On Monday the New York Post found a great solution to sell more papers – adding a wraparound ad with the Supreme red logo on a white background. The trick - using a cool and highly desirable New York City brand to sell papers - worked pretty well and the newspaper turned into an immediate success going sold out pretty quickly, with some newstands selling 50 copies in one go. Some people added the paper to their Supreme collections, others rushed to resell it online.
It was the first time the New York Post went for such type of promotion, but it wasn't the first "collaboration" for Supreme, that has so far worked with popular brands such as Fila, Nike, Rimowa and Levi’s, or luxury fashion houses like Louis Vuitton and even issued a limited run of Supreme-branded subway cards in partnership with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York.
Each Thursday Supreme releases new products, included limited edition designs that prompt consumers to line up outside its stores, the tangible proof that whatever Supreme touches sells well, so it was only natural for the Supreme x New York Post promotional cover wrap to become another must-have. In a nutshell, the hype sells, even better than the news (Monday's edition of the New York Post wouldn't have gone sold out if the advert hadn't been there...), which brings us to the main theme of this post.
Since Italy's populist leaders Luigi Di Maio (Five Star Movement) and Matteo Salvini (The League), found an agreement to form the (most right wing) government of Italian history, there has been an increase in racist attacks. They were obviously denied by the Minister of the Interior Salvini, who, more or less like US President Trump, seems to have more time than any other mortal to spend on Twitter, posting silly messages. Salvini spent the last 10 years navigating through life thanks to a series of T-shirts and sweatshirts with slogans that told him what to do (from "No Euro" to "I'm a populist", from "Stop The Invasion" - referred to migrants - to "No Sanctions to Russia", just to mention a few ones).
Salvini's speeches are collages of random sentences, so that if you watch them remixed by some clever YouTuber, you will struggle to understand which is the real speech and which is the remixed and satirical one.
Salvini hates migrants as, according to him, they are part of a larger scheme to replace Italians with other cultures; he denies he's racist and fascist, but uses Mussolini's slogans; he likes to invoke divine interventions brandishing rosary beads and gospel books at political rallies and loves a traditional family with a mother and a father (that's why he had children from three different women, because, if you love a family, you tend to have more than one...). Mind you, there is something that the Minister for Interior Affairs abhors: the possibility that Elsa (out of Disney's "Frozen") may reveal herself as a lesbian character (the only reason why I would go and watch the sequel to "Frozen") and Coca-Cola as the popular fizzy drink supports Gay Pride events, so Salvini publicly tends to claim he prefers olive oil to Coke (maybe he thinks olive oil is a drink and not a condiment, but I'm just guessing here...).
Yet this half-wit Minister who has recently been banned from Mallorca as "persona non-grata" (thank you, Mallorca) for his statements and policies against migrants, appeals to a large section of the population and everytime he post a demented tweet he receives friendly messages form his supporters (both the real and the myriad of fake ones probably linked to Russian bots, as Salvini is a friend of Putin).
Why is that so? Well, the answer is an easy one: Italy has gone through dark decades of ignorance under Berlusconi who sowed the seeds of idiocy in a consistent way. When the centre left went back into power it didn't know how to speak to their voters, or how to reach out to new voters. In the meantime the Five Star Movement started using social media and blogs, connecting with the technological orphans of Silvio Berlusconi, while The League started a massive campaign against migrants seen as a menace. Salvini, and together with him Di Maio, the only Minister of Labour and Employment in the world who never had a proper job in his life, appeal to a generation of Italians who never read a book, grew up believing in Berlusconi's utopia, tend to blame migrants for more or less everything and think that science is dangerous and doctors suggesting to vaccinate your baby are criminals who can be lynched online.
As you may guess, it is almost impossible for the left/centre left to attract the voters' attention while the country is going berserk (among the other champions of political dementia in the current government there is the homophobic Minister for Family Affairs Fontana who seems to have read The Handmaid's Tale getting to the conclusion that it is a political manual rather than a piece of dystopian fiction...).
Yet there is a way out: finding a candidate that appeals to the majority of people, especially those ones who believe in amplified slogans rather than in politics and truth. And here's where Supreme comes to mind – the hype sells. Hence the left has got to find someone representing the hype. Where should the ideal candidate come from? Well, the fashion world.
Yes, the Italian fashion industry has traditionally been conservative if not overtly right wing (the Fontana sisters were very Conservatives; Dolce & Gabbana often claimed they are right-wing supporters; Santo Versace, Gianni's brother, was an MP for Berlusconi's party until 2011), but, as a young woman, Miuccia Prada joined the Italian Communist Party and became a feminist and her brand has the sort of status that appeals to the masses.
In a nutshell, if ordinary people elected Berlusconi over twenty years ago as they thought he represented a self-made man, successful entrepreneur and supposedly charming (eugh!) womaniser (well, he wasn't entirely self-made, but that's what people thought...), and if they voted for ranting and often clueless candidates from the Five Star Movement promising impossible things and for Salvini, a man who uses his garments as ordinary people use a GPS - to navigate through a meandering situation using a simplified system of messages - they would elect also Miuccia, who could be a sort of ambassador (yes, just like actresses become ambassadors for fashion houses).
I know what you're thinking: I'm solving a serious problem in a very superficial way, but superficiality is the keyword in our society and voting for Prada may achieve the same status that a Prada keychain may give you when you don't have enough money to buy anything else (you can't buy the bag or the shoes – oh, but you've voted for her and this is sooo cool). So, never mind the programme (that will follow anyway...), the hype is what counts.
The New York Post sold papers by wrapping them up in an ad; we may wrap freedom and a political programme in a fashion brand (after all the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower highlighted that politics is like fashion and you can shift trends and public opinion in more or less the same way in both fields). Magazines often blur the line between commerce and editorial content to get more money; the next step may be blurring the line between marketing, fashion and politics. That's awfully sad, but if that's the only way to attract more attention on social media, fight racism, fascism and narrow-mindedness, well, we may as well go for this option.
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