When Women’s Wear Daily features ‘Cheap Week’ as a branded theme, that’s a sure sign of the times. Rosemary Feitelberg writes Frugality in Fashion Amidst Economic Slump:

While restrained spending has always gone hand-in-hand with a shaky economy, now, more than ever, Americans are bragging about their rock-bottom fashion finds.

Really? I’ve been doing that with my friends since the 80s. Apparently cheap chic has gone fully mainstream. And ‘fast fashion’ outlets are all too happy to provide alternatives to the traditional department store outlets.

Forever 21 - Times Square flagship store from Sugar Rock Catwalk

While the average American may not be glued to London’s FTSE or Japan’s Nikkei, he or she is more inclined to acknowledge the reality of his or her own financial situation. At Forever 21’s new 90,000-square-foot Times Square flagship Friday with her teenage daughter, Donna Georgio said she is definitely shopping at stores such as Marshalls and TJ Maxx more than Bloomingdale’s like she used to. “Part of it is due to clothes being too expensive and I’m afraid of losing my job or getting into debt,” she said. “I’m 50 years old. I’ve had all the clothes and have gone from having Audis and BMWs to a Volkswagen. My priorities have changed. But I can still hook it up and look good.”

What is interesting to note is that nowhere in this article does Feitelberg mention, even in passing, the essentially slave labor necessary in this race to the rock bottom price. Not that designer labels are above exploitation, mind you. It’s just that, ironically enough, the big names have been the target of enough high profile anti-sweatshop campaigns to force them to implement at least minimal supervision of their subcontractors. But the Forever 21 customer is highly unlikely to care about much beyond getting that trendy dress for $12.

Consumers have plenty of reasons to be frugal and will keep trading down and saving money for years to come, according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a New York-based retail and consulting banking firm. “People are looking for value and the consumer mind-set has changed forever. All you have to do is look at what’s going on with Mango, Zara and H&M [financially],” he said. “The most dramatic example is Japan. I have a home there. It used to be the biggest place for luxury [shopping]. Everything has changed there because the standard of living is declining and that’s what is going on here.”

W. David Marx noted this shift in Japan back in 2008 at Businessoffashion.com in a blog post titled Japanese Women: From Luxury to Yuru Nachu:

Just five years ago, the Japanese luxury market looked like it was headed for an era of permanent dominance. The economy had finally started to uptick after a long decade of recession in Japan. In came a relatively-unprecedented New Rich — mostly, internet millionaires and employees at foreign investment banks — who ushered a wealth-obsessed zeitgeist into the popular culture. Conspicuous consumption was in.

As an analogue to this movement, female style gravitated away from the street fashion of the 1990s to a style called O-nee-kei (“big sister style”), popular among mainstream females in their early twenties. The O-nee-kei girls were convinced that the only chance at future happiness was a rich suitor, and the bibles of this fashion movement — magazines CanCam and JJ — told them exactly how to dress in order to snag a man in a decent income bracket. The styling was mostly cute office conservative, but instead of designer fashion like in the 1990s, the clothes came mostly from cheap domestic labels. Handbags, however, needed to be from Louis Vuitton or Gucci, and jewelry meant Tiffany, Bulgari, and Cartier. The bling was all in the accesssories.

These O-nee-kei girls would not think for a microsecond about Parisian mode. In fact, these girls started to openly preach a love of “real clothes” — a term to describe inexpensive, trendy apparel from exclusively Japanese companies, mostly designed by young women the same age as customers. Although CanCam‘s focus on looking “classy” to attract rich men kept the luxury handbag on the menu, the “real clothes” rhetoric of “unreal foreign fashion labels vs. real Japanese brands” offered omens of wide-scale luxury rejection.

Ah ha. Keep the easily recognizable status symbol, but skimp on the quality couture clothing that the men they were chasing didn’t care about, anyway. What happens, however, when the supply of rich young men dries up with a global recession? While some girls just step up their game, all too many decide to play a different one.

Yuru Nachu style featured on Businessoffashion.com. W.David Marx photograph

With the less robust economy and a visible rise of underpaid young workers, the New Rich Pageant of 2003 has gone out with a whimper, making the princess-y O-nee-keilook appear somewhat shallow. In this recession-adjusted cultural atmosphere, everyone wants inexpensive, low pressure, and comfortable clothing. This year has thus seen the rise of the Yuru Nachu (“relaxed, natural”) style, which could be a long-term challenge to previous luxury attitudes. This “fashion ethic” is based on relaxed silhouettes, muted colours, and layering organic textiles. From loose “Bohemian” flower print dresses to off-white linen tunics, young women from all taste and consumer subcultures have embraced some variation of this fashion look.

Although Yuru Nachu reflects many of the global industry’s spring trends, the look has succeeded wildly thanks to its ability to connect with young women’s need for a less consumerist take on fashion. Out with the exclusive leather handbag, and in with the $12 “eco bag.”

When the cheap canvas tote replaces the Louis Vuitton as the anti-status status symbol, something is afoot. Back to WWD:

“If you look back at the boom years, a lot of that spending was accessed through credit. Debt-fueled affluence or aspirational consumerism is going to be challenged to return and is not about to get us back to where we were.”

Needless to say, he is not counting on shoppers to start spending more freely anytime soon. “From a big-picture macroeconomic standpoint, we are expecting a very sluggish recovery in the economy that is probably not conducive to consumers waking up one day feeling a lot better about everything and willing to spend again,” said Tuhy

This is bad news for big name ‘luxury’ brands that depended on the aspirational consumer to provide the bread and butter by overpaying for logo laden bags cranked out in third world factories.

“Conspicuous consumption is not very chic right now,” Christopher said. That behavior is counter to the Veblen effect, named after economist Thorstein Veblen, who first noted that decreasing the value of high-end goods only decreases people’s interest in buying them, he added.

Obviously Veblen wasn’t around long enough to witness The Gilt Groupe website. What’s different about now versus Veblen’s Victorian age is that the ‘democratization of fashion’ has 21st century ‘aspirational’ (translate - can’t really afford it but buy it anyway) consumers going after the same luxury brands as the actually rich, which in the long run turns into a cannibalistic effect of sorts. Decreasing the price doesn’t necessarily increase the interest - for it’s safe to assume that, by definition, far more people are interested in these items than can afford them - but instead increases the accessibility of the brand. Which will, in time, decrease the interest of the truly rich who establish the status of the item in the first place.

Consumers are kidding themselves if they think fast fashion distinguishes them from the masses, said Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.” Topshop may have certain status for being London based and the same might be said of the Swedish chain H&M, but the reality is that neither is all that different from Wal-Mart, she said. “Frugal chic is kind of a label in itself now. But I would argue that we are deluding ourselves. These goods are mass produced, sold all over the world, available to everyone and they don’t involve a lot of creativity,” Shell said. “Truly fashionable people are able to go to thrift stores to find something stylish.”

Yes! Count me amongst the truly fashionable, then.

Of course the corporate media moguls are going to keep the spotlight on the Tea Party movement; the more they reinforce the meme that government is the one taking liberty, not protecting it, then that much less attention can be paid to the real issue - the consolidated corporate giants that control the mass market of consumer goods directed at the middle class that so many of these ‘activists’ are freaked out about losing. Don Monkerud writes for Counterpunch, Tea Partiers Should Be Picketing the Corporations That Dominate Our Lives:

Tom Tomorrow

“Those who control our corporations managed an Orwellian achievement to redefine the use of brute corporate force as ‘market forces,’” says Lynn. “We still believe in a consumer utopia, but we have an illusion of choice. Corporate powers manipulate our decision-making and direct us to buy certain goods at certain prices.”

Institutional power shifted to Wall Street and large financial institutions. Today a small elite runs corporations to serve themselves as they concentrate their power. Some Americans are waking up to the reality of their situation, but Congress lacks the will to regulate corporate power.

…Although some Americans worry about the growing power of the government, few understand the real power that controls their everyday lives.

Private monopolies determine the brand of breakfast cereal we eat, the type of car we drive, where we bank, the medical treatment we receive, the fashion of our clothes, and the kind of toothbrush we use, in addition to the beer we drink, the health insurance we buy, and what we feed our pets.

…”People say we have an uncontrolled free market but we have the opposite,” says Barry C. Lynn, senior fellow at the New American Foundation. “What we have today is a laissez faire American version of feudalism; a private government in the form of private corporations run by private individuals who consolidated power to govern entire activities within our political economy.”

…

Denise Dorrance comic

In America we tend to hold on tightly to this myth of a ‘classless society.’ Talk of status and reaching for it is taboo; rarely will an individual list ’signaling status to others’ as motivation for purchasing a luxury good (yeah sure, it’s allll about the quality…). British epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson isn’t afraid to broach the class issue, and explains the fashion/status connection pretty clearly in his interview with Brooke Jarvis:

Louis Vuitton, classic status symbol

Status competition causes problems all the way up; we’re all very sensitive to how we’re judged. Think about Robert Frank’s books Luxury Fever or Falling Behind, or the great French sociologist Bourdieu—they show how much of consumption is about status competition. People spend thousands of pounds on a handbag with the right labels to make statements about themselves. In more unequal countries, people are more likely to get into debt. They save less of their income and spend more. They work much longer hours—the most unequal countries work perhaps nine weeks longer in a year.

If you grow up in an unequal society, your actual experience of human relationships is different. Your idea of human nature changes. If you grow up in a consumerist society, you think of human beings as self-interested. In fact, consumerism is so powerful because we’re so highly social. It’s not that we actually have an overwhelming desire to accumulate property, it’s that we’re concerned with how we’re seen all the time. So actually, we’re misunderstanding consumerism. It’s not material self-interest, it’s that we’re so sensitive. We experience ourselves through each other’s eyes—and that’s the reason for the labels and the clothes and the cars.

“We experience ourselves through each other’s eyes.” We are conscious about how others perceive us, especially strangers who have no other point of reference other than our outward appearance.

This is about the psychosocial effects of inequality—the impact of living with anxiety about our feelings of superiority or inferiority. It’s not the inferior housing that gives you heart disease, it’s the stress, the hopelessness, the anxiety, the depression you feel around that. The psychosocial effects of inequality affect the quality of human relationships. Because we are social beings, it’s the social environment and social relationships that are the most important stressors.

When Simon Doonan, Creative Director of Barney’s, (one of the handful places where fashion forward designers have access to the rare slice of edgy yet wealthy clientele that can afford their pieces), the extremely influential guy who the rest of the fashion industry knows to pay attention to… when Simon Doonan declares The Death of Trends then it’s a zeitgeist shift worth pondering. There are still going to be shapes and norms that we collectively select (whether you follow them or rebel against them) but I see this as more of a backlash against the accelerated cycle of the spending on disposable clothing hamster wheel and a coalescing around an iconic vocabulary of modernist elements; classics that are tweaked and revised with the times.

photo by Roxanna Lowit for the Jewish Daily Forward

Doonan writes for the Observer:

Fashion is no longer icy and aloof. Fashion is a massive, forgiving, ambiguous melting pot where people and trends can dig in their Lee Press-On nails and hang on for years and years without ever being out.

He goes on to list a few examples:

Uggs. Style pundits may have broadcast their out-ness for years, but last week’s snowy streets were packed with Uggs-sporting fashion plates.

There is a delicious personal irony in this example given that back in 2004 Uggs were cited in a lengthy discussion in Fashion Theory class as an example of trendy for trendy’s sake. Even though this trend might have been initiated by celebrity sitings, (so awesome to slip on between takes on outdoor shoots) could it be that they’ve had staying power because those who bought them discovered they were super comfortable and well made and lasted forever?

Skinny jeans. Despite their supposed out-ness, they have managed to become a fashion staple, especially when tucked into riding boots. Tally ho!

Key term, “Fashion Staple.” So they became ‘in’ a few years ago as the bootcut finally reached mass market saturation, but could it be that one fashion staple was traded in for another? Could it be that people want fashion staples?

Filson clothing, used as an example of 'American Workwear' trend on brand consultancy blog "We Are The Market"

Of course, now that the skinny jean is headed for eventual  mass market saturation, it will eventually go the way of the mom jean (which has been ‘out’ almost long enough to be revived…), so it’s not as if the trend cycle is no longer. But given that ‘fast fashion’ retailing cycles had accelerated to the point of new trends every six weeks, could it be that more and more consumers are weary of this and seeking alternatives?

These alternatives - especially to spending too much - have been found for the past few decades in the ‘indie’ and ‘alternative’ subcultures continued fascination with vintage. As these ‘trends’ arise in the vintage industry about which items are hot and eagerly sought after, it was a natural progression for designers to use said items as inspiration for re-issues.

If ever there were a quintessential example of advertising preying on insecurities of those too young to know better in order to drive consumption of a bunch of junk the entire planet would be better off not having at all, here you have it. From the NY Times Masculinity in a Spray Can:

One bathroom in Stefanie Mullen’s home in a suburb of San Diego is stocked with enough products to line an aisle in a drugstore:

Body wash. Face wash. Exfoliator. Exfoliating wash. Body hydrator. Body spray. Deodorant. Shaving cream. Shampoos and conditioner. Hair gel, of course.

All told, 18 different containers.

They belong to her sons Noah Assaraf, 13, and Keenan Assaraf, 14. They have been dousing themselves for years.

“Every day they walk out the door in a cloud of spray-on macho,” Mrs. Mullen said.

When boys pile into her car, that’s her cue to roll down her window, no matter the weather. “The smell drives me nuts.”

Nooooo! That stuff smells nasty. It does not drive women wild. I’m all about good grooming habits for boys, but soap and deoderant and maybe some zit cream should suffice. Where did these guys collectively come up with the notion that drowing themselves in this eye watering equivalent of glade air freshener is what women want?

“More insecurity equals more product need, equals more opportunity for marketers,” said Kit Yarrow, a professor of psychology and marketing at Golden Gate University.

For “Gen Buy,” a new book she co-authored about marketing to tweens and teenagers, Ms. Yarrow held focus groups with boys. “The 10-year-olds are copying the 14-year-olds, trying to be cool,” she said. “Everything is moving down the spectrum. It’s getting younger and more pronounced.”

So boys are turning to hypermasculine guideposts like Instinct from Axe, Swagger by Old Spice and Magnetic Attraction Enhancing Body Wash by Dial with results that are poignant, comic, confused — and stinky.

“It’s not necessarily a hygiene thing,” said Paul Begley, a physical education teacher at Messalonskee Middle School in Oakland, Me. “If they’ve been sweating, they’ll use it as a mask instead of a shower.”

Nooooo!!! Just take a shower, please? But apparently my views aren’t shared by my eigth grade female counterparts:

What further drives the boys’ rush to the products are girls themselves. Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for the market research firm NPD Group, said that in a recent survey, 41 percent of boys ages 8 to 18 said that one of their best friends was a girl.

“They shop with girls, and girls influence them,” Mr. Cohen said, much as the girls in the hit Nickelodeon tween show “iCarly” hold sway over Freddie, their hapless male buddy.

“Boys are paying attention to personal brands more than ever because it’s too easy to be criticized virally by a girl,” said Pat Fiore, a market consultant for body image products in Morristown, N.J. “The peer pressure is starting from the girls, who are discussing how much someone smells or what they look like, and it’s being recorded in real time by e-mail and texting.”

These girls are also becoming sexualized at earlier ages, applying lip gloss and wearing racier clothes. Boys, a bewildered developmental step or three behind, feel additional pressure to catch up.

Ms. Wiseman, who also wrote “Queen Bees & Wannabes,” a nonfiction book about the social pecking order of tween girls, speaks with students around the country. Even in rural North Dakota, she said, 12-year-old boys were highlighting their hair, a focus on appearance that was almost nonexistent five years ago.

“We consistently look at boys in a position of privilege and power,” she said. “But if you ask a 12-year-old boy if they’re in a position of power, they feel out of control of themselves, their bodies.” She added: “I defy anyone to tell me that an eighth-grade girl doesn’t look like she has more power and control than a boy.”

Wordsworth Boot in Moss Green - John Fluevog, from Libby's Steampunk Gift Guide at Steampunkworkshop.com. Someone buy these for me! *covet*

For buyers, designers, retailers and marketers wondering what the new face of consumption might look like in a post meltdown economy, Jake von Slatt and Bruce Sterling offer a vision of steampunk philosophy so eloquently stated I had to include it in its entirety. It’s a challenge to voluntary simplicity, which he claims as boring. And can be a lot of work. (no kidding!) The steampunk philosophy allows us to embrace and enjoy and even spend a lot of money on beautifully functional well crafted things things in our daily lives. What is disdained is the excessive, the filler, the junk, the disposable.

I stumbled upon this on the Steampunk workshop site:

The definition of steampunk is still a fluid and flexible thing, and that’s exactly how I like it.  When we talk about what steampunk is we talk in generalities and we leave a lot open for interpretation and thus creativity. But there are some memes in steampunk which are recurring. One of those is the rejection of a disposable economy, a belief that there is value in the finely made, and that participation in today’s race to the bottom, to the lowest price, to quantity over quality, is ultimately injurious.

Bruce Sterling (a steampunk icon in his own right) wrote about the value of fine things in his Last Veridian Note:

It’s not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.

Do not “economize.” Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It’s melting the North Pole. So “economization” is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.

The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don’t seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It’s in your time most, it’s in your space most. It is “where it is at,” and it is “what is going on.”

It takes a while to get this through your head, because it’s the opposite of the legendary of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed – (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You’re spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it.
…
Get excellent tools and appliances. Not a hundred bad, cheap, easy ones. Get the genuinely good ones. Work at it. Pay some attention here, do not neglect the issue by imagining yourself to be serenely “non-materialistic.” There is nothing more “materialistic” than doing the same household job five times because your tools suck. Do not allow yourself to be trapped in time-sucking black holes of mechanical dysfunction. That is not civilized.

Daniela Perdomo neatly sidesteps engaging in the content of the theories themselves, but rather takes a step back and asks what their growing popularity means:

promo ad for Jesse Ventura's tv show

“We have got to get to a point where we have leaders who are there for us instead of representing their manipulative, greedy ways,” he told me.

This insight is one most progressives can identify with, and it drives home the fact that people like Jones and Noory are driven to do what they do because they are distrustful of the powers that be. The fear of a government that ignores your constitutional rights or of too-powerful interests controlling the economy is a perfectly legitimate concern. This manifests itself across the political spectrum in the United States.

…That doubt stems from not knowing what happens behind closed doors in government and in the board rooms of the largest, most powerful companies in the country. What we have little doubt about is that power in the United States — and everywhere, for that matter — is monopolized by small, associated groups that do not represent the interests of the great majority. That’s why there is at least a grain of truth in every bit of conspiracy theory, even the most delusional ones.

The fear of concentrated power is valid and brings up important questions that mainstream culture is often unwilling to ask. Conspiracy theorists ask those questions, though their answers may lead some astray.

This is sort of where I’m at with all of this - can’t say too much about the specifics, aware that anyone who thinks they’ve got it all figured out is still seeing through their own filters, and since I’m still awaiting my invitation to the next Bilderberger event know that I’m so far outside elite power circles of any kind I’ll never have a chance to draw first hand conclusions.

But what I do see is a growing populist discontent with whomever is in power, and as the Supreme Court’s baffling decision to grant giant corporations with multi billion dollar arsenals the same rights of the individual ‘persons’ that have nothing near the means to compete on that playing field shows us, whomever that is sure isn’t governing ‘for the people.’

So the question becomes not ‘is there a shadow elite intricately tangled up in corporate and government trying to manipulate the masses for their own ends using mainstream media bombardment to frame the reality they want everyone to believe?’ (see the film Orwell Rolls in his Grave for an excellent expose on the specifics of that). The question is ‘what are people going to do when the system of consumer supply that keeps us comfortable and compliant begins to falter?’ It’ll be then - and only then - that we’ll start to see any widespread challenges to said structure that go beyond watching tv shows.

Following up an earlier post…

Trendy retailers might be hastily hiding their garbage, but disgruntled former employees continue to expose them to the public relations nightmare as the habit of destroying clearance merchandise rather than mark it down too far or donate it to a ‘less than aspirational’ clientele lights up the blogosphere. Jezebel.com cuts right to the chase about the interface between hyperconsumerism and our current fashion system:

But what the problems boil down to is this: for a very long time, the retail economy in the first world has been flooded with product. Inventory was allowed to outstrip demand, because margins were so high that waste became tolerable. (Consumption was rising anyway, because of easy credit and planned obsolescence.) This is true both of disposable clothing chains whose business model counts on an endless cycle of new stuff, and high-end stores whose end-of-season 60% off “sales” don’t even start to bite into wholesale, anyway. In a worthless economy like that, where products that are understood both by their sellers and their buyers to be fundamentally without value are moved around the world to make some already rich men even richer, epic levels of waste are not even an unintended consequence. They’re a design feature.

And over at Alternet, Liliana Segura features interviews with former Anthropologie employees describing the practice:

I was on stock and we were clearing out a bunch of sale items that hadn’t sold. I asked the manager what I should do with the clothing and she said “destroy it.” Destroy it? I asked. Shouldn’t we donate it? ‘No,’ the manager replied, ‘we are only allowed to donate certain items. Corporate policy is to destroy everything else.’

I didn’t have a choice so I did it. Perfectly good shirts, sweaters and pants got ripped, torn and generally wrecked. It was really depressing! Another associate told me they destroy furniture too — almost everything that doesn’t sell. We couldn’t figure out why. Later on another manager told me that Anthro does it to maintain their brand integrity. They don’t want their brands at discount stores or anywhere that would cheapen the brand. Nothing is too common and they want to keep it that way.

NY Times reporter Jim Dwyer who first exposed the story continues to follow the trail with a story profiling an organization set up to provide retailers a systematic way to donate leftovers to the needy. Those who run the clothing bank offer a lot of insight into their suppliers, in particular the role that our familiar friend, aspiration, plays in the fashion retail game:

The reasons are complex. No business wants to compete with its own garbage, or risk having people show up at a store seeking refunds on clothes that were never sold. “That’s why many retailers will damage unsold garments,” said Luis Jimenez, the director of the Clothing Bank, which is now operated for the city by Peter Young Housing, Industries and Treatment.

Some businesses do not want their goods worn by poor people. Ed Foy, the founder of eFashionSolutions.com, said that brands invest billions of dollars in their images, using models and athletes, which makes them cautious about where donated leftovers might end up. “They want us to see that the people wearing their brands are the people we aspire to be,” said Mr. Foy, a board member of the Clothing Bank. “They want to know, ‘Who’s wearing the clothing and how can that hurt my brand?’ ”

From the outset, the Clothing Bank tried to address the business concerns, Mr. Jimenez said. The warehouse is secure, lowering the chances that the donated clothes would be stolen and resold; only not-for-profit groups receive the distributions, so that, for example, no individual can collect a pallet full of Dress Barn merchandise. Donations are tax-deductible. If a donor wants labels removed, they are cut out by volunteers, including inmates on work release from the Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem.

But even that isn’t enough for many brand managers, the luxury ones in particular. Dwyer continues his coverage:

New York City officials destroyed tons of new, unworn clothing and footwear last year that had been seized in raids on counterfeit label operations, abandoning a practice of giving knockoff garments to groups that help the needy.

…

A spokesman for the Police Department said that no one asked for the knockoffs in 2009 — an explanation that was bewildering to the operators of the clothing bank, who run a warehouse that supplies clothing to needy New Yorkers. They said they had made many requests.

“It would be hard to justify taking a truckload of perfectly good clothes and incinerating them, but that’s what’s happening,” said William Montana, a commercial real estate adviser who is on the board of the clothing bank. “The people who had control over giving us that stuff had been really good to us. Now the pipeline has dried up.

…
Many major fashion brands have their headquarters in New York City, and Mr. Bloomberg has made prosecution of trademark infringement a priority for his administration. The companies also take actions in civil court against the pirates, an expensive process, to protect the designers’ names.

“These are people who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of them millions, to get counterfeit goods off the street,” said Robert Tucker, a lawyer with the firm of Tucker and Lafiti, whose fashion clients include Chrome Hearts, Steve Madden, Zac Posen and Ed Hardy. “Everyone wants to feed and clothe the homeless. But how are you going to spend all this money and then put it back on the street?”

From the outset, the Clothing Bank tried to address the business concerns, Mr. Jimenez said. The warehouse is secure, lowering the chances that the donated clothes would be stolen and resold; only not-for-profit groups receive the distributions, so that, for example, no individual can collect a pallet full of Dress Barn merchandise. Donations are tax-deductible. If a donor wants labels removed, they are cut out by volunteers, including inmates on work release from the Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem.

I’ve also been seeing the phrase ‘tone deaf’ used a lot, too. From ABC News, JPMorgan Chase To Spend Millions on New Jets and Luxury Airport Hangar

After pressure from his administration, Citigroup abandoned plans for a new $50 million corporate jet from France. And in February, Obama said the days of bank executives flying corporate jets “were over.”

But on March 11, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, said he could not understand why corporate America has such a bad image.

“When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America I personally don’t understand it,” Dimon said.

Dimon, whose 2008 compensation package, according to SEC documents, was worth more than $19 million in salary, stock and options, declined to speak with ABC News about the proposed plans.

Can we say deeply engrained sense of entitlement totally divorced from performance or contribution not just to the greater good, but even to their own benefit? Because as I understand it, the whole Ayn Rand kick is all about leaving these superior, brilliant beings to pursue their own self interest because since it wouldn’t be in their self interest to, let’s say…have their companies blow up in a super nova that becomes a black hole sucking away global capital… that they wouldn’t - couldn’t - let that happen. And how’s that theory working out for us right about now?

Tony Schwartz writes How Self-Interest Destroyed the Economy and explains the ‘tragedy of the commons.’ Expect that phrase to be popping up more and more:

Do you find yourself asking this question: How is it that so many ostensibly smart people in the financial world made such terrible choices for so long?

Thirty years ago, an ecologist and professor named Garrett Hardin wrote a classic article in the journal titled “The Tragedy of the Commons.” His thesis was that individuals, acting in their rational self-interest, may ultimately destroy a limited resource over the long term.

To illustrate, Hardin used the metaphor of an open pasture - “the commons” - to which herdsmen bring their cattle to feed. The herdsmen understandably want to feed as many of their cattle as possible - or as Hardin put it: “As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain.” This works fine for everyone so long as there’s enough grass to feed all the cattle. As demand rises, however, the effects of overgrazing take a progressive toll on the commons, until ultimately they’re destroyed for everyone.

“Therein is the tragedy,” Hardin writes. “Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit - in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.”

But we’re not herdsman (well, at least not literally. Although the case could be made for anyone in marketing…) How does this relate to our financial system?

Far too many of us conspired to get as much as we could while the getting was good, never stopping to consider that if everyone keeps trying to get more - leveraging their bets and running up debt to do so — there will eventually be a day of reckoning.

And the antidote?

We live now in a world of palpably limited resources. Every choice we make has an increasingly visible impact on the commons. The leader who suggests that his company’s only obligation is to maximize profit for his shareholders is dangerously delusional.

We’re all in this together, and we literally can’t afford to act any longer as if we’re each free to pursue our self-interest with blinders on. The antidote is a higher level of awareness - the capacity to see the consequences of our actions over the long term and to make choices from that perspective rather than succumbing to our most primitive impulses.

A perspective which, of course, is the opposite of current advertising methods which are all about stimulating those primitive impulses in order that they may be sated by the product on offer. What we’ll have to see then, is a layer of sophistication integrated in - since thinking about others or the common good might now have perceived rewards (feeling good about oneself and the like) then the brand will need to associate itself with those actions. This will become a feedback loop of sorts - as consumers get more activist and whistleblowing becomes accessible to everyone with a cell phone camera, corporations will have to watch their p’s and q’s. How many investment bankers can become PR people? Hype alone isn’t going to cut it.

While many luxury retailers are taking their marketing under the radar, appealing to stealth wealth and discreet luxury, Saks Fifth Avenue is taking a bold move in the opposite direction.

Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bags. Image from NYTimes.com

Their Spring 2009 ad campaign cops a graphically bold stance of shopping with an aesthetic of defiance lifted directly from none other than… the icons of communist propaganda. Whether it makes you cringe, gag or crack and ironic smile, such an open embrace of socialist chic as a ploy to stimulate carefree consumerism is a sure reverberation of the hairpin turn in the zeitgeist. Eric Wilson writes for the NY Times: Consumers of the World Unite

SHOPPING, these days, is a political act. If you are brave enough to buy a $2,000 Prada handbag, you might rationalize that you are helping to stimulate the economy. Solidarity, people!

Saks Fifth Avenue, which has surely felt the recession’s sting, is taking just such a fist-raising stand with its spring marketing. The campaign is inspired by the bold graphic designs and propaganda spirit of Constructivist art — although it is intended to be tongue-in-cheek.

Saks Fifth Avenue ad. Image from NYTimes.com

So is Alexander Rodchenko (the constructivist artist who’s work ‘inspired’ the Saks campaign) rolling in his grave? Not necessarily. I emailed the Times article to my friend who’s actually read Karl Marx, and here’s what he had to say:

But when you view it ala Marx, it makes perfect sense. To him, all art is propaganda. And propaganda is simply anything that promotes a point of view. The Soviets were using their
propaganda to promote nationalism; marketers are using the same images to promote
consumerism, by simply making small changes (prettier models, having the lines move
towards products). It’s still a “Join our bandwagon” message.

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