As a student in Germany I was always amused when my fellow students would take to the streets protesting "American Imperialism" while wearing Levi's blue jeans. It had to be genuine Levi's brand – no German knock-off was acceptable. Later, as a banker, I put together financing for a Hamburg-based apparel firm – Tom Tailor (now defunct). I asked the founder why he had such an American-sounding name for his firm and he gave a simple response: "Because it sells." Evidently, despite a reflexive anti-Americanism among many Germans, America as a brand is associated with youthful casualness.
Phoebe has noted this phenomenon in her blog:
Clothing, too, comes from stores with names that evoke the States, at a
time when fashionable Americans look in horror at countrymen whose
clothing identifies them as such, and when Americans imagine Europeans
to be aesthetically put off by anything hinting at Americanness. Yet
American Apparel has a spot on Heidelberg's quaint main shopping
street, where it looks ridiculously out-of-place, along with two around the corner from each other
in Munich, near the university. That the store not only is but also
upfront calls itself "American" does not seem to have taken anything
from its hipster caché, given the constant flow into those shops of
German young people already in that style of clothing. But those
wishing to dress American but shop European can also go with European
chains like New Yorker, Forever 18, Marc O'Polo (a Ralph Lauren-esque
shop), Madonna (from which was recently blasting Madonna music – is
this legal?) or, in Belgium at least, Brooklyn. Is there a Brooklyn in
Germany? Who knows.
Interesting that Phoebe asks about Brooklyn in Germany. Brooklyn native Leah McDonnell believes that Berlin is becoming more and more like Brooklyn each day.
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Well, that`s just like american people, attacking the chinese for violating human rights, and then buying chinese toys produce under violation from human rights.
But I know, what you mean. And if this was the only hypocritical about the students (68er`s, I assume), then we all and this country would be in a much better condition now.
I have to say, I find Leah McDonnell’s article rather under-researched. She doesn’t mention that Polish citizens still don’t have equal employment opportunities in Germany, despite being EU members. And despite last night’s murder in Hohenschönhausen, I don’t think you can seriously call the area a ghetto – the “chronic urban issues” are elsewhere. Unemployment, for instance, is higher in the inner city boroughs in the former West or incorporating parts of the West (Neukölln, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Mitte, Spandau).
But then I’ve never been to Brooklyn.
David you don’t even seem know a difference between politics, anti-war and anti-racist protests and youth fashion. Yes, the citizens right movement dressed themselves in workers attire… youth subcultures did that for as long as they existed.
And you are willfully ignorant of the deluge of fake-french, fake-italian and what-have-you fashion brands either.
Instead you conflate everything into your paranoid and bizarre theory of obsessive “refexive anti-americanism”.
It’s somewhere on the level as when you explained that a Grimm’s tale about a changeling represented “prejudice against black people”. Do you still believe that, too?
These theories are typically so childish and uninformed they only reinforce the impression about backward US-American hillbillies.
I lived in Brooklyn for seven years and it was the only place where my knowledge of Mittelhochdeutsch came in handy. On 13th Avenue you hear a type of Yiddish that that is reminiscent of German before the “Zweite Lautverschiebung”.
And you are willfully ignorant of the deluge of fake-french, fake-italian and what-have-you fashion brands either.
Yet American Apparel has a spot on Heidelberg’s quaint main shopping street, where it looks ridiculously out-of-place, along with two around the corner from each other in Munich, near the university.
It is so useful imformation for us to read.