I just got back from skiing at Mount Baker, the original ski resort of snowboarders so I am told, and I couldn’t believe the amount of Dolce&Gabbana crap out there. That’s right, Dolce&Gabbana, they don’t use spaces. They’re too cool for that.
The last time I watched winter sports on TV I saw the logo, but I never believed some crappy fashion house merchandise would actually make its way to what is supposedly an alternative counter culture sport. I guess that’s what happens; everything that’s cool gets swallowed by the mainstream.
Dolce&Gabbana stickers, snowboards, t-shirts…ick. Do these guys travel with Louis Vitton luggage and wear Juicy Couture sweatpants? I hear there is a great perfume out there made by Hillary Duff that maybe they’ll want to try.
There’s nothing that gets my ire up like clothing whose sole purpose is to point out who made it and how expensive it is. There is nothing inherently finer about these products. In fact, the prominent display of the logo makes it look cheap. Please show me the pair of cool looking glasses that don’t have their maker prominently displayed on both ear rests.
Snowboard and ski equipment is riddled with logos, but I guess there’s just something offensive about a fashion couture house and snowboarding. These guys sell $300 jeans, for god’s sake.
Last night on CNBC there was a show about how skateboarders had initially rebuffed Nike when Nike wanted to break into the lucrative skateboard business. Apparently it was short-lived. You can now buy all your Nike skateboard equipment via the brand “Nike SB.” Please wake me up.
It’s all a matter of course in the U.S.A. Between Gen X, those grungers in college, Dead Kennedys in high school, and Gen Y, so-called ‘alternative’ (to what? to grunge?) Blink 182 and Linkin Park . . . we move from counter-cultural, inner-city white skateboarding to gleefully consumerist, equal opportunist snowboarding. Skateboarders were a whole different animal, they listened to Fugazi, lived Russell Banks’s _Rule of the Bone_, read that one magazine I can’t recall the name of . . . starts with an “A” I think, and took pride in wearing the same raggedy old jeans and a plain white t-shirt. Of course, skateboarding has succumbed to the pressure of consumerist cache, but my point still stands. Surfing was always honest–honest about its blondness, its southern californianicity, so its due its props at least for that.
Great comment. But I have bad news, Dolce&Gabbana have a new surf line also. Since I don’t surf, I haven’t noticed if surfers have succumbed as easily as the snowboarders.
How do we find the mix between counterculture and consumerism?