulders. You may have just blown 50 bucks on a leather string top that barely hides your tits, but that might be the point.
Soft drinks loll around with fashion in the Stygian depths of capitalist manipulation. A cola will not attract the opposite sex. It will not fill you with joy or with a fashionably extreme attitude towards bungee jumping and lawn mowing. You pay your $1.25 ($4 from the stadium vendor) and you get not a night of torrid, back scratching sex with the product spokesperson of choice, but a measure of flavored water that will nourish you with a quick blood-sugar spike and quench your thirst after you crunch down that bag of flavor-crusted Doritos.
>From where and when I'm sitting, the true evil, the true Ba'al resident on its nether throne, lubricating anal probes with glee rarely witnessed since Middle English had its fundament-fixation heyday, is cable television... but that's a ranting Cant for another day.
Pakeha