In a Fashion Brand – Postmodern Tidbits

Originally, “brand” meant only a mark of identification. Brick makers in ancient Egypt marked their bricks to avoid blame for the collapse of a building [1]. In ancient times, potters would also put marks on their work for identification [2]. Today, the word “brand” has taken on a new meaning. Blackett has even argued that “...brands have come to symbolize the convergence of the world’s economies on the demand-led rather than the command-led model.” The symbolic function of brands is nothing new. As far back as 1959, Levy was already asserting that people do not buy products just for what they do but for what they mean [3]. This symbolic function of brands has been further accentuated in a postmodern era. Central to postmodernism is the issue of identity [4]. People are struggling in a era characterized by the fragmentation and saturation of identities [5]. With the decline of conventional institutions, the market has become a new institution where we can wield power and control [6]. In the postmodern context, the fashion brand is no longer simply a mark of differentiation; rather, we can avow our own existence with fashion brands [7]. This paper presents a contextual review of fashion brands in a postmodern discourse