Have We Reached Peak Brand?

Head-to-toe designer looks, fancy mini fridges, and making products for real people.

Every guest interview on Throwing Fits, a menswear and pop culture podcast, starts with a fit check. For me as a listener, this tends to be the part where I form my first impression of the guest and the hour ahead based on the brands they list. I know that the episode is going to be dripping with testosterone if they zero in on their New Balance x Something Something sneakers. I know I am about to gain some knowledge if it’s a menswear designer dressed head to toe in their own brand. And if it’s a woman in old Celine jeans and an Aritzia tank, I am intrigued.

This last interview with Chromeo threw me for a loop though. Prompted to give a fit check, the guests went: “Are we naming brands? I don’t have brands. You guys are big on brands!” because most of the clothing these guys own is either vintage or custom-made. My brain short-circuited — they gave me no clues to picture what they look like in my head. In the culture where people largely express who they are by tagging the brands they choose to wear, eat, and wash their face with, it was surprising to come across someone whose identity doesn’t revolve around brands.

From the business perspective, creating the type of brand identity that people use as a puzzle piece to express their own, or even better, absorb head to toe, sounds like a dream. Forget using a face wash that prevents breakouts, get the one that also lets everyone know you are cool, confident, and have your life together when you post it on IG. It gives you power to influence the industry, to make a statement in the border culture landscape. It turns your customers into ambassadors and walking billboards, and drives consistent sales.

Shopping is no longer fun though when every single product, down to water bottles and toothpaste, has some sort of status points attached to it. Instead of simply spending money on the stuff you like, you start thinking about what every purchase says about you. Does buying healthy snacks for your kids make you an almond mom? Will you still get a side eye if you carry around an old Balenciaga bag? And even if you say you don’t mind that shopping at Erewhon, lunching at Fanelli’s, or carrying a Sandy Liang x Baggu bag makes you a meme, you still feel the need to acknowledge that you are aware of the jokes and you are in on them.

What even comes first anymore: the brands or the memes? A bunch of new products, like this expensive fancy mini fridge for drinks, don’t create a “type of guy”, they just fit perfectly into an already familiar bicoastal creative director meme. Which makes me wonder — do brand creatives even speak to real people or do they cater to the people we watch and group into characters on TikTok and IG? It would be strange to do the latter the same way it would be strange to cater to the needs and wants of a random group of people who act as a family in a TV commercial. Sure, people on social media are real but they still optimize what they show for engagement. Maybe, this is the reason why the Rocco fridge looks more like something out of a “day in a life” video shot in a $6000+ apartment that looks like a MoMA Design Store rather than something a real thoughtful creative with money would buy for their home. And if they do, it would have the same shocking effect on me as seeing the Ultrafragola mirror in Emma Chamberlain’s multi-million exceptionally designed home.

Rocco mini fridge brand shots

I don’t know what’s stronger — the FOMO that mass consumers feel trying to keep up with the people they see on the internet, or other people’s burning desire to assert individuality in the world that runs on consumerism. My instinct is that as a creative and a business person, you always want to side with people who are yearning to find and express themselves because they tend to be the ones who set the trends anyways. Plus, they will find a way to make your products unique and their own, no matter how many you sell, instead of copy-pasting and discarding them when the trend cycle ends.

I really like this piece by Rachel Tashjian from Paris Fashion Week where she writes that the best creative idea in women’s fashion you can have right now is simply watching how real women think and live, and making clothes that celebrate their growing desire to carve out time to think about how they feel and want to express themselves. She talks about how women are flocking to vintage and shopping newsletters to find something that will help them assert their individuality, and how tired of being sold head-to-toe looks and empty brand names, they are mixing and matching thoughtfully purchased pieces in a way that shows the world they are human.

I really think this observation and creative advice apply to everything else that we produce and consume. Get to know real people. Ask them how they do their makeup, look inside their pantries, and learn how they shop. And while others are figuring out how to talk to Gen Z and make viral products, create something people want in their bathrooms, closets, and homes.

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More on shoppers and brands:

laura reilly

in a recent Magasin:

“Paris is a piece city, not a styling city (like New York). Its dressers put themselves so entirely into the hands of designers and curators in a way that makes fashion less like a paintbrush and more like the collection of certificates on the wall behind the doctor’s desk. Every outfit here is like: Dries coat, Saint Laurent boots, Alaia Teckel bag. Or: Lemaire coat, Khaite boots, The Row Margaux bag. Or: Comme coat, Rick boots, Balenciaga Rodeo bag, fin. It’s very definitive.”

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Rachel Tashjian from New York Fashion Week:

“But if there was one take away from the past week of shows in New York, it is that in America, a new fashion cognoscenti has emerged, in tandem with a class of brands — some new, others decades old — speaking to a woman who shops with discernment.

Bored with TikTok trends and yanking on Lululemon, she is a working woman who pores over fashion newsletters instead of magazine pages and sees design as a form of culture, as valid as an interest in books, music or film.”

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Chloe List

writes Unbox Inbox — a great newsletter about package design. Her recent toothpaste deep dive nailed the type of toothpaste squeezer and shopper I am:

“There are two types of people, those who squeeze the toothpaste tube starting from the end and moving towards the cap, and those who squeeze it wherever their heart desires. If you’re the former, I’d wager you’re far more likely to own a metal toothpaste squeezer. I do, and it makes it easier to justify the fancy toothpaste that costs at least twice as much as the average tube from the pharmacy.”

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