This is especially true with luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada. People are either trying to impress others with fakes, or they’ve actually paid full price to become walking billboards.
Similar thing with iPhone cases that have a cutout for the Apple logo. That’s just hilarious.
Same sentiment here - but with the exception of band t-shirts and other merchandise - where in most cases you do want to show your support for the artist.
I definitely consider a band shirt an ad as well, but wearing one feels like a conscious decision to show your preference for that band and perhaps attract like-minded people. With clothing brands, however, it’s more about signaling wealth and status rather than admiration for the brand itself. You’re wearing an ad and being oblivious to it.
It’s the exact same thing, you just have different goals and values from the other group of people
A band is not the same as a luxury fashion brand.
One is exploited by massive corporations, gets a single digit percentage of the profits they generate, gets known by word of mouth (or T-shirt) among fans, and creates a piece of culture.
The other is a (usually massive) corporation, exploits low paid workers, is a status symbol for the rich and the people who want to appear as rich, and sometimes they make an item that could technically be considered a piece of culture.
Advertising for and/or showing your support for them are very different things that imply different things, for different reasons.
Wearing band merch implies support for their musical stylings, a connection with the creative output of the band, and possibly their world view.
Wearing a logo-festooned piece of couture clothing implies wealth and status, and (often) complicity with sweat shops.
While the two previous paragraphs seem to be similar, because of the first two paragraphs, they are quite different.
The funny thing is that the rich people know that those are 2nd class luxury. The real luxury clothes do not have big logos, they are made with expensive materials like silk, cashmere and other expensive hand crafted fabrics that most people can only afford exceptionally. Most Luxury brand sold their soul for profits by creating those 2nd class that wanna-look rich people can afford, but they still sell their actually valuable products to actually rich clients, without big logos.
P.S.: those 2nd class luxury are made in the same Asian sweatshops as the fast fashion like H&M, while real luxury are made by highly skilled workers, usually in Western countries.
