Turning against ideas of branding
After a long winter holiday hiatus, this mornings after storm thoughts were racing with philosophical ideas about the fashion world. Realizing that in developing a brand, we look for a way to provide uniformity to potential customers; to define and ultimately edit or distill some sort of message or offering to a set of people in the hopes that they identify with this point of view-Go to it as a source, knowing that there’s something there that they personally appreciate or have a connection with and can come to rely on it.
The problem with branding is that it makes choices for you, with the brand in mind. Making assumptions for you about how and what choices you will make and giving you the most of what those choices would be. It supposedly makes it a cleaner slate of more appropriate choices for you. But who’s to say that you as the consumer, doesn’t have the ability to go through things without that edit and find things that speak to you? I think that assumption for lovers of fashion is wrong and we dont really need this edit. What we need is a resource of good items where we connect the dots to put them to use. If they are unique, well made, designer, fashionable, vintage or hand made, all the better. And if they can no longer be found and have a fashion histogram, even better. We can see what works with what we want to wear, we can choose what image we want to create and what style we want to evoke with these pieces and all the purposes they can have in a look. We are more than one style and more than a refined edit. We dont always want the mainstream watered down selection for the masses.
Ive spent a good amount of time applying good marketing and branding concepts to this site and realized that it's much less important than the real purpose and that this brand will naturally evolve without forcing it into some pre-interpreted concept.
Ornamental Excess is a fashion achieve, with provenance, hand selected for fashion clientele and we want to connect with the next owners who will wear, love and care for these uniquely selected pieces.