I have talked before about prison aesthetics in fashion. In the case of Haeftling, my criticism was tempered by the professed share of profits with the inmate population.
This example from Nike is less complex. These are trainers “inspired” by prison. The ‘Prison Blues‘ sneaker. How bland.
The jejune description of the shoe is trumped only by the inanity of the comments.
The quotes on the sneaker are those of Johnny Cash – an inadvertent and tellingly naive inclusion. Cash, despite his self-manipulated jail-bird image, only spent one night in lock up and (certainly today) has little to do with the reality of American prisons. I’d loved to have seen quotations from Eugene Debs, Clarence Darrow, Angela Davis or Elliot Currie used instead, but they aren’t commerce-compliant …
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August 25, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Tamara
Wow, first we had gangbanger wannabes, and now we’ll have prison inmate wannabes. But you know that 99% of the guys who will buy these shoes would be crying if they had to spend a day in an actual prison. (throwing up fake gang sign.)