Unauthorized Branding Study
Parents were angry to learn that an undercover brand analyst for a major clothing retailer visited Public School Zero last week to conduct field research into student fashion trends without warning. The analyst, Dameon Tricky, posed as a recess monitor and was not identified to students or staff, although he is a college friend of the Principal.
The retailing consultant wandered around Public School Zero attempting to “get the tea” on what the “crumb crushers” are wearing these days and taking pictures without the consent of the kids he believed to be “dope.” Throughout the day, Mr. Tricky was seen consulting his phone for slang terms which he deployed at every possible moment.
“Cringe, I know,” the analyst commented about himself.
According to his detailed report, obtained by outraged parents, the fashion trend in the target demographic niche is for labor-intensive apparel that could spell trouble for retailers.
Here is Tricky’s analysis, redacted to remove the brand identifiers of his clients. Note: the sneakers pictured in his report do not represent actual thrifted sneakers or proposed products. They are not cool.
Prototype Scouting Report
The prototype garment for Brand X should be objectively unattractive but more than just ugly. It should not be appealing. And yet the item should have some cultural interest to older people that cannot be decoded by the young wearer. In other words, the clothing item should have an element of dramatic irony not understood by the owner.
The prototype’s cultural reference should not be as obvious as a band, TV show, or retro brand already sold on Target t-shirts. Perhaps a forgotten company, event, or family reunion. Anything named here will already have lost its cachet, so no examples are given.
History is key. Our target item should appear to be aged by an exacting process requiring great precision. Skip a single step, and your clothing is merely dirty, old, and gross.
Suggested Steps for Aging of Garment Prototype
The ideal item was originally purchased in the late 1980s somewhere other than at a major retailer. How about the gift shop of a national park? It would be great if the place where the item was sold is now out of business but features in a current indie movie and or a classic movie that has recently been revived for ironic appeal. This step is important because the youth believe that clothing was of higher quality in the 1980s and that current manufacturers are trying to cheat them (they’re not wrong).
If it was cool back in the day, it is not cool now. The goal is retro-normcore. Designer goods with high Etsy resale value are a very different trend which is seen as “sus” (short for suspect) among serious high schoolers. Even though the large, heavy clothes the youngsters like come from the era of mainstream designer labels, they see luxury brands as another reinforcement of consumer capitalism and a very negative type of commodity fetishism (as opposed to thrifting, which is a good kind). Added value comes from recycling clothes, not from validating the environmentally destructive fashion cycle promoted by branding.
Ideally, the clothing will have some wear. Enough to give the elusive sensation of the human connection that the current generation of teens feels deprived of. Think of this as the foot-trodding step in wine-making. In this step, there is a positive contagion heuristic whereby contact with another person through an object adds to its value.
The garment should have what cultural theorist Walter Benjamin refers to as an “aura.” There should be a faint hint of death coming off the clothes. The suggestion of a drunk driving accident or rehab visit after a football injury without any actual evidence of them. Whatever story the garment tells is a secret: this is not a charity auction piece that a rich parent buys for its rock star provenance.
Since this vintage item (though please do not call it vintage) is well-made, it will not have the holes and unraveling that current-day clothes immediately acquire after a trip through the wash. And please, none of the fake machine-applied aging (that also started in the 1980s). Something other than the fact that it is out of fashion, oversized and ugly should commemorate the passage of time since the garment was made in a sweatshop of yore.
Perhaps the decal on the front is a little faded, or a button is cracked. Yes, there will be an extra button sewn into the hem since that’s the way things were done back in the day. But better to leave the cracked button on. It was so securely attached that you can still use it even though it’s damaged. The sad button represents the desire to hold on to something lost, which resonates with Gen Z teens with many attachment issues.
The clothing needs to be stored for a length of time before it reenters the market. This is like the aging of wine in barrels, and it cannot be hurried. In order for the clothes to preserve their yeasty human microbiome and yet not spoil, the chemistry must be very precise. Here the human hand is almost always that of a mother. There is a deep resonance in this step which involves the invisible maternal labor that the used clothes economy depends on. Nothing could be more off-grid: surveys of the division of labor in households do not count the work involved in barreling clothes.
Barrelling The Thrift Find
Let us imagine every step of the barrelling process of a premium thrift store find:
A mother asks her child if something still fits and if it is ready to donate or pass on to the hated step-sister’s cousin. This question is deeply hurtful on so many levels. Repeat this step six times.
A mother waits until the child is at camp and removes the old clothes to be donated to a “Limbo Box,” as suggested in a 1983 issue of Good Housekeeping. This box is merely a holding area, usually a repurposed cardboard box, not the final barrel. When the child returns from camp, they are presented with the Limbo Box and asked to pass judgment. The box sits untouched for another month until the mother silently removes it.
On a day when no children are present, the mother sorts through her various children’s Limbo Boxes and her own outdated, stained, or ill-fitting clothes. Certain items are kept for sentimental value.
Our ideal piece of clothing survives this process not just because of the positive association with the road trip to Yosemite or the late Grandma George, who paid for it. Somehow the garment conveys that it has another life to live. It is possible to imagine someone wearing it again? A future grandchild, a war refugee sheltering from an apocalypse, a fashionable young person who sees that it has come back around again (unironically, it is imagined), a grown offspring who wears it out of sentiment after the mother’s death.
The garment is saved and makes its way to the equivalent of an oak barrel: a large snap-top plastic storage container, ideally already a little worn and with the seal slightly broken. Where the top doesn’t close properly, the air is allowed to circulate, and the clothes inside take on some of the dead mouse and termite dust aroma of the attic. These notes mix with the off-gassing from the plastic box and asphalt roofing to form the heart of a unique perfume.
We do not want the garment to be ruined by water, but if there is a leak in the attic that damages some nearby items and imparts a faint biological hint of mold, that only makes it more fun to clean and revive the clothing later.
For the garment to age well, it is imperative that the box is opened every few years. Although this can be scheduled, as Martha Stewart Living Magazine suggested, it is better if it happens organically. (For a discussion of Martha’s storage advice, see: It’s ‘A Good Thing’: The Commodification Of Femininity, Affluence, And Whiteness In The Martha Stewart Phenomenon. Spoiler alert: Martha recommends wrapping fabric in expensive acid-free tissue paper.)
But the ideal second-hand clothing was not tended to by housekeepers and archived by national experts. Instead, perhaps a family member desperately rifles through the attic looking for a Camp Indian Name t-shirt to wear to the camp reunion and comes upon the storage box naturally. A child rummages for items for a Halloween costume, checking in every single box in the storage area and leaving all the tops off. A houseguest who is supposedly looking for the air mattress pump gets a bit curious. The box is opened, and the carefully folded piles are disturbed, preventing acid from accumulating in the folds and leaving stains. A spider is released instead of dying in a sweater pocket and leaving a corpse to mark the fabric. Another time signature is added to the provenance.
The garment can be discovered by an adult child clearing out their dead parents’ house. The garment can be reassessed by a mother cleaning out the attic on a ten-year timetable. The garment can be found by a sibling looking to convert an attic room into a living space. The garment can be removed by a hauling service that collects large loads of donations at a price. The garment can be scouted by a man who is taking on these household tasks as part of a massive generational shift in human behavior.
Fining the Thrift Find
At this point, the ideal item of clothing will have one last step, much like the ancient practice of “fining” wine. Let’s say this item is on the way to GoodWill, but along the way, someone has a last-minute pang of regret and plucks it from the box. That someone could be a mother remembering Homecoming or a fashion-savvy hourly worker who spotted the shirt through the clear plastic box. Maybe the garment gets a wash and enters the modern era. This step should not be too long but just enough to make the garment feel wanted and ready for adoption.
Part of the “fining” process may involve a sojourn in the back of a minivan awaiting the perfect thrift store drop-off day. If, in that time, someone spares a sigh over the garment in the box while unloading groceries or changing a tire, that extra emotion can be felt in the clothing and is added to what Karl Marx calls the alienated labor of all the workers who have touched it.
Acquisition
According to research subjects, it matters who shops with you for this piece of clothing at the thrift store. An old friend group you are reunited with over Thanksgiving vacation, a new friend you don’t quite trust yet who kidnaps you for a day of shopping that turns into something more, your two best friends who are fighting that day but don’t blame you. The presence of other people at the moment you find the garment is part of its karmic value.
What matters less is where you bought this item of clothing. Back in the day, thrifters (who were not called thrifters back then) saw it as high-status to shop at obscure vintage stores (again, don’t call it that) in scary warehouse neighborhoods by the docks. On a good thrifting trip, you would step in a puddle of pee and wonder if the people around you were sex workers or not (though that’s not the term you used). If you were competing with costume designers and drag queens for the perfect hand-sewn 1950s dress, you knew you were in the right place. All that snobbery is gone. The reverse snobbery of rich kids shopping in working-class environments like bare-bones thrift stores compliments the expensive hardware store Carhartt brand work clothes that accessorize hand-me-down looks.
If the old lady at the register who rings you up remembers you from last week and laughs at your taste, then you know you have the perfect item of clothing.
Reaction To The Report
On receiving the brand analyst’s report, parents at Public School Zero pointed out that human test subject paperwork was not filled out. The analyst replied that his work was not scientific in nature but rather about “vibing” with “his homies.” In fact, he explained, he only talked to one clique of students at the school, the ones trading vinyl records and Betamax tapes in the boiler room.
Parents retorted that the webpage of the analyst’s consultancy firm promises “data-driven results for maximizing profit.”
“Welp,” the analyst texted the head of the PTA. “In return for the data I collected at Public School Zero, I will donate a box of my old t-shirts to the school’s annual White Elephant sale.”
In the meantime, the consultant directed parents to his personal website, where he sells Camp Indian Name t-shirts and other unbranded apparel. You can buy the Camp Indian Name t-shirt at the link below. Because that is not another example of self-serving consumer capitalism. /S (that means sarcastic).
Also Read: The Gamification of Invisible Labor