Label craze: Designer’s overstepping their usual boundaries

In our consumer driven society, where labels are everything, the designer of a product is sometimes the primary reason behind a purchase decision. Attach a highly regarded name to anything, and it sells—it is an instant formula for success. This week, I chose to explore the web, looking to reputable blogs for further information on this subject. During this search, I learned about two cases in which fashion designers recently expanded their brands and attached their names to merchandise outside their normal fields of expertise. Below are my comments and the links to these articles, which discuss recent trends in designer branding. At Tech.Blorge.com, Arnold Zafra covers the launch of a new Samsung cell phone that is designed by and branded with the Giorgio Armani name. In the second article, found at the Daily Mail's website, fashion writer David Hayes explores the recent trend of top label designers introducing lines for children. As my comments on these sites indicate, it seems that adding a high fashion name to anything from cell phones to children’s clothes is enough to convince people to pay top dollar for the validation that comes with the brand.

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/09/23/samsung-and-armani-team-up-for-mobile-phone-and-lcd-tvs/


At first thought, teaming up an Italian fashion designer with an electronics manufacturer seems like a bizarre match up, but with the label craze in today’s society, it actually makes a surprising amount of sense. The first benefit of this pairing is the aesthetic element of the phone’s design. A renowned designer such as Giorgio Armani is respected for of his superb taste, and presumably would carry over his talent into mobile design. As this article mentions, Samsung was lagging behind their competition in terms of the visual appeal in their designs. There seems no better way to reverse this tendency than to enlist a globally esteemed design authority to construct a new mobile model. The second benefit for Samsung is that attaching the name “Giorgio Armani” gives the phone instant value and credibility because of the high-quality, high-class associations with the label. Having an expensive brand name associated with the phone allows Samsung to charge a higher price, because people know owning an esteemed brand indicates a luxurious lifestyle—even if it’s a clothing designers name on a cell phone. The phone was launched on Monday, fulfilling its pricey expectations, and selling for about 650 EURO, or about 915 US dollars. I suppose if people express themselves through the expensive clothing they wear, a designer phone can make a statement just as powerful.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=476409&in_page_id=1879

People who spend money on designer clothing often do so to validate their success. In the same way an expensive sports car proves one has made it big, wearing expensive clothes is a way to essentially, put a paycheck on display. This is not to say that the allure of beautifully crafted clothing is not a contributing factor in the purchase, but on some level, it’s a good feeling to be able to afford something that signifies prosperity. While that logic is understandable, this new movement towards parents adorning their children in high fashion designers is a twisted way of showing aspiration, and can be detrimental to a child’s perception of materialism. I was shocked and appalled, while reading this article, when I heard the absurd amount of money wasted on kids who are both unaware and unappreciative of the price of their clothes—not to mention the fact they will grow out of them within a year or so. In addition, dressing a child in designer labels at a young age, sets the norm that these type of clothes are standard; so as they grow older, they will expect nothing less than designer clothes to be handed to them. I do not intend to assert that luxury items should never be splurged on, however, designer clothes should be appreciated and valued—something that can’t be done by a child who has never endured the toils of hard work.