urban outfitters
Out of context: Reply #40
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Skylark:
Cosmonauts or not...you rule the skool.Jevad:
No prob... i'm not offended at all.We get TONS of hatemail here, not to mention the usual bitter hipster "they bogarted my identity, man" rants.
I'm not exactly a UO superpatriot myself. And believe me, I can be as critical of the industry as the next guy. I'd be stupid not to be.
My only point is that we don't collectively as a company make decisions to push an unattainable body image on our customers (even unconsciously).
The internal opinion of the last catalog was that it did come off a bit "too young" for our perceived customer. The next one will skew slightly older (hopefully).
I also agree that UO has shifted its focus. That was actually a deliberate strategic business move. I think at some point (around 50 stores or so) that it just became impossible to maintain any kind of indie agenda (if there ever was one).
This used to kill me daily, because I always held out hope that we could recapture our old customer base... but at the end of the day, the design team doesn't control the overall direction of the product line (which plays a huge role in who our customer is), so my opinion don't mean dooky.
One other thought: as a designer, part of your job is to dictate the form of communication. I mean, at some point in your process, you're going to "push an image" on a client, or on the public, right?
It's up to you to decide whether to buy something or not. I don't think that all retailers are trying to "tell you how to look and feel". They're just hoping you buy stuff.
Incidentally, where do you get most of your clothing? It's pretty hard to stay brand-free these days...