A Logo is a Logo
Travel Case with Logos
Shoshana Mirel

This piece was developed for a Fairhaven College course, Costume and Textiles as Political Discourse, taught in winter 2002, taught by Toby Smith. The course focused on how clothing and textile design function as a language to communicate cultural and political messages. We composed/constructed costumes or textiles and wrote a paper which narrated its story. I made a suitcase modeled on a designer logo bag.

Instead of using a brand logo for the pattern on the bag, I used four leftist symbols: the anarchy symbol, the women’s symbol, the fist of the black power movement, and the hammer and sickle. The left-wing groups that represent themselves with symbols on the bag are generally considered to be in opposition to the wealthy elite, who carry monogrammed logo brands.

In this project I intended to point on the similarities between the groups – they both speak through their accessories, whether they are armbands of jewelry. The message of the project is a wakeup call to anyone who thinks that they are better than their opponents. Wearing a logo of any kind seems to be an attempt to be part of an identifiable community. In our society people have resorted to looking for patterns on bags and patches on sleeves to identify their community and to categorize others. A logo is just a logo.