aking T-shirts

I have a bit of a t-shirt obsession so this is right up my street. And this is an interesting piece of marketing that again uses an art gallery context for showing off fashion/design this time by local designers creating limited edition t-shirts for aking (Cape based rock band).The t-shirts were displayed at the Kunst House recently and will be on show at Vide coffee shops for a month before being sold in Levis stores (as usual both of these brands are ahead of the curve when it comes to cool marketing).

Many thanks to Waldo of the Be Kind Collective for sending me the pics (his is the one with the crow).

Levis Live Unbuttoned

Marketing a fashion brand isn’t so hard and yet i can’t understand why local fashion brands are so dull, dull, dull (there is much more to life than being stuck booking billboards and magazine spreads) . As mentioned in my Loeries post Levis are one of the few brands consistently doing cool stuff in South Africa. Hugh Mcleod (patron saint of bloggers) has a great marketing mantra “if you want to be a cool brand you’ve got to do cool shit” if you’re a marketing/pr student drop out and rather just repeat that to yourself every morning. He also adds importantly “Oh yeah, and you’re not the one who gets to decide what’s cool or not…” which should be tattooed on the hands of all marketing types and brand managers.

Anyway i think this is fun:

Fashion at the Loeries

Ok so i’m at the Loeries not Joburg Fashion Week but i’m staying in touch with the pics and the occasional bit of gossip filtering through from the north. One of the things you quickly realise at the Loeries is that you can tell exactly what job people do and where they do it from how they’re dressed. Example if you’re a creative you pretty much have to wear a straw trilby, high impact graphic t-shirt, jeans and a jacket (a thrift store tuxedo one preferably).

What was pretty shocking is the lack of fashion brands winning awards. Just confirms what I know already that local fashion retailers (with a few exceptions like Levis) are terribly dull with their marketing. Another exception is Nike who won two well deserved awards for their pop-up store (created by Trigger) – this was an excellent and inspirational campaign (although still think they could have got more publicity out of it). Bumped into Malcolm and Christian from KlukCGdT at the awards – they’re in an ad for Sanlam SA Fashion Week that’s up for an award apparently.