In the fan curve

And it's Fashion Week again! The pandemic, I have to say today, has also brought about positive changes in the rituals of the fashion industry. The line-up of the live defilees has thinned out, as has the rows of spectators: You no longer have to share 50 centimeters of a seat with two people, and you are no longer constantly rushing to make it from one event to the next.

So you have enough distance and also the time to take a closer look at the people around you. So recently I was at Louis Vuitton and felt like I was in the fan curve at a Champions League final. Almost all of the guests were wrapped in Louis Vuitton logos from head to toe. LV monograms and the typical brown Damier patterns as far as the eye can see: large and striking on plush jackets, across the chest or back. Small and hundreds of times on shoes and fishing hats, bags, jewelry and belts. Even on sweatpants! Since I assume that no guest dares to turn up with a fake from a street market in Asia or North Africa at the real Louis Vuitton, it must be the case that the luxury house really offers such banal trousers. But why are there people who spend an estimated 1200 euros on Louis Vuitton sweatpants that look like a fake from a street market in Asia or North Africa?

The logomania of the 80s is back. At first it was only the little crocodile from Lacoste on the polo shirt or the blue and red F from Fila that the wearer wanted to use to express his status, then the brand names puffed up on the back of T-shirts and sweatshirts and closed the owners changing advertising media. The Afro-American rappers in Harlem, New York, drove the brand cult to extremes by hijacking the insignia of the white upper class and printing fake logo mixes of European luxury houses the size of a traffic light on leather jackets and hoodies.

At some point this boasting was considered vulgar and embarrassing, especially since it was mostly brand pirates who dared to print fake luxury logos on cheap textiles and sell them a million times over. A poor sausage who needs to pretend or show off his wealth in such a penetrating way. First the luxury industry fought against this cannibalization of its image, now it is doing it itself. From Dior to Chanel to Louis Vuitton - there is hardly a fashion house that does not have logos on its products today. The 100-year-old Gucci collection is just arriving in stores and chief designer Alessandro Michele is adding something more: some coats and blazers even have a double logo emblazoned: Gucci and Balenciaga. Like FC St. Pauli and FC Bayern Munich on a fan scarf. There is no well-known fashion magazine that does not cover this detail with gasping words like "revolutionary". Ingenious or banal, consumers seem to like it when I see the fervor with which they plaster themselves with logos. And it's good that after the parade I didn't go straight to the next one. Taking a seat at Hermès in Louis Vuitton would really be a no-go.