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Thursday, September 20, 2012

Unasked for and unwanted advice for those naming a clothing line

Don't name it after a color.

Don't get me wrong, people seem to like the "Pink" line, and I've seen several women wearing articles of clothing from it, and no doubt it is incredibly successful and has brought in more money than I could ever hope to earn if I lived a hundred lifetimes, but here's what I've noticed about "Pink": it doesn't seem to contain a whole lot of pink.

White word on a blue shirt, the word is "Pink" my response (in my head) is, "No, it's not."  I don't care if the word is a label or self referential, either way it's wrong.  Blue is not pink.  White is not pink.  Black writing on a black shirt (hard to read unless the light catches it right which it did) "I LOVE PINK" all evidence was to the contrary, her clothing choices all tended toward darker colors meaning even if she had ventured into the red end of the spectrum (she didn't) it seemed that she'd never put on something light enough to qualify as pink.  Of course for all I know she has precisely one dark outfit and every other day she'd be wearing nothing but pink, but it's difficult to seriously take that into account given that the on piece of information I do have to go on is that ever piece of clothing I've seen that contains the word "Pink" is decidedly not pink.

We can expand this to accessories as well, the girl with the black on black "pink" shirt had more that made me think she liked dark colors than just every piece of clothing she was wearing.  It was everything she carried as well.  I don't think any of that said "Pink" but some people did have such things labeled "Pink" and they all had on thing in common: they weren't pink.

Now some of the women here do in fact wear pink clothing, but based on the lack of labeling it would appear that none of it is of the "Pink" line and while I'm sure that the "Pink" line includes many things that are in fact pink, from what I've seen with my own eyes it might as well be named, "Anything but Pink," for the color range it displays.

Clearly the line is successful, clearly people like it, thus my advice is not only unasked for and unwanted, but actively bad as taking it would have gotten rid of a successful clothing line before it even started.

It's just that... if I were to make a clothing line called, "Orange," my first thought on, "What color should it be?" would not be, "Purple, with blue writing saying, 'Orange.'"  It just seems wrong.  The thing is labeled "[Color]" but it's not [Color].  I don't find it dishonest so much as strange.

So my advice on naming would be that unless you're going for monochromatic, don't name it a color.

5 comments:

  1. I assumed it was either a tie-in with the singer (unlikely) or deliberate cognitive dissonance.

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  2. I actually think it's a line from Victoria's Secret for college girls. Could be wrong, but I don't take that company as the deliberate cognitive dissonance type.

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  3. I am with you; it makes no sense. But I hate both that stuff and the color pink, so I am obviously not the target audience.

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  4. Pink is definitely one of the Victoria's Secret lines. I have no idea why they expanded that idea out into branding "pink!" on everything that is clearly not pink, but I guess it proves that most clothes are really about promoting a brand, rather than any sort of "fits comfortably and does not cause cognitive dissonance" minimum standard.

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  5. When the PINK line started, it had a lot more pink in it than it does now. I think VS may have even trademarked PINK written in their trademarked typeface.

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