What brands do you swear by?

[ClearAsCrystal]

Gap clothes. It can get rather pricey, but the clothes are a really good quality and really sophisticated.

 

I worked retail there. When I had my discounts I bought a gazillion clothing items from them and have to say from pure experience, they last large spans of time and wash fantastically. I always thought that it was all scheme commercialized bullshit with the Gap.

Plus, they try very hard to fit small, petite sizes like mine (I'm 5 feet ONE inch, yeah I grew). But really, jeans and shirts specifically are great.

The accessories, now that's a completely different story. :rolleyes:

[mc_squared]

Depends on what the item is. If they're jeans, I usually get them on sale. I got really great skinny jeans there for 50% off. But it's for like a shirt I don't mind spending some money on it, as long as it's going to be an investment in my wardrobe.

 

And as long as it doesn't just take up space in your wardrobe!!:P

[ClearAsCrystal]

And they leave a very large "gap" in your bank account?:rolleyes:

 

the sale rack is just as good.

[mc_squared]

the sale rack is just as good.

 

I agree - I hardly ever pay the full price for anything, unless it really is dirt cheap in the first place..................................... ;)

[Guest Grace]

starbucks para mi :)

i also love H&M and Zara. lol.

i'm not very focussed on brands to be honest as long as things look cute.

[ClearAsCrystal]

I agree - I hardly ever pay the full price for anything, unless it really is dirt cheap in the first place..................................... ;)

 

Yeah. discounts, coupons, sales, clearance... favorite things to see :wideeyed: I only pay full price if it will be something I wear often. Like jeans or shoes. I tend to wear my shoes out really easy like.

 

But that is true, Grace. I will pay a good chunk regardless of brand if I think it's well worth it, or damn cute.

[Best u Can]

I don't think I would swear by a brand, but for audio I do prefer Sony and for computers I would probably choose a Dell for customiz-ability. For clothes I don't swear by anything because there are a lot of brands that look good. There are however brands I would avoid. And actually for computer add-ons (like wireless keyboard/mouse or a webcam) I do like microsoft.

[*andrea*]

^ NERD

[Starlight]

Hanes tshirts for men. Yeah, I know they are men shirts. But they're cheap and I love how they're oversized on me. :)

[alyssa]

tama drums/pedals

sabian cymbals

 

and I do like anything from Aéropostale, Urban Outfitters, and H&M... hehe.

[Starlight]

Oooh I love Urban Outfitters. They have some pretty awesome stuff.

[ColdMike]

I don't really swear by a specific brand... (except if it comes to cars... then it's different.)

 

About clothes... I'd buy sth more because I like it a lot than because it's this or this brand.

[Starlight]

Florida oranges. :nice:

 

Not a brand, but oranges from Florida are just delish.

[mc_squared]

Confessions of a brand addict...

 

by NEIL BOORMAN - More by this author » Last updated at 10:31am on 27th August 2007 Comments

Label junkie Neil Boorman: By 30, he owed a total of £19,000 in debt

 

Consumer debt in the UK has reached an all-time high of £1 trillion

 

Could you torch your designer wardrobe? This label-mad writer tried it - and took six months to get over it

You're dressed up to the nines, you're standing in an impossibly glamorous room, your hands are sweating in anticipation and the excitement is almost unbearable.

But you're not waiting to meet the Queen. You're simply spending a week's wages on a designer jacket you can't afford and don't really need.

If this sounds remotely familiar, the likelihood is you're a brand addict.

How exactly does one become obsessed with brands? As a reformed addict myself, I am, unfortunately, an expert on the subject.

I suffer from a recurring compulsion towards the labels on consumer goods. If you and I met in the street, I would automatically scan the logos on you and, based on their status, judge the type of person that you were.

I once fell in love at first sight on a crowded bus travelling into work. She had huge dark eyes, the most delicate lips and rich, thick hair - pretty much the girl of my dreams.

I couldn't help but stare at her during the half-hour journey, wondering if I should get up and ask her for a date.

I had plucked up just enough courage to ask her when the bus pulled over and the deck cleared, leaving the woman in full view. She was wearing Pumas - to me, the all-time most rubbish sneaker money can buy.

In my view, it's a brand that says you'd like to be cool, you'd like to be adventurous, but you've neither the confidence nor the flair to see it through.

The woman's spell-binding beauty evaporated. I couldn't even look at her any more.

If you and I had met last year, you would have spotted the ostentatious logos that I sported - it was paramount that my brands conveyed the right message about who I was to anyone who cared to look.

With my limited-edition trainers, luxurybrand wallet and top-of-the-range Mac computer, the message of who I thought I was spelled out: progressive, creative and cool.

But, in fact, it increasingly said: desperate, miserable and poor. Without these props, I would have been lost.

I was fiercely loyal to a small number of brands - Adidas and Apple in particular - to the point that I could not contemplate buying products made by their rivals.

I would rely on these brands to increase my confidence at meetings (BlackBerry) or my status at the bar (Ralph Lauren).

My spare time was devoted to tracking down new branded goods. I once travelled to New York simply to buy a pair of Prada shoes that had sold out in the UK.

Obsessive shopping is traditionally associated with women, but a rise in the importance of male grooming has dragged men into the shops.

I felt incredible pressure to conform to the advertised ideals of the 'new man'. Faced with such pressure to maintain a flawless public image, a brand can become your 'friend' by helping you to achieve a standard of beauty.

But it is the same brand that enforces this impossible standard in the first place.

Consumer debt in the UK has reached an all-time high of £1 trillion. Meanwhile, advertising spend recently passed the £19 billion mark. With the average person being exposed to 3,000 adverts a day, it is no coincidence that 80 per cent of Britons admit to regularly overspending.

More than a million people in the UK suffer from compulsive shopping disorder, often a symptom of the low self-esteem that I was later diagnosed with.

A drug is being tested in the UK that promises to wean people off their reliance on shopping in the same way it has halted other addictions such as gambling.

My own addiction to labels led to an increasingly expensive lifestyle. At the age of 19, I plunged into debt within months of landing my first job as a TV production assistant.

By 30, I owed a total of £19,000. The crashing highs and lows of spending made me feel increasingly anxious and depressed, but I carried on shopping to cheer myself up - a classic love/hate cycle of addiction.

The anxiety reached a climax in 2006 when I caught myself inventing excuses to escape the office and go shopping.

By this time, I was fully immersed in brand culture as editor of a lifestyle and fashion magazine, a world in which it is particularly important to play the game.

I checked myself into therapy aged 31.

During my sessions, I recalled being initially unpopular at school because I didn't wear the right trainers or carry the right sports bag.

I pleaded with my parents to buy me these things so that I could become part of the cool set. They refused on grounds of cost, but this served only to make the brands more enviable to me.

During therapy, I came to realise that this tug of war sparked my lifelong habit of obtaining brands.

At all costs. I concluded that to break with the past, I had to destroy my previously branded life in the most violent way I knew how.

The first symbolic act was to burn my favourite pair of trainers, given to me at my first meeting with the brand managers at Adidas.

The level of anxious heartache that I felt, taking a match to them, was excruciating but it only served to remind me how deep the obsession had become. After all, it was only a pair of shoes.

The main event followed six months later, with a public bonfire in Central London. Twenty years of designer shopping went up in smoke before an audience that was largely unsympathetic to my cause.

Thousands of people posted negative comments on websites, appalled by the apparently casual destruction of valuable goods.

My partner Juliet was a rock of support, however, defending me against mounting criticism even though I was returning our lifestyle to the Dark Ages, banning TV, branded cosmetics and even supermarket food from the home.

Post-bonfire, I suffered a terrible gnawing emptiness. It took six months for me to recover from the loss, helped enormously by my therapist.

Self-confidence, she told me, came from accepting the person that I really was, not covering up with a blanket of brands.

Practical life brand-free was just as tough. Banned from the supermarket, I had to discover local markets and independent shops for food. I learned how to make my own cosmetics and realised there were alternatives to Cif (baking soda and vinegar are a brand-free boy's best friend).

My new wardrobe, bought mostly from online Army surplus and market stores, is nowhere near as flash, but I can buy ten non-branded T-shirts for the price of one on the rail at Selfridges.

Conversation with friends can sometimes be fraught (they are mindful to avoid the subject of shopping), while my knowledge of the zeitgeist is spectacularly poor, not having watched television in 12 months.

I still lust after the lifestyle, but a return to brand culture isn't an option. As any reformed addict will tell you, there is no moderate halfway house.

Being a child of the 1970s, I am the product of a generation that has been sold to from birth, bombarded by TV advertising and billboards.

There exists no brand powerful enough to make us purchase against our will, but there are plenty - Anya Hindmarch and PlayStation to name two - that persuade us to sleep overnight on the pavement for 'must-have' products.

And it's all down to very clever and subtle advertising campaigns, or "emotional branding".

It is this that triggers us to spend our money on new versions of things that we usually already own, like an 'it' bag. Products are sold not on the basis of what they do, but how they make us feel.

As Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, who says we are 80 per cent emotional and 20 per cent rational, explains: "For great brands to survive, they must create loyalty beyond reason."

A new study out this month suggests that continual exposure to brand messages has a very real psychological impact.

"Buyers do not only consume the actual goods advertised," says Professor Helga Dittmar of Sussex University's social psychology unit, "but also their symbolic meanings - successful, happy, attractive, glamorous - thus moving closer to the ideal identity portrayed by media models.

"It not only presents unrealistic images which pose a problem for many people, producing self-doubt, but it also presents the supposed solution: buy the product and it will get them closer to these ideals.

"Immense profits are to be made from people's misguided search for identity and happiness through consumption."

By limiting the volume and frequency of advertising to children, the Government has acknowledged the potentially negative influence of excessive branding. But adults have no such protection.

Having de-branded so publicly myself, every aspect of my life has been transformed - sometimes for the worse.

I don't get much work as a fashion journalist any more, and the invites to parties, along with promotional gifts, have dried up.

Ironically, the one new brand I've created is the Non-Branded Neil, and I now report on labels from the other side of the fence.

More importantly, I face a new set of challenges with my newborn baby boy Dexter.

Before long, he'll be asking me for branded football boots, mobile phones and computer games. Will I give in to pester power, or will I deny him the brands that his mates take for granted?

Right now, I honestly cannot be sure.

• Neil Boorman is the author of Bonfire Of The Brands, £12.99, published by

[RICK8]

Nah...whatever's cheapest at the time..:lol:

[mc_squared]

Nah...whatever's cheapest at the time..:lol:

 

So does that mean you're a cheapskate??:rolleyes:

[Black Rose]

I don't swear by any brands.

[RICK8]

So does that mean you're a cheapskate??:rolleyes:

 

 

 

No it means i look after my money..:dozey:

[mc_squared]

No it means i look after my money..:dozey:

 

Same thing!!:P

Do you have Scottish ancestry by any chance?:rolleyes: