Nothing seems faker than a chain store product attempting to imitate a DIY look, and nothing screams more anti-anarchy than a retail store,… and this story doesn’t make any exception. Urban Outfitters can try very hard at being hip for their customers, whom, by the way, have been described with the very flattering term of ‘upscale homeless’ by the company, but they will never be near any level of coolness and this new item on their catalogue looks totally ridiculous.
The chain store has released this ‘crazy awesome’ jacket, which may or may not look like a moto leather jacket from the 90s as they pretend. Look at it, it’s hand-painted punk logos of the Sex Pistols, Crass and the Clash and I think the bands should sue? Urban Outfitters pretends that each vintage piece is unique and can be yours for just $375… and I totally see what they mean by unique and vintage. They went at Goodwill or other thrift shops, bought as many $10 leather jackets as they could, and painted the shit out of them! They applied a lot of white in the back so that their ‘artist’ could write any punk band names he wanted. I know a guy who does a similar thing with vintage clothes and sell them on a flea market for 5 bucks. Or may be the hipster-scale store had a large stock of black jackets they couldn’t sell and decided to refurnish them.
It’s shameful for so many reasons but it would hardly be the most awful thing that the store has ever done, after all this is the same company which released this ‘Auschwitz Chic’ t-shirts with, on the pocket, the same Jewish stars Jewish victims were forced to wear during the holocaust. So we aren’t even in the same ball park here but I still want to punch in the face the first middle class hipster who buys such one of these jackets. Urban Outfitters clientele was not even born in the 90s and this screams poseur more than I can express it here. It is a sad day when punk becomes a brand, and it is safe to say that Joe Strummer would be furious? By the way the logos are so approximate they look like a joke, were they painted in Bangladesh or what? In this case it’s even worst, it’s rebellion turned into profit, but what’s new?