As a child from a low-income background, I never really had many options to be considered cool by my peers, especially with clothing. From elementary school to middle school, I was often ridiculed for the shoes I wore, particularly my sneakers. I remember my mother’s go-to outlet for my sneakers, and the occasional heels for church on Sundays; Payless. Every few months as I grew out of my sneakers, I got to pick out a new pair or two. Originally, I remember occasionally picking a pair of Twinkle Toes, but I would mostly go for the sneakers I could play in. For me, these would always be Champion sneakers. My Champion sneakers were often around $25-$30 USD each, and that was the best my mother could do at the time. Though, no matter how much I liked my sneakers, I would always get teased. Champion sneakers have inherently been perceived as low-class due to advertising, price, and style. More recently, Champion sneakers have been receiving a higher favor from the public due to their newer designs.
My peers often wore suede Pumas, fancy floral patterned Adidas, and even the fanciest KD’s (Kevin Durant’s). As I aged and grew through middle school, I finally began wearing Nike and Adidas sneakers. These shoes weren’t too fancy, with prices still ranging from $40-$50 USD. I finally learned to be content with my sneakers; especially because I only wore them to school once per week for gym class. I remember very distinctly one day in 7th grade, many of my classmates began wearing Champion sneakers. Though, they looked nothing like I had. Having a class discussion around sneakers with my homeroom teacher, I remember my friend Rodney exclaiming “If you used to wear Champion sneakers, you were so crusty. But now if you wear them, you’re cool. What’s with that?”.
In retrospect, I’m able to reflect and realize that there was a sharp shift in the way Champion designed its shoes. The stigma switched from “If you wear Champion sneakers, you’re poor.” to “If you wear Champion sneakers, you’re cool and I should respect you because you spend money on your shoes”. Pulling from Stuart Hall’s “Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices”, Hall describes stereotypes forming through three different ways; media and representation, binary opposition, and naturalizing difference. (Hall, 1997) More specifically, I’d like to dive into media and representation. Through advertisements, Champion has been advertised as affordable and cheap in Payless ads. When I was younger, the particular ads displayed on TV were always advertising sales on Champion shoes, ranging from 15%-30% off at times. Though, I don’t remember the more expensive sneakers my peers used to wear being advertised. The underlying assumption here is that these shoes had a higher cost. So, if you owned a more expensive pair of shoes, being teased was never an option. Hall’s idea of intertextuality can be incorporated here. To my mother the meaning of affordable shoes was great. Though to my classmates, the meaning was directed to me being poor, or that I didn’t have style. The shift in Champion's stigmatization can also play into the essentialism and stereotypes that Hall introduces. The idea that Champion makes shoes for those who can’t afford more expensive shoes was a fixed stereotype.
Moreover, the build of the newer Champion shoes was so distinctive. The sneakers looked like socks, and the fabric is pulled above the ankle, with chunky straps across the front of the shoe. In addition, the retail price for these sneakers ranged from $70-$100 USD for adult sizes. I had never seen anything like this before; until now. As I’ve aged, I’ve become more observant of people's shoes, particularly sneakers. The reason why Champion had a huge increase in popularity with that particular shoe, named “Rally”, is because it resembled Balenciaga’s “Speed” sneaker design, which retails from around $865-$1,050 USD. In essence, Champion attempted to mock Balenciaga’s shoe design in hopes of attracting customers that couldn’t pay the original retail price of Balenciaga’s shoes.
Through this attempt, modern-day Coolhunters arose within the sneaker market. Drawing from Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Coolhunt”, Gladwell describes Coolhunting as identifying trends before they happen (Gladwell, 1997). Sneaker resellers can be identified as reactive Coolhunters, as they try to keep up with the trends as they happen. As more popular sneakers are released, it’s very common for them to bulk buy these sneakers, and resell them for prices that are higher than the original retail price. The original product may sell out from the manufacturer. This leaves consumers in a place of vulnerability, some are even willing to pay above retail to keep up with the trends. This hints at Coolhunting being a closed loop. Since these sneakers were brought to the mainstream, the margin in front of these sneakers has been pushed further back, making accessibility an issue. For example, take Champion’s sneaker “Rally Lockdown” in the “White Camo” colorway. The original retail price was $135 USD. Now, thanks to resellers, the resale prices available on GOAT.com range from $204-354 USD.
The culture of reselling has taken a toll on the sneaker market altogether. These people are often white and take trends from marginalized groups, knowing that sometimes the people from marginalized groups are sometimes willing to pay the price to reclaim their style. These particular fashion trends are often uncontrollable and the difference between the consumer, producer, and reseller is what keeps products stratified.
Sources:
Gladwell, M. (1997, March 17). The Coolhunt. The New Yorker.
Hall, S. (1997). Representation - cultural representations and signifying practices. SAGE Publ.
Hi Teia,
ReplyDeleteI love the use of Gladwell's idea of coolhunting and Hall's ideas of representation to connect it to Champion and your personal experiences! However, I think you can go further by talking about Champion's switch from being for the poor to being cool by applying it to Adorno and Horkheimer's ideas of the commodity fetish and false needs.
I can say that I personally had the same experience growing up. I too came from a low-income background and would face extensive ridicule for wearing shoes from Payless. In elementary school, all I would hear were the words, "You got those shoes from Payless??" in a way that made it seem like a bad thing. However, as soon as I started wearing Nike shoes, Champion became popular and became a thing that everyone wanted to wear. It became cool. However, I could not quite figure out how. How does something that I was literally laughed at for wearing become cool a year or two later? Well, I think it became cool because of the idea of the commodity fetish and false needs. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that people will fetishize items that have a high exchange value and cost a lot over things that they actually need (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). As you pointed out, the cost of many Champion products went up significantly. So, by applying Adorno and Horkheimer's logic, it can be said that people started buying Champion shoes and products because their exchange value went up. Adorno and Horkheimer's arguments demonstrate that people, in general, think that having items with high exchange value will heighten their status. So, it is reasonable to assume that the rise in the price for Champion products contributed to these products being considered cool and contributed to people's desire to obtain them since the products became commodities with a high exchange value. This is especially true under the assumption you mentioned that claimed that having more expensive shoes led to you not being made fun of in school as it further demonstrates the idea of items with a high exchange value being prioritized and fetishized (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). As such, this ties into the idea of false needs since, overall, people are using their money to buy things that they want, in this case commodities that they fetishize and think make them cool, over the items they actually need (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). A person clearly needs shoes, but they do not need Champion shoes or any designer shoes, yet people still buy them. The likely reason: they think it makes them cool and they believe it raises their status. So, by applying Adorno and Horkheimer's ideas of the commodity fetish and false needs, understanding how and why Champion became considered cool becomes much easier.
-Dominic Woods
ReplyDeleteGreat post, it was very well written! I especially liked that you related the readings to your own personal experiences, and your passion can be seen throughout your post. I did want to note that Devin Powers also made some great points that help reinforce some of the concepts you introduced. For example, “Cool became valuable – less to those who authored it than those who learned how to sell it” (Powers, 2019, p.63). This speaks to your comment on how typically white sneaker resellers find what’s trending in marginalized communities, buy the product up at an incredibly faster pace then the marginalized community; essentially pushing them out of the market. Allowing them to capitalize off the product by selling it back to the original community. As you mentioned before this does demonstrate coolhunting as a closed loop because it isolates the original community that made it popular.
I would also like to mention that it’s not just white resellers but its other ethnic communities too that are profiting off of black sneakerhead culture. You alluded to GOAT.com, a sneaker reselling company, which I might add is owned by two people by asian descent. This goes to show that coolhunting, and the exploitation of marginalized groups can be considered an interracial phenomenon, where even minorities find why to capitalize off of each other.
This being said, some brands do not follow the traditional characteristics of a product that is considered cool. Personally, as someone involved in sneakerhead culture I have noticed that one of the most coveted brands is Air Jordan retro does not follow the traditional cool requirements. “Fast-paced, youthful, and nonlinear, cool hunting pantomimed the trends it followed.” (Powers, 2019, pg. 62). As Powers mentioned, cool hunting is fast-paced and youthful. I would like to note that Air Jordans have been popular since the 1980s, attracting youth of 5 different decades. To facilitate its popularity for 50 years, Nike, the sneaker producers, has come up with a system where they would drop the same sneakers sometimes with different colorways every few years. This form of product release, in addition to its social status, contributes strongly to making it popular. This was because branding in the late 1900s became more about how a company's product's image and identity spoke to the consumer. (Powers, 2019). Michael Jordan, the athlete whose sneaker brand Air Jordans is attributed to, is commonly considered the best basketball player of all time. This being said, Nike has marketed their product in a way that if someone wears his sneakers they will be just “like mike” (Swagger Contributors, 2021). This method of marketing is often imitated with other sports celebrities, but not to the same success as Air Jordans.
Ultimately, I found your blog post topic really refreshing because people do not talk enough about how the black community is exploited, especially in the fashion industry. - Xian Scott
By Gabriel Jung
ReplyDeleteI had a remarkably similar past to you when it came to assessing popularity. I remember in middle and high school there was such a binary categorization of what was cool or not. When it came to me, watching anime was a hugely stigmatized act within my school. But now that I look back, my cousin, who is now just entering middle school, has created an entire on-campus business around selling Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Keeping up with the latest episodes of Attack on Titan is now cool rather than something to be guarded with your life. I think this calls back to Jenkin's publication on Star Trek. The image of what it looks like to be a fan of these things has evolved deeply throughout the years. When we were kids wearing Champion sneakers were seen as "crusty" but now they're associated with the image of an on-point fashion sense. Just like "Trekkies" were seen as obsessive, musty, and basement dwellers, these previously stigmatized products were once seen in the same way. Yet, with significant and quick narrative changes on how both anime and Champion sneakers were seen, the image that they became associated with were fundamentally changed. Hence, they now mean a completely new thing to the next generation. Once you begin to realize this, you start to wonder what other stigmatized, niche things can be absorbed to the mainstream and become cool. How far could this really go and is the image behind a product or a "like" fundamentally up to interpretation by the majority?
Hi Teia,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your analysis of Champion sneakers and how their meaning and implications have shifted over time! This cultural artifact is not one that I have experience with, so I like how you start your blog post off with a story to contextualize and personalize your argument. I also think your synthesis of Hall and his ideas of representation and intertextuality as well as Gladwell’s concept of cool-hunting makes sense.
One source I think would further support your argument is Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. At the end, you introduce the culture of reselling and how it has shifted the sneaker market altogether, but you do not tie it in as well to the rest of the ideas in the post. I think incorporation in particular is a key term you could address here.
Adorno and Horkheimer define incorporation as the process of brands, products, and even people who might seem to resist the culture industry ultimately getting commercialized (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). This concept is certainly relevant to the evolution of meaning for Champion sneakers! As you mentioned, Champion the brand started on the margins, whereas other brands had more positive connotations. However, as Adorno and Horkheimer explain, the culture industry took note of this deviance and claimed Champion sneakers as its own, like “the land-reformer to capitalism” (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). Ultimately, just as incorporation strips marginalized groups of their individuality, the culture of reselling strips Champion sneakers of their original meaning and thus their authenticity. In order for these marginalized groups to reclaim their power, they have to succumb to the demands of the culture industry.
- Grace Rhatigan