In life and in fashion, there is a fine line between tasteful and terrible. Not only is it a fine line, it is a blurry, subjective line built of mass opinion from both apathetic and ferocious critics. Your cousin in Alabama is not likely to share the same fashion aesthetic as your cousin in New York. But that doesnt mean they won’t both be wearing the same shirt at the family reunion.
(For purposes of this example I am using Affliction Clothing, a boutique T-shirt label who sells to “high-brow” retailers all over the world in conjunction with random t-shirts you’d see in a Wal-Mart or small town department store in the boys section.)
Even though New York and Alabama are wearing essentially the same shirt, New York is thinking “Lame” about Alabama and Alabama is probably thinking about dirt bikes. As a clothing manufacturer, we have to determine that intangible factor of “coolness” and layer that into our production methods to avoid being “lame”. In the case of Affliction VS. generic shirts, the coolness factor is the borrowing of low-brow concepts and marrying them with boutique quality manufacturing. It is clever and ironic to Mr. New York to be wearing a rattle-snake t-shirt out on the town. For Alabama, it is his bad-ass rattle snake shirt, no irony required. The ultimate question however still reamins, Is subtle clever irony worth boutique prices? So far, the answer is a resounding yes from customers. Alabama doesn’t care either way.