Ellesse- the revival no-one asked for
My dislike of the Ellesse brand stems from its logo. I find it to particularly vulgar and aesthetically displeasing, thereby imbibing any garb on which it is emblazoned with the same distasteful qualities.
Thus, I have come to conclusion that the popularity of the brand can be attributed to one thing and one thing only: marketing. The same principal applies to all modern trainers- they seem fairly ugly to me, but never fail to fly off the shelves. Plaster some pics of the ‘ol Air Max 720 on a few YouTube ads and Insta feeds, and voila, smile and you’ve just made a million.
On the bright side, though, at least Ellesse operates closer towards the budget end of the spectrum. The apotheosis of this marketing perception-change can be seen in the likes of Supreme (in vulgarity), whose clothes, in my opinion, possess little-to-no aesthetic qualities whatsoever, yet whose prices imbibe the garment with a worth not dissimilar to that of fiat currency.
The Tinkerbell effect is a good method of illustrating what I mean. This effect describes something coming into existence solely because people believe it to be so. This is the principal by which fiat currency derives its value. The pound is not backed any commodities, though people’s collective belief in its value elevates a plastic fiver to something of worth, even though its intrinsic value is little. Indeed, this is the same as Supreme, as the quality of the garment does not correlate with its price.
The sort of people who wear these clothes, then, are what I call faux-fashionable. This even worse than having no style at all, because the Ellesse wearer is misinformed about their actual status, mistakenly believing themselves to have stylish credentials they don’t actually deserve.
The metric I use to establish the true value of a brand is its prevalence in TK Maxx. Superdry ends up there occasionally, Ralph Lauren all the time, and the upper-end designers almost never. Ellesse, though, permeates the isles like nothing else. I don’t know the exact reason for this, though I suspect it’s over-production. I suppose there just aren’t enough teenagers going round with their parent’s money with which to buy all.
I myself cannot claim to be completely innocent, as I do own a number of their garments myself. What hypocrisy! Well, they’re all socks, and I picked them up whilst I was in the queue at TK Maxx because they were going cheap. Also, as the logo is hidden by my shoe, nobody will be able to tell what brand they’re from. A win-win situation.
As naff as the brand and its clothes are, I have to give credit where credit’s due. Of course, the shell logo t shirts are making someone somewhere a lot of money, and any company that can get youths to don the sort of shell suits Jimmy Saville would be seen in, (and make them appear fashionable) deserves some kudos from a marketing perspective at least. Or it could just be that 80s/90s revivalism is a rising tide that lifts all boats? Actually, I’ll go with the latter.
