The revelations ‘were not really revelations at all,’ noted the New Yorker. That Cambridge Analytica assembled psychographic profiles of voters using improperly obtained Facebook data — and sold it to such clients as the Donald Trump and Vote Leave campaigns — had been in the news for years. Nevertheless, #deletefacebook trended, alongside its new public face: pink hair, pensive gaze, pierced septum. He ‘looks like he could walk in a Vetements show,’ noted an incredulous GQ.  ‘The Millenials’ first great Whistleblower?’ tweeted Cadwalladr.

Most modern whistleblowers dress to deflect attention. ‘Appear respectable and serious without overdoing it,’ advises a 2013 guide for would-be government informants.² Daniel Ellsberg, the military intelligence contractor whose leak of the Pentagon Papers helped end the Vietnam War, rubbed elbows with flower children at anti-nuclear demonstrations in a suit and tie.³ Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who divulged 9/11 lapses, wore a fifteen-year-old suit to her congressional testimony, ignoring the subsequent flurry of letters from fashion consultants and hairdressers.⁴ Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s public image — button-down shirt, wire-framed glasses with one nose-pad missing — has been so consistent it’s piqued the suspicions of conspiracy theorists.⁵ ‘The funny thing is most of my life, even today, I never wore glasses,’ Snowden said recently of media portrayals. ‘They have trapped me in time over the course of my existence as the way I looked when I came forward.’⁶

Whistleblowers, in other words, are insulated from trends. According to political psychologist C. Frederick Alford, although their actions lead to progress, they have a streak of moral conservatism: ‘It takes someone who believes in the system far more than the system ever believes in itself.’⁷

Wylie, on the other hand, wore all of the following in the days and weeks after he went public: a Raf Simons-esque jacket with photo collage patches. A neon-orange sweatshirt by Polish streetwear brand MISBHV. A T-shirt by a New York streetwear brand, Pleasures, printed with a photo of a baby smoking a cigarette. A camouflage coach jacket from the pop star the Weeknd’s merch collection, XO (according to some fans, the letters reference a kiss; according to others, the club drug ecstasy). In his portrait for the New York Times, Wylie stands in front of a wall of graffiti. A self-described gay Canadian vegan who dropped out of high-school and taught himself to code, this is not all that surprising. But as a whistleblower, he’s an outsider among outsiders. Rather than cultivating quiet normalcy, Wylie’s outfits gesture at the avant-garde as loudly as any fashion editorial. But what are the gestures saying?

What clothes say about their wearers was, in fact, the research query that brought Wylie to Cambridge Analytica in the first place. In 2013, while working towards a PHD in trend forecasting, he was hired by its future parent company. Cambridge Analytica went on to use a quiz app to cull information from Facebook profiles that would help predict political beliefs, similarly to how fashion forecasters might predict purchases. ‘Fashion trends are a useful proxy for [politics],’ Wylie told the Observer. ‘Trump is like a pair of Uggs, or Crocs, basically. So how do you get from people thinking “Ugh. Totally ugly” to the moment when everyone is wearing them? That was the inflection point [Steve Bannon] was looking for.’ After Wylie left in 2014, he started his own company, Eunoia Technologies, which developed ‘algorithms to predict fashion personality and trend adoption in individual consumers.’⁸ Its ‘Psychographic Segments’ included ‘Young Punky Creatives’ and ‘Hyper Branded Exhibitionists’; per a Buzzfeed report, the start-up pitched microtargeting to everyone from fashion labels to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.⁹

In the weeks after Wylie went public, Facebook lost $80 billion in market value.¹⁰ Public figures including Elon Musk deleted their accounts, and dozens of publications published how-to guides to doing the same. If this whistleblower’s revelations ‘were not really revelations,’ why are they striking a nerve? Part of it is Facebook’s handling of the crisis: Cambridge Analytica obtained its data under the guise of academic research; the platform knew about the misuse, but did little to rectify it. Adding fuel to the flames is the figure of Wylie himself. In the days after he went public, a quote by John Waters circulated on Twitter: ‘When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters,’ the filmmaker said in 2012. ‘Now you’re a hacktvist. But there’s no look to that lifestyle! I’m mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.’¹¹ 

Wylie had an outfit. His whistle was directed not at a government, but its nebulous digital equivalent; no one wants to be viewed as a data set, much less a ‘Hyper Branded Exhibitionist’ or ‘Young Punky Creative.’ The thing is, Wylie is also complicit. ‘Pink hair is cancelled. Septum piercings obviously cancelled… “Whistleblowing” extremely old already exposed news, cancelled,’ tweeted Ashland Mines, the DJ Total Freedom. Does it take someone steeped in the intricacies of personal branding to jam up the algorithms that govern it? Or is Wylie’s persona all too crisp, a meme more than a movement’s spark? Perhaps the Millennial Whistleblower’s politics are like his fashion, a collection of things that only look radical.

The thing is, the trendiness of political opinions is exactly Wylie’s point. Trump is like Uggs and Uggs are like Trump; sudden, infectious, arbitrary. Most people are comfortable with the idea that what they wear is not a reflection of a deeper self so much as of passing conventions. Clothing is a dance between self-distinction and social acceptability, a tendency to flock with and against our peers. More unsettling is the notion that our political beliefs could be the same. On social media platforms, their similarity is exacerbated, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The values most dear to us are displayed alongside haul videos and cupcake close-ups, as clicks and shares. Our politics are accessories to personal brands.

At the time of this article’s publication, Christopher Wylie was no longer on Facebook, although not by choice. Soon after he went public, the company disabled his account. ‘Downside to @facebook also banning me on @instagram is missing out on my daily dose of well curated food pics and thirst traps,’ he tweeted, somewhere between sarcasm and sincerity.

Our own forecast is glitching; the meanings coded into the Whistleblower’s clothes remain opaque. But whistleblowers are, Millennial or otherwise, truth-tellers. Perhaps this one’s revelation is that behind our curated identities, there may sometimes be no meaning at all. 

Alice Hines is a writer in New York.

1. From Cadwalladr’s profile of Wylie, published on March 18, 2018. See: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/
   data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-
   faceook-nix-bannon-trump. The two first interviews with Wylie as an on-the-record source were published on March 17, 2018, by the New York Times and the Guardian. ↩

2. http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1954&context=lhapapers ↩

3. https://www.mintpressnews.com/daniel-ellsberg-nixon-almost-took-vietnam-war-nuclear-in-november-1969/214120/ ↩

4. http://faculty.cbpa.drake.edu/frank/mba_240_2364_
   fall_2013/part_3_personal_values/links_theme_3/
   time_magazine_whistle_blower.pdf ↩

5. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4 and https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/3sance/
   snowden_is_still_missing_a_nosepad_on_his_glasses/ ↩

6. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/16/is-whistleblowing-worth-prison-or-a-life-in-exile-edward-snowden-talks-to-daniel-ellsberg ↩

7. See: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/
   snowden-whistleblower-interview-alford/ and https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/
   01/anatomy-whistleblower/ ↩

8. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fashion-tech-meetup-4-registration-16714155489#  ↩

9. https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/cambridge-analytica-chris-wylie-eunoia-trump-campaign ↩

10. http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/27/news/companies/
    facebook-stock-zuckerberg/index.html ↩

11. https://www.wsj.com/articles/
    SB10001424052702304636404577298132546958436 ↩

A PR chaos quickly ensued. On Twitter, regular users and ‘sneakerheads’ alike shared photos and videos as they burned or tossed in the bin their pair of New Balance.⁶ Meanwhile, rival brand Reebok cynically seized the opportunity and offered to send replacement shoes to many outraged customers.⁷ Shortly thereafter, New Balance disassociated itself from far-right ideology with a statement that divorced its concern for local manufacturing from white supremacist agendas. Unfazed, Anglin followed up on his first post by saying that whether or not the company identified as Republican is irrelevant and suggesting that the brand make him an official spokesperson:

If I were in the marketing department of New Balance, I would take it a step further and offer me, Andrew Anglin, publisher of the America’s most-trusted Republican news outlet, a product endorsement deal. I’m in great shape, have ripped abs and would look fantastic on a billboard that reads ‘Official shoes of the Republican Party: New Balance stands with the White race.’⁸ 

The social media outrage caused by Anglin’s endorsement of New Balance, on the other hand, was an inadequate response inasmuch as it was mostly directed at the company rather than at Anglin and the political views he represents. Boycott may be appropriate in the case of companies who do business with certain political figures, as in the case of the Grab Your Wallet campaign,⁹ but it is misguided in the case of brand appropriation, which does not require direct affiliation on the part of the brand. Furthermore, by focusing on the PR scandal not only did most mainstream media outlets give free PR to Anglin and his site – neo-Nazi groups and public figures regularly use grandiose statements, racist hashtags and ‘trolling tactics’ to build their ‘brand’¹⁰ – but they also failed to address the dynamics of neo-Nazi’s appropriation of a mainstream footwear brand with a global distribution.

This instance of appropriation is not an isolated case. In a recently defunct blog, an American neo-Nazi sympathiser proposed that far-right groups appropriate Adidas with the aim of turning ‘something that the everyday person wears’ into ‘a symbol of our movement.’¹¹ And it is not just footwear brands that are being appropriated. Cartoonist Matt Furie’s character Pepe the Frog went from ‘inoffensive Internet meme’ to being ‘hijacked by hatemongers’ from the so-called alt-right.¹² Food is not safe either: fast food chain Wendy’s was celebrated on The Daily Stormer after Pepe the Frog accidentally made an appearance on the company’s social media account¹³ and even milk has been appropriated as a symbol of racial superiority.¹⁴ These instances show that white supremacists seek recognition by associating themselves with mainstream symbols and material goods. They seek visibility by appearing ordinary and, thus, paradoxically invisible.

As the case of New Balance shows, this desire to hack the mainstream manifests itself in sartorial terms too. If traditionally skinheads donned a specific subcultural uniform consisting of ‘tight trousers, T-shirt imprinted with neo-Nazi slogans and massive Doc Martens boots laced to the knees,’¹⁵ Anglin’s posts made it clear that this is no longer the case. While this may be a new phenomenon in the U.S. it is not the case in Europe. As early as 1993 it was observed that ‘German neo-Nazi skinheads are changing their style. They are growing their hair and increasingly swapping jackboots and bomber jackets for “normal clothes,” such as ‘jeans, running shoes and parkas.’¹⁶ A 2014 article in Rolling Stone even documented the rise of Nazi hipsters or ‘nipsters,’ who sport tote bags, Converse shoes, skinny jeans and beards, appropriate reggae and dance the Harlem Shake.¹⁷

In this sense, the appropriation of New Balance certainly overlaps with attempts by the far-right to look less threatening and appear more palatable to broader audiences, as the case of alt-right demagogue Richard Spencer’s suit-and-tie image attests.¹⁸ Like a suit, a uniform of jeans, T-shirt, New Balance trainers and sporty jacket relies on invisibility. The person (usually a white man) who wears it is virtually indistinguishable from a non-far-right guy in a casual everyday garb, just like a nipster may be impossible to distinguish from a regular hipster. Invisibility as a strategy also overlaps with three elements that have been to an extent addressed by the media but not necessarily linked with neo-Nazi ‘style’: whiteness, the discourse around technology and masculinity.

In his famous 1997 study of whiteness in Western cultures Richard Dyer argues that white people have historically represented themselves as ‘the norm.’ In doing so, whiteness and normativity become synonyms. This equation renders whiteness invisible, which means that all the variations of non-whiteness are constructed as visible others.¹⁹ The appropriation of mainstream brands, in this sense, uses sartorial invisibility – the fact that white supremacists could visually ‘pass’ as moderates or liberals – to paradoxically build what Spencer calls ‘white identity politics.’²⁰ To this end German Nazi-hipster Patrick Schroeder ‘conducts seminars showing neo-Nazis how they can dress less threateningly and argues that anybody from hip-hop fans to hipsters in skinny jeans should be able to join the scene without changing the way they look.’²¹ Style is then either thought of exclusively as a tool to assimilate or paradoxically discounted altogether as irrelevant to one’s political beliefs. For white supremacists ditching the skinhead image means leaving behind their status as subculture, which defines itself in opposition to the mainstream, to reaffirm whiteness as the mainstream. In the process whiteness would be rendered invisible and its dominance reiterated because in Western cultures invisibility, as Dyer points out, is indeed the privilege accorded only to those in power.

Invisibility as a mode of operating under the radar and not ‘outing’ oneself also resonates with the so-called Alt-Right’s fixation with technological discourses and imagery. That white supremacists are social media-savvy trolling experts who operate online to expand and reinforce their network is well-documented.²² But technology is also celebrated in Alt-Right aesthetics for its potential ‘to conquer and to reaffirm inegalitarianism,’²³ which goes hand in hand with the reaffirmation of white dominance. As merchandise from The Daily Stormer attests, neo-Nazi aesthetic taste includes eighties comics and sci-fi content [which] offer normative gender roles, hyper-masculine futurist heroes, hypersexualised women and a variety of visions of humans transcending their bodily limits via technological innovation.’²⁴ The transhumanism represented in popular films such as Blade Runner and The Matrix is also celebrated.²⁵ That the latter was directed by two transwomen is strategically ignored, but its hacking ethos finds an expression in practises such as ‘Operation Google,’ which is used to bypass the algorithms set up by search engines to identify and block content that is deemed discriminatory. This strategy entails replacing racist epithets with the names of the very same companies that implement anti-discriminatory policies – Google, Skype, Yahoo and Bing are some examples – on forums like 4chan and /pol/ so as to avoid flagging and deletion.²⁶ Operation Google thus hacks the very system it aims to bypass. It renders racism, homophobia, transphobia and white supremacism undetectable, that is invisible to algorithms, on the most used search engines in the world. In this sense, one could see the appropriation of New Balance trainers and the company logo as its sartorial equivalent: Operation New Balance is a way to hack the wardrobes of as many consumers as possible.

Last but not least, the popularity of eighties comics and sci-fi imagery in Alt-Right aesthetics and the choice of appropriating a brand of trainers have one more thing in common: both unabashedly celebrate masculinity. This is not to say that sneaker culture is inherently misogynist, but rather that it offers men the possibility to reclaim adornment and fashionability while retaining associations with a traditionally male-dominated cultural realm like sport.²⁷ In virtue of that sneaker culture becomes a preferential site for the projection of the idea of a dominant, physically strong and ready-for-action masculinity that perfectly embodies the fascist belief in ‘permanent warfare’ as well as its obsession with ‘sexual politics’ and gender symbolism.²⁸ But whereas ‘sneakerheads’ are likely to make bold statements with vibrant or limited edition trainers, sobriety is key to uphold standards of neo-Nazi masculinity. As one of the commenters on Anglin’s post writes, New Balance ‘are gorgeous, nothing extremely colourful and gay as hell, just plain grey.’²⁹ Once again, value is placed on avoiding visibility and distinction.

Invisibility as strategy thus brings together many of the key elements of neo-Nazi ideology and aesthetics. Social media outrage in the guise of brand boycotts and shoe burning will not prevent further attempts from the far-right to hack, infiltrate and colonise our political imaginary as well as our wardrobes. Rather, what we need to make visible and to examine are the invisible processes by which we can potentially become victims, allies and vehicles of such unacceptable ideologies.

Alex Esculapio is a writer and PhD student at the University of Brighton, UK.

1. http://www.dailystormer.com/your-uniform-new-balance-just-became-the-shoes-of-white-people/ ↩

2. https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-balance-faces-social-media-backlash-after-welcoming-trump-1478823102 ↩

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/statement-on-trump-puts-new-balance-shoe-company-in-cross-hairs.html ↩

4. http://www.dailystormer.com/your-uniform-new-balance-just-became-the-shoes-of-white-people/ ↩

5. http://www.latimes.com/local/la-gibson1aug01-transripit-story.html ↩

6. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/statement-on-trump-puts-new-balance-shoe-company-in-cross-hairs.html ↩

7. http://www.esquire.com/style/news/a50877/reebok-replace-new-balance-trump-comments/ ↩

8. http://www.dailystormer.com/the-daily-stormer-fully-endorses-new-balance-whether-it-is-a-republican-company-or-not/ ↩

9. https://grabyourwallet.org/ ↩

10. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump ↩

11. https://jobewatson14.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/altright-brand-appropriation/ ↩

12. https://newrepublic.com/article/137545/perversion-pepe-frog ↩

13. http://forward.com/news/359129/did-wendys-become-the-accidental-neo-nazi-happy-meal/ ↩

14. http://www.avclub.com/article/milk-chugging-alt-right-trolls-shut-down-shia-labe-250242 ↩

15. S John, ‘Carnaby Street: A mixture of trendy shops and neo-nazis,’ Toronto Star, Aug 5, 1989. ↩

16. A Tomforde, ‘Neo-Nazis in Germany ditch ‘skinhead and boots’ image,’ The Guardian, Nov 18, 1993. ↩

17. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/heil-hipster-the-young-neo-nazis-trying-to-put-a-stylish-face-on-hate-20140623 ↩

18. See for instance http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/the_hatemonger_next_door/ and http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/how-the-alt-right-uses-style-as-a-propaganda-tool.html ↩

19. Richard, Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture, New York and London: Routledge, 1997. ↩

20. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/richard-spencer-trump-alt-right-white-nationalist ↩

21. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/heil-hipster-the-young-neo-nazis-trying-to-put-a-stylish-face-on-hate-20140623 ↩

22. See for instance http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump ↩

23. http://baltimore-art.com/2017/02/11/the-aesthetics-of-the-alt-right/ ↩

24. Ibid. ↩

25. Ibid. ↩

26. https://ageofshitlords.com/4chan-pol-launching-operation-google/ ↩

27. Y Kawamura, Sneakers: Fashion, Gender, and Subculture, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. ↩

28. http://baltimore-art.com/2017/02/11/the-aesthetics-of-the-alt-right/ ↩

29. http://www.dailystormer.com/your-uniform-new-balance-just-became-the-shoes-of-white-people/ ↩

It’s the same narrative typically generated by fashion collaborations: Can you believe X is working with Y? we ask, re: Juicy Couture and Vetements, Christopher Kane and Crocs, Gosha Rubchinskiy and Kangol. In 2017, the collaboration has become as common as the collection. It generates unfailing press, both critical and laudatory. In both scenarios, interest tends to hinge on the brands’ differences, on the inherent edginess of uniting them. In the case of Louis Vuitton and Supreme, the story is that the former brings to the table old-world prestige (and high prices), the latter irreverent youthfulness (and fans rabid enough to pay them).

Yet it’s worth asking: how different are Supreme and Louis Vuitton, actually? They are worn by the same celebrities.³ They are sold in the same shops.⁴ And they both communicate primarily through logos, reinforcing the notion pervasive of late that brands, even more than craft and design, create objects of desire.

Looks-wise, Louis Vuitton x Supreme is a copy-paste. Wallets, duffels and backpacks are virtually unchanged from their, in some cases, decades-old silhouettes; they’re spottable thanks to the word Supreme in limb-size font. Other pieces – skate decks, denim jackets, trunks – stamp the skate company’s logo atop the Louis Vuitton monogram, with the artistry of a teenager pasting an unrequested bumper sticker on his mum’s BMW. When Supreme knocked off Louis Vuitton in 2000, the results were more complex than this: those skate decks tweaked the century-old monogram, swapping out the LV for a dollar sign. Now, the two logos keep safe distance. If the old decks deconstructed logos, the new ones reinforce their sanctity.

The original decks didn’t make much money: two weeks after they were issued, Louis Vuitton sued Supreme,⁵ and unsold inventory was supposedly incinerated.⁶ This bit of streetwear lore fuels the narrative that there’s something subversive and daring about the new collection, too. The collection is ‘not dissimilar to that 17-year-old bootleg,’ writes Vogue.⁷ The denim looks ‘like something you might find on Canal Street rather than Bond Street,’ notes Dazed.⁸ Kim Jones, Louis Vuitton’s designer, encouraged the comparisons. ‘It’s tongue-in-cheek, a bit Dapper Dan, you know? That’s what things are now,’ he told the publication.

Dapper Dan is the Harlem tailor who, in the 1980s, turned bootlegging into an artform, creating custom outfits for rappers and sports stars and eventually getting sued by the luxury brands his designs were besting. When it was founded in 1994, Supreme had more in common with Dapper Dan than Louis Vuitton. Its red box logo was an appropriation of an artist, Barbara Kruger, who herself worked with found images from advertisements. Throughout the Nineties it was known for its irreverent ‘logo bites,’ placing stickers across Calvin Klein ads of Kate Moss, selling T-shirts that aped the branding of Patagonia and Courrèges.⁹ As Supreme grew, these were replaced by official collaborations with Vans, Nike, the Muppets, Playboy. The company began to sue others for copyright infringement, as it had once been sued.¹⁰ Its logo – created as a commentary on logos, worn as an emblem of a wry attitude towards corporate fashion – now served the ur-logo’s original design function, pioneered by Louis Vuitton in 1896: to mark authenticity and protect against intellectual property violations.¹¹

This use of the logo makes sense when you consider how much money is at stake. Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy’s annual revenue in 2015 was €35.7 billion.¹² Supreme is a privately held company, whose earnings are not subject to public disclosure law, but it has ten stores in five countries and fans willing to wait in line every single week when new products drop. The collaboration is priced accordingly: cell-phone cases are reportedly retailing for between €200 and €300, backpacks and bags between €1500 and €3000, trunks for $68,500.¹³

Dapper Dan closed his shop in the 1990s. Though many of the brands he knocked off now reference him, none have invited him to do an official partnership, he told me when we met a few years ago in New York. In one sense, this is surprising: It was Dap, after all, who invented new techniques for working with leather and fur, who created couture-like pieces that rivalled the craft of Louis Vuitton’s own artisans.¹⁴ But it’s Supreme who has most in common ideologically with the luxury brand. Its logo projects status and power. By wearing it, you align not with a person, but with an abstract and impersonal entity. It is, by definition, corporate.

Fifteen years ago, fashion collaborations followed a formula: high-end designer trades cache for cash with a mass-market retailer.¹⁵ Today, they come in all shapes: lateral (Canada Goose and Levi’s), cross-industry (Moschino and Barbie), mainstream-underground (Converse and Comme des Garçons). Often, these garments are mashups, refreshing brand aesthetics through the juxtapositions of familiar silhouettes, patterns, materials. In an era of increasingly ephemeral trends, where brands of all price points churn out hundreds of garments a year and where creative exhaustion is rampant, it’s perhaps unsurprising that designers are eager to find a kind of cheat code, a quick and easy hack for attention.

It’s also perhaps no surprise that, as the collaborations pile up, some of the buzziest versions take a meta-stance, commenting on the phenomenon while benefitting from it. Vetements, for instance, took the collaboration concept to its logical extreme, with a Spring 2017 line consisting solely of co-branded items with companies like Juicy Couture, Hanes and Dr. Martens. Shown in a department store during couture week, emphasising business instead of craft, the pieces felt like anti-couture – a clever in-joke. Similarly, Louis Vuitton x Supreme draws on the latter’s lingering anti-establishment aura, its legacy of satirising precisely the kind of consumer branding this collaboration typifies, to make appealing bags that might otherwise be seen as the luxury versions of totes from a well-sponsored conference.

In many ways, it’s an old story. Fashion has always preferred its capital and wealth obsession with a side of radical chic. But perhaps there’s something contemporary about the collection, too. In the world outside fashion, corporate power is at a heights never seen before, infiltrating art, media and politics. In November, the U.S. elected its first brand as president. His logo is his name, and it’s been used for decades to make money through reality TV shows, real estate projects, and licensing deals. Like Louis Vuitton x Supreme, Donald Trump x America is a collaboration which serves up corporate power with a side of outsider populism. And, like Supreme x Louis Vuitton, it promises to generate lots of money, at least for some.

Alice Hines is Vestoj’s online editor and a writer in New York City.

1. http://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/01/24/supreme-louis-vuitton-reactions ↩

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/fashion/mens-style/louis-vuitton-supreme-collaboration-fall-2017-menswear.html ↩

3. 2 Chainz; Odell Beckham Jr.; Kylie Jenner ↩

4. Dover Street Market ↩

5. http://www.supremenewyork.com/random/decks ↩

6. http://www.crfashionbook.com/text/louis-vuitton-supreme-2/ ↩

7. http://www.vogue.com/article/kate-moss-david-beckham-louis-vuitton-supreme ↩

8. http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/34407/1/why-lv-x-supreme-is-a-watershed-moment-for-fashion ↩

9. See: http://www.imgrum.net/media/1292882430637713806_1647796372 and https://www.reddit.com/r/supremeclothing/comments/2nm9oe/info_on_patagonia_supreme_box_logo ↩

10. ‘She’s trying to build her whole brand by piggybacking off Supreme,’ Supreme’s founder, James Jebbia, told New York Magazine, of Leah McSweeney, whose women’s skate line made goods printed with the phrase ‘Supreme Bitch.’ The logo, McSweeney said in court documents, was meant to ‘parody and comment critically upon the Plaintiff’s use of the term SUPREME in connection with its misogynistic and highly demeaning “boy’s club” attitude and line of skateboard street wear.’ See: http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/supreme-2013-5/ and http://www.complex.com/style/2013/05/supreme-court-the-12-greatest-moments-of-supremes-legal-battle-with-leah-mcsweeney/105 ↩

11. S Bonvicini, Louis Vuitton: Une saga française, Fayard, 2004. In 1895, the luggage company’s original ‘Damier’ checkerboard pattern was copied. The next year, Georges Vuitton, the son of the house’s founder Louis, designed a more complex monogram – the one still in use today – in order to ‘dissuade’ imitators. ‘Ironically, it would become the most copied design in the world a century later,’ writes Bonvicini. [my translation] ↩

12. https://www.lvmh.com/news-documents/press-releases/excellent-performance-of-lvmh-in-2015/  ↩

13. See: https://www.instagram.com/p/BPcxeOTA1_Z/ and http://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/01/25/supreme-louis-vuitton-prices/ ↩

14. Dapper Dan is interviewed in Vestoj’s On Masculinities issue. He was also a storyteller at Vestoj‘s Storytelling Salon at MoMA PS1 in 2015. His story can be viewed here, at minute 34:20. ↩

15. Isaac Mizrahi for Target in 2003; Karl Lagerfeld for H&M in 2004. ↩