This isn't so much "lifestyle" as it is just marketing survival.  What are their alternatives?  Put the models in their clothes against a plain white background, copying GAP directly?  Or do you want them to throw the guys in a high school or backyard suburban setting - which would look exactly like a JC Penney pullout from the Times, and perhaps bring their entire brand crashing down.  At this point this is a generic widespread upscale/preppy look, and like Terry said they're executing it pretty similarly to Polo.

How many genres of men's clothes marketing are there anyway?  There's this preppy stuff, there's the urban stuff like Eccho and whatever else that appears every other page in SLAM, there's the jet-set stuff like Armani and whatever other more expensive brands, there's the ones that focus on the clothing more (GAP, maybe Prada?), there's quirky/retarded (Old Navy, the copying of which would be too blatant).  I can't think of any others but they may be out there.

The impression I get from these Gant ads is that they're aiming for a more youthful market than in the past - I remember the brand as an alternative to Polo and Hillfiger(before it became super-ghettoized) in the mid-ninties when I was in hs, sold in the same department stores, but I considered it more of an old man brand.  With the preppy stuff getting bigger among young people now I guess they're just adjusting and trying to get a piece of that market.

'Pimp' would be 'Hard-Edged-Young'/'Money'/'Creative'.

Last edited by Coolidge (2007-04-03 14:25:26)

Ol Boys,

Whilst perusing preppyjournal.com after Terry's recent thread, I came across the below write-up of the new Bennetton line. 

These chaps make the Gant models look like he-men.  They must be marketing to the gender confused crowd (not that there is anything wrong with that, right Manton?).

Cheers,
Trip



http://preppyjournal.com/node/768?PHPSESSID=1c359c4e3eee61cc6221fcc201142a87

Good lord I want a slim seersucker suit.  Damn those admen.  Personally I find the totality of those lifestyle ads.  it turns me off to the clothing, or rather, the outfit.  there are pieces i would like but the whole thing is just too much.  it almost becomes a parody of prep instead of a representation.  Not to be too poststructuralist about it, but the idea of prep is so clouded by advertizing that it is probably impossible to reach the core of prephood, even if such existed.  What was "prep" in 1960s seems edgy now to me.  The Gant stuff just looks like a Nantucket look sold to people who have never been near nantucket.  However, the people actually on Nantucket could look at the ad, reappropriate themselves to it, and thus the projection becomes the reality.  It's more dictation than representation.