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On wearing branded stuff

I always felt uncomfortable when clothing or wearable accessories have an incredibly large amount of space for their own branding. I usually avoid such stuff when the brand name takes over the product. There are certain brands that do that, every item they produce will have an unreasonably large amount of real estate in the product to their own logo. I thought this was crappy/bad design. But it actually works, as people actually buy the product because it has that ultra visible branding. And people like to show other people that they are wearing something branded. As long as it is subtle and occupies the minimum space it requires, I am okay with it, but anything larger is a complete putoff. At more times than I can remember I have not bought clothes that have too much branding even if I like other attributes (color/texture/cut). I always felt it as odd to have too much branding on myself and somehow I could not explain this feeling of uneasiness, as I could not exactly pinpoint the cause of this discomfort, or put it in words (or both). Recently I read something which resonated perfectly with my own thought process (is there a word for what I have just described: a single word describing the feeling). Anyways here is an entry from a great blog which describes that feeling:

When you see someone sporting a shirt with the manufacturer’s name inscribed in bold letters across the chest, it’s hard to ignore the irony. The wearer is paying the company to promote its name, rather than vice versa. For the privilege of being a walking billboard, the purchaser may have paid many times the normal price of that product.
So next time you wear a pair of shoes with that logo, or a pair of pants with some large initials stitched on them, or a shirt with a brightly painted name, remember, you’re inadvertently advertising the company. The word “advertise” comes to us from Latin advertere meaning “to turn toward” or “to pay attention”. The word “inadvertently” derives from the same source. In other words, by not paying attention, we ARE paying attention.

Now, the aesthetics of branding is something that can have personal preferences. I like mine subtle not garish, better still if it is not at all visible to others. It is like the aesthetical difference between pornography and artistic nude. You know it when you see it.

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