Converse: Three Chords and the Truth?

I like my institutional brands to be unaware. Aloof. Like a teenage stone fox who hasn't figured it out yet. Or at least have an ad agency that's good at making them look that way. Coyly, Ingalls, Quinn & Johnson's 1991 TV spot for Converse's "It's What's Inside That Counts" campaign features a boy-guy voice-over insisting,"There are a lot more whatchucall ugly people in this world than beautiful people, and there's a growing sense of strength in our collective ugliness … We don't want to live in a beer commercial. The point is not to be beautiful. The point is to be yourself."

WTF happened? According to The Converse Century, Fall 2008 Footwear Look Book, the point is now apparently not simply to be your own rock star, but to be a specific, Converse-approved, dead rock star. I don't know about you, but I really don't remember seeing many Chucks at Grateful Dead shows. For the less pedantic, there are also designs from John Varvatos, the menswear designer who one assumes spent the night in line for a bald-faced grab at whatever credibility still hangs in the air in the old CBGB space. Apparently feeling expansive in his new digs, Varvatos & Co. introduce the new Converse collection, "The next chapter in the Converse history book aligns the deviants with the affluents … Unabashed irreverence never looked so good." If that makes you cringe, it's probably because it conjures images of Wall Street types in John Lennon neckties. They are the cavemen in neckties that say, mimicking the mullet, "I was cool once, but don't worry, I am now a sheep like you. I have taken the Pledge of Predictability."

It is a relief then, to see this guy's YouTube deposit, extolling his just-completed customized Chucks, though one wonders why simply wearing them is no longer enough. I always considered those with authentic rebel cred way too busy to be self-branding. Anyway, complications from spray-painted laces notwithstanding, gallagtor is encouraged by his result.

As one authentic aesthetic after another is gobbled up and tweaked to become the next American bloated-bovine brand, we reassure ourselves with the delusion that it's natural selection. That what is worthy of The Consumer will inevitably bubble to the surface, and that appropriation by sartorial sheep isn't poaching. Take the Kurt Cobain shoe, PLEASE. Featuring "Artwork and scribbles taken from Kurt's personal sketchbook," it makes one wonder if Leonardo is puking in his grave, too.