The Children of Marx & Coca-Cola

Have we reached peak irony in fashion or is there something deeper at play?

Johnny Vandal
Aug 24, 2017 · 14 min read
A SERIES OF CREATIVE ESSAYS BY JOHN HENRY PITTS, III

A few years ago, a New York Times op-ed challenged my generation (read: Millennials) with the task of bringing back earnestness into our cultural expression. While I may too express a similar “malaise of irony” as the author does, I will admit that the challenges of selling earnestness are a lot more diffucult that many would assume.

While irony, the five letter word, may be trading at its highest value in regards to fashion and culture, there sadly is little irony in fashion-darling Demna Gvasalia’s eponymous label VETEMENTS recent Saks Fifth Avenue window store display that mocks the idea of “fashion” by throwing a pile of previously worn clothes into the glitzy windows for European tourists and employees of 30 Rock to see on a daily basis.

This would’ve made for a hilarious Jenna Maroney & Tracy Jordan sketch.

Or maybe there is irony in the same premiere luxury retailer making headlining news for being potentially dumped by its recent corporate conglomerate for not selling enough Emilio Pucci designer dresses to the housewives of Chinese real estate moguls. (Editorialized sarcasm inserted on my part~)

In VETEMENTS’ defense, the clothes were all gathered and sourced by Saks employees to be donated to the RewearABLE Foundation, a green clothing initiative that benefits adults with developmental disabilities. But one has to ask, are the optics on this whole thing 20/20? Or is this yet another un-fashionable PR stunt steeped in the Pepsi-cola, Kendall Jenner sugar water of white privelege?

Similarly to Kathyrn Bigelow’s attention grabbing film DETROIT, the question has to be asked if the value of such a dramatic statement lies more in flattering the creator . . . and less so the beneficiary? (Because honestly I’m not sure how much value can be created by spending millions of dollars to artistically re-enact again the daily, brutal assault on black americans by institutional powers. We got enough videos of that on YouTube.)

Perhaps irony is the ultimate condition of white privelege (“Imagine like how “cool” it would be if The Terminator or The Trump ran for office?!”), where we have spent generation after generation creatively assaulting the cultural institutions that govern our existence to the point that there is simply nothing left to rebel against?

As I type this I am re-watching an old episode of Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men, a show that elevated the struggle between truth and irony to high art. It was probably of no accident that Weiner chose to end the seminal TV series with a shot of Don Draper meditating outside a 70s hippie commune, staring out over the Southern California coastline, no doubt on the brink of conjuring what would soon be one of America’s most memorable advertising campaigns.

I’m sure the exectives at Pepsi sought to recreate that similar magic with their recent Kendal Jenner-starring, message-driven advertorial, while unfortunately ignoring the 40 or so years that have passed between now and their competitor Coca-Cola’s 1971 cultural gambit of an advertising coup. A bunch of lily-white daughters and sons of WWII veterans we definitely are not. For us millennials, the idea of monotheistically “rallying” the country around a common foe hasn’t happened since Lebron James decided to take his talents to South Beach.


Burberry, J. Crew, Calvin Klein, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ralph Lauren. These are all brands that have struggled to maintain their financial foothold in the new millennium, and the common thread between most of these brands is their “heritage” being that of an affluent indulgence, ulimately achored by a strong sense of Western European bourgeois cultural “identity.”

There are more than a few similarities between how both long-standing fashion houses and sovereign countries operate. The idea of a shared heritage, along with a codified set of beliefs about how its people should govern and express themselves. More importantly, both thrive on the eventual acknowledgement that young blood (often of a 1st-generational, immigrant status) is required to translate and convey these cultural codes to a new generation.

Is there ulimately much difference between America’s Barack Obama and Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing? Hedi Slimane deeming the name Saint Laurent more succinct without its primary namesake? Demna Gvasalia re-imagining the logo of a failed American democratic candidate into his first major designer collection? Kanye West liberally incorporating the confederate flag while people riot in the streets over its very existence?

We could pretend that social politics and fashion are unrelated bedfellows, but reality would say otherwise. The global referredum on Western European bourgeois values is in full throttle, and the brands that are failing to realize this are the ones who still believe politics and fashion (or sports, or music, or movies) are unrelated. Feel free to see the PR fallout from Brazilian soccer wunderkind Neymar’s record-shattering $263 million transfer fee from FC Barcelona to Qatari-funded Paris Saint-Germain.

Take that Lebron James~

What the brands above have quickly learned is that you have to be willing to give people their own firebrand, because if you don’t, they will find their own, and most will be quite horrified with the subsequent results.

#fakenews


The Wu-Tang Clan. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Spice Girls. These are all relics of the past, because artifice, which ulimately reads as “trying to hard” is currently out of vogue. Today, the story of Peter Parker is more captivating than the story of Spiderman. The struggle of Bruce Wayne is more interesting than the story of Batman. The mind of Mark Zuckerberg? More valuable than the code of The Facebook.

Or perhaps it is of no coincidence that the world’s most valued company is named after a simple piece of fruit? Perhaps Jobs’ greatest artistic catalyst, like Demna Gvasalia, was simply in trying to negotiate his internal cultural conflicts between Eastern and Western traditions. Truth vs. Irony.

Financial scholar and author Nassim Nicholas Taleb would probably agree that “sophistication” is the great enemy of a healthy, robust system. Even the most sub-Saharan, witch-doctor approved rituals can have some value if approached with the right combination of speculation and open-mindedness. The mistake however that we in the West unfortuately made is in bringing with us a good number of those “witch-doctor” rituals while adding on a thick layer of sophistication, believing we had somehow “evolved” past those days of unrefined scientific illiteracy.

Going back to the idea of white privilege, we have to be honest with the reality that all that white, post-war born Americans had to express was rebellion. It was obvious that the proverbial fossil fuel of cultural energy would eventually run dry, especially since every color and shape of rebellion had now been codified by Corporate America at large. What is left from the boiled-down reduction that is our cultural melting pot but irony?

For the more affluent members of our society, I call it The Lena Dunham Problem. In today’s market, one’s God-given name is your only currency, but if you are born into privilege, what creative brushes are available to you to paint with? Asking a person of privilege to write and create as someone who isn’t is the equivalent of asking a zebra to act as a thorough-bred race horse. It could try, but the results would be extremely awkward and embarrassing, much like the later half of Lena Denham’s aptly titled HBO series.

The fashion industry, at its core, is the $5000 cashmere-woven, Confederate flag symbol of privilege and affluence, and the industry could quite possibly be throwing its final Hail Mary in its attempt negotiate its own internal conflict between opulence and authenticity, truth and irony, rebellion and austerity.


While listening to local radio station KROQ play memorable musical hits from the 90’s, I was struck with a realization: What made the 90’s so vivid and memorable for a lot of people was that it ultimately combined the artistic rebelliousness that America first learned it had a taste for in the 70's with the polished decadence of the 80’s. The novelty of nouveau technology had worn off, and for a brief moment in modern history, society was comfortable playing around with million dollar toys with little residual guilt.

But something happened. Reality happened. And such excesses began to seem too excessive. One could argue that it took the various creative classes well over a decade to become comfortable working within such a new, restrictive template. If the previous generations’ amps “went to 11,” then this generation’s went to -8. The game became less about how much you could create, and more so how much you could negate. How much you could expose for what little value it ulimately had.

“Expulsion for the sake of expulsion,” to borrow a line from Robert Redford’s Quiz Show, a film that explored the fixing and federal investigation of popular 1950s game show Twenty-One.

One could say that all of us, regardless of socio-economic background, are still suffering from the spectre of affluent guilt. It comes across in how we market, how we brand, how we communicate. I look at my living room floor and stare at a designer rug from the New York cult brand Supreme. I wonder, what would that company be called if it was founded in 2017 instead of 1994? Anti Social Social Club? I Love Ugly? Fear of God? A-COLD-WALL?

Or VETEMENTS . . . which simply means “clothes” in French.


Investor and billionaire Warren Buffett once said that it takes 20 years to build a reputation, but all of 5 minutes to ruin it. As much as most fashion designers would hope for their work to remain at the forefront of the public’s attention, it is the names and the lives of these venerable young men and women who ultimately drive consumer interests.

Perhaps from this perspective there is little difference between left and right, affluent or street, high or low. There is only the individual and the institution, and it is safe to say that we are living in the age of the “anti-institution” as far as fashion and politics are concerned. While Ivy League business school experts are funneling millions into creating the perfect “brand,” millions of consumers a fleeing away from even the very idea, rewarding only the companies whose founding kings and queens are lined up on the front lines like Jon Snow and Danerys Targareon from Game of Thrones.

Ask yourself this simple question: When consumers pay hundreds to thousands of dollars of their hard-earned income on iPads and MacBook Pros, are they buying into Apple’s legacy . . . or Steve Jobs’?

And let us not forget, for all of the media noise celebrities like Lebron James and Kanye West have created over the years, the most valuable name in athleticwear is still a 54-year-old cigar smoking, former NBA point guard who had a tendency of sticking out his tongue whenever he crossed over opponents.

One would think that inviduals like Warren Buffett and Jeremy Scott wouldn’t have much in common, but I would fathom that there is more than just coincidence in these two midwestern American men building their respective business empires incorporating long-standing brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Kraft Foods into their respective portfolios.

In the film The Founder, a Batman-like origin story about fast-food giant McDonald’s, a near-perfect scene occurs between characters Ray Croc and Dick McDonald, played by Michael Keaton and Nick Offerman respectively:

Ray Kroc: It’s not just the system, Dick. It’s the name. That glorious name, McDonald’s. It could be, anything you want it to be… it’s limitless, it’s wide open… it sounds, uh… it sounds like… it sounds like America. That’s compared to Kroc. What a crock. What a load of crock. Would you eat at a place named Kroc’s? Kroc’s has that blunt, Slavic sound. Kroc’s. But McDonald’s, oh boy. That’s a beauty. A guy named McDonald? He’s never gonna get pushed around in life.

Dick McDonald: That’s clearly not the case.

Ray Kroc: So, you don’t have a check for 1.35 million dollars in your pocket?

I don’t think people have a pre-natural aversion to “brands” or “corporations” but I do think people are both consciously and subconcsiouly aware of several shifts that have occured. First, the level of entry into creating a “brand” is at an all-time historical low. In previous generations, in order to create a business, you had to go through several real world gatekeepers. You needed permits, real estate and business licenses. But now, all anyone really needs is a decent laptop (or smartphone) and an internet connection.

We haven’t lost trust in our institutions because they’ve somehow become evil and corrupt (although some have). We lost trust in our institutions because we could no longer see, hear and touch them. Before you would walk into a store and greet the owner and the workers who had probably been working there for years. Now, you click upon pixels that have been dynamically created to reflect what websites you most favorably visited in the last 72 hours.

Tattoo artist Sasha Masiuk modeling popular brands including Vetements, Gosha Rubchinskiy & Raf Simons

Denma Gvaslia making a DHL t-shirt wasn’t an blatant act of irony. It was the truth of our time in its most brutally honest form. Amazon.com will account for over half of all ecommerce sales by 2021. And who will be the emotional touchpoint for all those transactions? Jeff Bezos? The day laborers/robots packing the boxes? The author/designer of the products?

No. It will be the man who delivers the package to your door step. That is who will become the emotional touchpoint for 21st centure commerce. Not the store owner. Not the salesperson. But the delivery man.

Reflecting upon it some more, it may not be that creatives are struggling within a more restrictive template. It’s possible that we’re struggling to live up to the inflated commercial expectations of the 20th century while still working within a completely exhausted framework.

Culturally speaking, we’re still treating the recession and financial crises of the early aughts as mere stumbling blocks towards a greater way of capitalism. But reality would say otherwise. The inconvenient truth that very few of us want to acknowledge is that several (if not most) of these cultural expressions were never meant to be multi-billion dollar industries.

The McDonald’s brothers. Kurt Cobain. Alexander Mcqueen. These people did not create with a future IPO in mind. Greed and money have become so much apart of our everyday discourse that we don’t even question its place anymore. As America slowly began to produce less and less, our cultural exports took on greater and greater economic value. Prior to the 80s, very few became rich from something as frivolous as fashion, music or, heaven forbid, the news. Now we’ve made rockstars out of people who simply poke satirical jabs at the banal happenings of the day.

Sorry Jon Stewart~


The individuals above aren’t creating brands. They’re starting converstations.

They are no different from Richard and Maurice McDonald, standing in front of their struggling restaurant business, wondering how to negotiate a quickly changing American landscape? One where technology has transformed how people interact and spend their leisurely time. One where the old model of business no longer fits the quickly changing demographic of whom one does business with.

To be more succinct, I’m sure there was a point in western history where the thought of a woman wearing high heels with denim, skinny jeans would have seemed anathema. Or perhaps wearing that same outfit to the office with a designer t-shirt and expensive blazer? And maybe she has a nose piercing or carefully placed tattoo to remind herself of her indigenous heritage?

Let’s be even more modern. What about the young man, who has never even so much as succesfully attempted to crossover an opponent on the hardwood floor, now taking great care and pride in lacing up his 54-year old, cigar smoking, former NBA player-endorsed basketball shoes while going on a date with his wife and kids?

As somebody who grew up only wearing Air Jordan’s when I was in full-team uniform on a hardwood, freshly-polished indoor basketball court . . . . that sh*t blows my “I can name every player who played for the Chicago Bulls from 91–98” mind.

But that’s what true visionaries see. I’m not going to say that they were not concerned with making money, but they don’t see Wall Street, International Conglomerates and Silicon Valley venture capitalists as the Super Mario Bros. “warp card” to the final level of financial riches. They see their business as it should be, as a conversation with the people of their community.

Us looking at their creative decision-making process is ultimately us looking at the reflection that is our quickly-changing cultural landscape . . . and it is freaking us the f*ck out. It is of no coincidence that an artist like Andy Warhol came to fame during the same time period that America’s most beloved president and most beloved civil-rights leader were both shot and killed during a temultuous decade that came to define the future of modern society.

Prestigious fashion houses and soverign nations. From Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton to the United States of America, the ideas that were codified generations ago demand to be re-interpreted and renegotiated so that they continue to serve, embellish and empower the people on whose backs these institutions would cease to exist.

For those of us in the west and those of us in the east — the greatest sin that any of us can make is in forgetting where we come from. But the greatest tragedy is being unwilling to challenge the status quo of our social institutions. It is most certainly true that every man and woman’s story deserves to be told, because “society” does not exist in books. It doesn’t exists in gaudy, fancy buildings. And it sure as hell doesn’t exist because the powers that be simply proclaim its existence . . . or lack thereof.

Society only exists within the space between You and I. Us and Them. All we can ever be asked to do is to continue that negotiation between What Was, What Is and What Will Be. The East and The West. The Affluent and the Impoverished.

The Truth. And The Ironic.

(Because seriously if that don’t explain what the f*ck Drake is doing half the time, I don’t know what does~)

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade