Wednesday 29 September 2010

I can't have children. They might grow up to wear Jack Wills clothing.

My awesome mother whilst reading The Times today spotted a fabulous article that she left out on the side for me to read (she does that rather regularly- awesome really) However, this one is a cut above, seriously made me laugh. She knows my bugbear for companies such as this and therefore knew I would enjoy a rant by a fellow bystander who has been left behind in this madness.

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I can't have children. They might grow up to wear Jack Wills clothing.
Sathnam Sanghera - Wednesday September 29th 2010, The Times



A few months ago I wrote an article for The Times magazine about wanting a baby. Male babyhunger was a neglected phenomenon, I complained. Too often men are portrayed as getting saddled with babies, when some experience broodiness as intensely as women. But I'd like to take it all back. I don't want children anymore. For one reason : I couldn't risk fathering offspring which grew up to become consumers of Jack Wills merchandise.
In case, like me a week ago, you have never heard the name before, I should explain that Jack Wills is a rapidly expanding fashion brand that has 1,700 employees, 36 shops in Britain and aims itself at posh students. How posh? Well, the shopping guru Mary Portas has remarked that "wearing Jack Wills is a mark of class, wealth, even education, and you very much have to be in the club", Polly Vernon has written in The Observer that "you know you're posh if you live near a Jack Wills store", while The Sunday Times recently revealed that one of the company's early marketing ploys was to send one of its signature hoodies to the head girl and boy of every public school in the country.
The company also sponsors polo events and yacht-club balls, has designed T-shirts for the Eton rugby tour, employs "a bunch of impossibly beautiful, incredibly polite brand ambassadors called Seasonnaires" to spread its brand message, runs shops that resemble boarding schools, and, frankly, the last time I took so violently against something I was 14 and reading about the death penalty.
The idea of a designer fashion label for students is preposterous enough, given that they already have one in Oxfam. But creating one for public school students is particularly bewildering. After all, they already have a uniform - a school one - and then, out of hours, they have plimsolls, flip-flops, golding baseball caps, brightly coloured polo shirts (collars up), dangly ear-rings, sleeveless puffer jackets, jogging bottoms, bangles and pashminas. The idea of slapping a Jack Wills logo and price tag on to this, the default look of every last Muffy, Hugo and Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, is pointless. And cheeky. And, as a social statement, really quite offensive too.
The posh have been mounting a comeback for some time. You can't move 50 yards in London without spotting something painted in Farrow and Ball's country house paint colours; Barbour jackets are back; our TV screens are graced by the likes of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Kirstie Allsopp and Tomasina Miers; and you may have noticed that our Prime Minister, Chancellor and Cabinet are a bit posh too.
But the cultural manifestations of this poshness have until now been subtle, the politicians in question have arranged for the concealment of pictures of them in top hat and tails, and asking political candidates to shorten double-barrelled surnames. In contrast, Jack Wills, whose logo is nothing less than a pheasant in top hat and tails, represents something new and terrifying: the wilful celebration of inherited wealth and privilege.
In a time of economic distress this is crass enough, but the label exacerbates matters by mocking the working classes while doing so: adopting the hoodie, the symbol of the youth underclass as a signature item; selling an image of the world that is, in the words of The Sunday Times Style Magazine "sort of like Skins, but with nicer houses and pleases and thankyous"; and by nurturing the kind of fans who respond to criticism on Facebook pages with remarks such as: "Ur just jealous because we're not chavs and have good taste."
Indeed, it turns out I 'm not the only one who has taken against the brand. Jack Wills may have 131,679 fans on Facebook, but there are also 60,852 detractors belonging to a group called, "Why are you still in your PJs? Oh sorry, didn't see the Jack Wills logo", and another 22,557 affiliated to a page entitled "Jack Wills brings all the rahs to the yard, and they're like, put it on daddy's card."
The label, which claims it will have a turnover of some £90 million this year, is notoriously secretive and doesn't allow journalists much access. The owners of the company probably realise that if people knew about Jack Wills outside upper-middle-class towns such as Winchester, Aldeburgh and Reigate, it would spark mass civil unrest. There is one thing I can bring myself to admire about the company, apparently it flogs branded Jack Wills condoms. Which at least reduces the chances of its customers reproducing.

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It is at this point that I would like to state my particular problem stems further than just Jack Wills, but in also its brand competitors with dark shops, club music blaring and fake shop assistants.... No names need mentioning.

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