A Thread about fashion and literacy
Two spelling bee campaigns in a month! What does it all mean?
You know the brand Bvlgari? For years, I pronounced it ‘Voolgari’, thinking myself pretty sophisticated for instinctively dropping the silent ‘B’. I later learned that I’d been saying it wrong all along - it’s actually pronounced ‘Bulgari’, very simple. Luckily, it wasn’t a brand that came up a lot in fashion conversations, meaning I was less likely to put my foot in my mouth during those early years. Not like LOEWE, the name that you could probably get away with not knowing how to say until 2013. Then Jonathan Anderson got hired and made it the world’s hottest brand, meaning we all had to quickly get up to speed.
This week, Anderson showed that he was in on the joke, releasing a new film featuring Audrey Plaza and Dan Levy titled ‘Decades of Confusion’. The film portrays a spelling bee, in which the contestant (Plaza) is attempting to spell LOEWE for an exasperated adjudicator (Levy). Plaza wears a range of contemporary and archival looks from the house, a nod to LOEWE’s history - and the many years we’ve spent chewing up its name. “I own the f***** handbag, I think I know how to spell it!” Shouts Plaza in one scene. (Spoiler alert: she doesn’t.)
The film arrives hot on the heels of another spelling bee-focused fashion moment. Earlier in March, SSENSE rolled out its latest kidswear campaign, featuring stylish mini-mes wearing looks from various designers in their assortment. Whilst none of the contestants were caught cursing, the premise was the same. Compete to spell the names of various luxury brands.
This wasn’t the first time SSENSE had included a literacy-related riff in their marketing - in November last year, the retailer debuted its first international out-of-home campaign, a series of billboards around New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto and Montreal. Slogans included “You can’t pronounce it, but you know what it looks like.” And, “If you can pronounce Jacquemus, you can pronounce SSENSE.”
These campaigns are the latest examples of an ongoing discourse around the difficulty in both spelling and pronouncing various fashion brands. A quick Google search reveals articles on pronunciation by pretty much every major title, from Vogue to Harper’s Bazaar to Business Insider. My personal favourite is i-D’s video version from 2014:
Both LOEWE and SSENSE’s videos playfully tap into a fear that drives a lot of the fashion industry - the fear of getting it wrong, whether that’s pronouncing a designer brand, or simply choosing the right one to wear. Like SSENSE’s campaign, fashion has the ability to catapult us right back to childhood, standing in the schoolyard wondering if the popular kids will invite us to play. Do you have a Disney lunch box, or are you toting an embarrassing multipurpose tupperware instead? All we really want is to be accepted by our peers and included in the game.
These campaigns also remind us that acceptance by the establishment isn’t just about money - it’s about class and education, too. You can buy the f****** LOEWE handbag, but if you can’t pronounce the name, are you really part of the club? Despite social media’s democratising effect, fashion remains an industry predicated on exclusivity and IYKYK. Remember how we fawned over quiet luxury last year? Old money classism is alive and well.
Some brands are playing with this notion, though. I think of AVAVAV, the fashion brand known for its cartoonish toe boots, and more recently the post-it note suit worn by Rihanna in her new Vogue China spread. In a L’Officiel interview with founder Linda Friberg back in 2020, she said of the name: “AVA has a nice meaning in many languages and also the infinity of AV builds a nice pattern.” When designer Beate Karlsson joined the brand later that year and gave it the new, ironic aesthetic we know and love, this infinity spelling acquired a new meaning. AVAVAV became a sort of Dadaist ‘blahblahblah’ to match the highly conceptual, borderline comical nature of the brand’s offering.
Speaking of cartoonish footwear, there’s also MSCHF, the art collective known for their iconoclastic, often fashion-based stunts, most recently the big red boots. Subverting phonetic convention in their name adds to the MSCHVSNSS of it all. Faced with this awkwardly spelled word, the traditional ‘cultured’ customer gets a taste of their own medicine, unsure how to pronounce this strange new label that all the cool kids seem to know. MSCHF are playing with the age old luxury trope, but flipping it on its head, much like the ‘Birkinstocks’ they created in 2021 - sandals made of deconstructed Hermès Birkin bags.
Literacy leads to literature, which also seems to be a theme in fashion right now. Simon Chilvers wrote an interesting piece for the Financial Times, name-checking several designers who used literary references in recent collections. This included Valentino, where lines from Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘A Little Life’ appeared on suits, shirts and jeans at the brand’s menswear show. Chilvers also mentions Saint Laurent’s new bookstore, which opened in Paris last month. And of course, the OG designer bookworm, (Book)Marc Jacobs, who regularly posts photos of himself holding different tomes on his Instagram with the caption “the reading hour”.
With a million apps and notifications vying for our attention at all times, burying your nose in a book has become the ultimate luxury. What’s more, books are markers of culture and taste, both of which the fashion world loves.
But whilst literary culture can often be pretentious and exclusionary, I think in general, any endorsement of books is a good one. Whilst we might look at SSENSE’s campaign and think: “cute!”, Scientific American reports two thirds of U.S. children are unable to read proficiently, whilst 40% are essentially non-readers.
It would be totally out-of-touch for me to suggest that fashion could have any sort of effect in improving these statistics, but I do think that efforts to make reading ‘cool’ or fun should be celebrated. People love to scoff at overly-curated bookshelves, but so what if you only buy books to look good in your home? There’s still more chance of picking one up and reading it than if you don’t have them at all.
When we learn to read, write, speak and spell, we’re learning the tools of communication. Fashion is a mode of communication, too. Mastering its lexicon allows us to enter the cultural conversation, but - per the spelling bees - it’s a competitive landscape where not everyone wins.
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This essay is a perfect segway into promoting the most recent development in the Threads of Conversation universe, namely the first live event! Next Wednesday 3 April, I’ll be interviewing author and cultural critic Nathalie Olah about her book ‘Bad Taste’ at Salted Books in Lisbon. Olah’s book explores who gets to dictate taste, good or bad, and how our tastes are shaped by forces outside ourselves. The event is free (and drinks are free too!) so if you’re in Lisbon, or have a friend who is, then come along. The event starts at 6pm and runs until 8pm.
Threads of the week
Squinting into the sun in a vintage t-shirt, belt and Dickies dupes from Depop. The shoes are the Cecilie Bahnsen x ASICS collab and in hindsight I would recommend wearing them with socks.
Loose Threads
I only discovered Hannah Crosbie recently, but she seems to be friendly with all the good taste girls. Her new book looks fun. File alongside Slutty Cheff.
If you’re a freelance creative, then this is a great account to follow.
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