The Logo Nobody Is Impressed By
Where I grew up, you can walk into a fancy store and pay ten times what a thing is worth for the logo on it. I understand why people do. A logo tells people who do not know you something about you. It has never been me, but I understand it.
In the countries I have visited and lived in, the places with many people who have little money, I found the same brands everywhere, and almost none of it real. A purse that costs a month of rent in a mall is on a market table for the price of a sandwich. The famous watch, the famous sneakers and the famous shirt all appear, with the logo stitched on perfectly.
The real stores are in nearly every country, especially in the places we write about. And yet everyone has the copy. In many of these places there is little or no penalty for owning one, or nobody much cares, except the company that made the original. I am not telling anyone what to buy. I am telling you what I see.
What I noticed is what happens to the signal. At home, a logo says I paid a lot. Abroad, the same logo is on the person who cleans the house and the person who tends the garden. They are not wearing it to say anything. They are wearing it because they like how it looks.
I imagined walking down my street with the real thing and meeting both of them in the same one. I would feel a little foolish. The logo had stopped saying what it says at home, and I was the only one still reading it.
Brand names are one kind of status symbol, and status symbols are local. In Bali, in Indonesia, the size and care of a family’s temple inside the home can show its standing, and a larger one can say more. In Mexico, a security guard who walks with a person, or a very high wall in front of a house, can mean someone has arrived. In Japan the signs are different, and in Russia they are different again.
What counts as status is a local language. A person who arrives carrying a symbol from home may be speaking in a language nobody there reads, or saying something they did not mean to say.
You might say a brand is just something you like. It can be, and nobody needs my permission. I am talking about the signal and not the taste.
You could ask two residents, before you move, what status looks like where they live: the house, the car, the clothes, the wall. You could look at what you were planning to bring, and ask what it would say there.
What did you carry from home that meant something there and nothing here? Tell us in the comments. Someone reading may be packing a suitcase right now.
Tell us in the comments