Branding the Individual

Jane Pavitt tries to imply that consumers can customize themselves to make themselves unique, that consumers have limitless possibilities and choices... I disagree. I disagree more with the message the article tries to get across than the reality it tries to describe. Although I can accept the reality described in the article I don't appreciate it. I hate consumerism and I hate that society is obsessed with it. I do not think we have a wide variety of choices, instead I think we lack them. I don't think that anything anyone wears is unique unless they themselves crafted the item.

To be specific, I thought the message this article was trying to get across was that consumers have the power to choose and determine the direction of the market. It was a message intended to empower consumers and inspire them to take shopping more seriously if they weren't already. It portrayed our ability to design ourselves as endless and limitless, but for me the limitations are all to obvious. I'm not talking about the obvious financial limitations which implies that only the rich truly have freedom of expression. Not only because they can get high end products but also because they can probably order customizable ones. In this case, yes the consumer truly has limitless possibilities.

However, what about the regular Joes? Although this article does touch upon socio-economic classes and counterfeit products it doesn't mention the fact that we can only choose from a selection of products that were already design. We can never truly have what we want but only get what we think is the best design out of the designs already available... What we (consumers) lack is the ability to customize and improve on already available designs. Fortunately, I think this is something we are slowly beginning to realize.