A.c.kermans or Armani? Or both?

The other day I was walking around a local shopping mall when it occurred to me that perhaps I didn’t look as if I belonged in some of the shops where I happened to be browsing. My ensemble consisted of items sourced from Ackermans, Edgars (specifically, Edgars Kelso) and a pair of corduroys I bought from Mr Price years ago and hauled out of storage because most of my winter clothing is back in Sydney; my shoes were Orlando Pirates takkies from the cheap shoe store at the Woodmead Value Mart. I wondered whether the store assistants were looking sideways at me; they could almost certainly detect the undistinguished provenance of my clothing.

Whatever they thought, I wasn’t interested, since I knew that I could afford to buy a lot of what I might have wanted to in their shops, but chose not to.

Do brands matter to you? Do you go out of your way to pay more in order to wear them? South Africa’s teenagers are “obsessed” with designer labels, according to this article in last weekend’s Sunday Times. “The branded guy is going to get the girl, and it is clear that there is ‘no romance without finance’,” the article quotes Jane Lyne, MD of research firm Youth Dynamix.

“No romance without finance.” Lovely.

Clearly, I wouldn’t survive amongst that lot for a moment (believe me, it was bad enough when I was a teenager, when there was Kappa and not much else, before so many international brands breached the sanctity of our shores). I go through stages where brands matter to me a lot, and I am ashamed not to be seen wearing something sporting a suitably recognisable logo, and stages where I couldn’t care less. Most of the time, it’s a case of the latter, as I am naturally parsimonious and find it difficult to bring myself to pay five times the price just for the addition of a little embroidered figure of a polo player astride a horse, about to whack a ball.

There are risks to wearing inexpensive clothing though, especially if you are a woman. A lot of the time, people don’t respect you if you don’t dress well, or expensively (the two do not necessarily correlate), or both. I know this only too well; I myself have judged others by the clothing they wear — and I of all people know that it is wrong. I’ve witnessed situations where a new female employee got off on completely the wrong foot with her colleagues because she was dressed like a refugee from the 80s. After that, there was no way she was ever going to win us around. I have also been on the receiving end; once an MD told me during a performance review to dress better — apparently my conservative style did not match my “quirky” personality.

So brands do matter, and the figure on the price tag counts. I try to get around this by buying unusual pieces from places like Big Blue or YDE, while relying on Mr Price or Edgars for functional basics. (After all, a white T-shirt is a white T-shirt is a white T-shirt, right?) I get my jeans from Edgars for R119 because they fit and I haven’t had a good experience with designer jeans since the pair of Soviets I lost. If I’m looking for jackets, I check out Hilton Wiener at sale time, and if I’m after something that looks both expensive and unusual, something that I plan to keep for a long time, I find Jenni Button is a good bet. (And, because it’s manufactured in Cape Town, you can comfort yourself with the thought that you are supporting local industry as you hand over your credit card to the shop assistant, who dazzles you with her smile.)

Maybe it’s different for you. It could be that you work in an environment where nobody cares what you like look. Or you’re in investment banking, and Hugo Boss is de rigueur. Perhaps your friends would despise you if you chose not to wear the right brands. For me, brands have to provide some kind of functional benefit beyond a logo (quality and durability for starters). And there’s something quite pleasing about wearing the old inexpensive clothing you could have thrown away and didn’t, during a recession.

You could almost say it’s a badge of pride.