The Rise and Fall and Rise again of 90s and Y2K brands
My 17-year-old son wears the clothes I wore when I was 17. Literally.
A blue Carhartt sweater I had stashed away at the cabin is now his favourite sweater. He has bought the exact same Carhartt military style belt I had in my snowboarder days, to hold up baggy, blue denim jeans very similar to those worn by me 25 years ago.
Is it because he looks up to me, I ask myself. No. No way. Definitely not. I’m not that na?ve.
The reason, of course, is that he is caught up in the 90s nostalgia that very much defines the pop cultural zeitgeist of today. A lot of 90s and Y2K brands have made a comeback these days. In the same way, in fact, as some iconic brands of the 70s made a comeback in the 90s – such as the white Adidas Superstar low-top shoes I wore with my Carhartt clothes.
It all goes in circles, it seems.
Which has made the brand nerd in me curious. Why do some brands come to define a period? What happens to these brands when they fall out of fashion?
The magic of cultural appropriation
The rise of such brands is very often caused by “cultural appropriation” – meaning that consumers, outside the traditional target group – starts to use the brand as an effective cultural marker. It becomes a way to differentiate between the in-group and the out-group. The cool and the uncool.
Just consider these examples.
Most Europeans don’t know that Carhartt is an American blue-collar workwear brand. Carhartt’s rise to pop cultural fame happened when rappers such as Ice Cube and House of Pain took to wearing the brand in the early 90s. This led it to become one of the most iconic streetwear and skatewear brands of the 90s and Y2K era.
Fila on the other hand was originally an upscale Italian sportswear brand, targeting the tennis market. Bj?rn Borg was spokesperson for the brand in the 70s. However, basketball players started wearing it in the 90s and the brand quickly pivoted to target this growing market segment. This led it to become one of the most fashionable sportwear brands of the 90s.
Buffalo shoes was originally a German manufacturer of cowboy boots. However, their sneakers and then plateau shoes became one of the defining signatures of the European techno crowd of the mid-1990s – and got really, really popular when the Spice Girls started wearing them. This led it to become arguably the most iconic (an unarguably the ugliest) shoes of the 90s.
There are more examples of this dynamic – such as UK work boots brand Doctor Martens, which was first appropriated by punk rockers in the 1970s and 80s ane then again by grunge rockers in the 90s. Rugged Norwegian maritime wear brand Helly-Hansen rose to (brief) fame when it was, for some very strange reasons, appropriated by gangster rappers in the early 90s.
Did I kill Carhartt?
Arguably, there was more good fortune involved, than a well-thought-out strategy behind the spectacular growth of these brands in the in 90s. They just happened to be picked up by some very cool kids.
Cultural appropriation worked its magic, but it also burned out rather fast. The dynamic seems to go something like this:
Seen from this perspective, I feel a bit bad. I was probably part of the demise of Carhartt as I was not part of the original cool crowd that appropriated the brand. I was a latecomer. Not uncool per se, but I wasn’t exactly Ice Cube either.
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Brand hibernation
Which brings me to the next question – what happened to these brands when they fell out of fashion?
The story of these brands diverges a bit.
Carhartt is arguably the most successful of these brands. One reason, I believe, is that they did a very smart move when they were riding the wave of popularity in the 90s. In 1994 it launched a sublabel – Carhartt WIP – that targeted the cool kids, while it retained the original Carhartt label for their traditional target group – blue collar workers. When it fell out of fashion with the cool kids, it still had a very sizable business from the original label to fall back on. The Carhartt WIP label could go into hibernation mode and lie in wait for the next wave of cool kids to discover it. Which they have.
Fila was not so smart. They probably didn’t see the sudden popularity as a wave, but more as a lift-off. The brand pivoted away from the preppy tennis target segment, to focus almost exclusively on the basketball, hip hop, streetwear segments. With it came flagship stores and major sponsorship deals with up-and-coming basketball stars such as Grant Hill. When popularity started to wane in the late 90s it hadn’t anything to fall back on. It struggled on for a while and was eventually bought by Fila Korea in 2007.
Buffalo shoes suffered a similar fate. When it fell out of fashion, it didn’t really have a fall-back plan. It soldiered on for a while and was in 2016 bought by German mainstream retailer Deichmann group, which is a sad, sad fate for a pop cultural phenomenon. It is however fast becoming stylish again, thanks in part for artists such as Billie Eilish (which, I guess, can be considered kind of a modern-day Spice Girl).
Reborn only to die again?
It seems then, that these brands go through a life cycle such as depicted below. They start out being not cool at all. Then they are – for mysterious reasons – culturally appropriated and becomes cool. The popularity wears off and it becomes not just not-cool, but actively uncool. Then it is forgotten. However, with a bit of time, it seems almost inevitable that someone cool comes along and drags the brand into the limelight again, it’s popularity reborn.
And so, the cycle continues.
Which brings me to the last question, which I do not have a ready answer for. Are these culturally iconic brands trapped in this endless cycle of popularity – obscurity – popularity? It might seem that way. But then again, maybe they will prove us wrong the second time around. Maybe they have a clever strategy in place to sustain the popularity in a way they didn’t manage back in the good old Y2K days.
Maybe my son will continue to wear my Carhartt sweater into his 20s. Or maybe it will lie waiting for my grandkids to pick it up 25 years from now.
Sources:
The article leans heavily on Douglas B. Holt How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding
The rise and fall of Dr Martens – from punk rock boot to a bland school run staple (telegraph.co.uk)
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