How Much Product Placements Influence your Style?

How many times have you watched one of your favorite movies just to realize that the entire cast wore clothing from the same designer. What’s worse, how many times has that designer turned out to be one of your own personal favorites! How cool was it to see a character onscreen wear an outfit and bring it to life. No you wore clothes from that designer because someone else looked good in them, and they were typical of the look and representative of the ethos of the characters in that film.

Product placement from fashion designers is nothing new in cinema; Georgio Armani outfitted men in movies as diverse as Maid to Order to American Gigolo, while Ralph Lauren’s Polo line was featured in Woody Allen’s signature movie Annie Hall. Ralph Lauren’s clothes are still featured in many movies, including Big Momma’s House 2, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and Failure to Launch.

Fashion designers have influenced pop culture in ways many of us take for granted, from Michael Kors’ numerous appearances as a judge on Project Runway, to Gianni Versace’s close relationship to artists in the music industry, to those years that Tom Ford brought Gucci back from the dead through an all out saturation of Hollywood; many celebrities wore his clothing religiously as if their careers depended on it. We’re all easy prey when strong emotions about why clothing is worn and what it says about the individual are interwoven into a story.

Products will continue to be placed in various films, television shows, and commercials, and there is little, if anything we can do about that. We’ll attempt to look for serious information about what to wear, what not to wear, and what, if anything, we should do about it, yet continue to be bombarded with conspicuous hints of who we should buy it from.

- Chris Kendalls