*The Joy of Brandedness*

Written by Dr. Johanna von Pezold

In April 2021, I bought this handbag from a Chinese store in Maputo for 400 Mozambican Meticais (about 5.5€). Combining a modified Louis Vuitton flower pattern with Gucci’s signature golden bee and the iconic green-red-green ribbon on cheap synthetic leather, I couldn’t resist: Why settle for one brand when your handbag can have two?

Proud of my purchase, I started thinking about the universal appeal of brands and their aesthetics. As I read more, I realised that logos are often seen as markers of authenticity or origin, but what is truly desirable is not the brand itself – it is the look of brandedness. This also explains the recent craze for brand collaborations in fashion: Tiffany x Nike, Supreme x Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs x Fendi, Gucci x Adidas.

Yet these collaborations rarely improve the product’s material quality or design. More often, they simply layer another logo or colour onto an existing design, giving the impression that it was the marketing and legal departments who sat together, not the designers. What, for example, can Tiffany add to a sneaker beyond its signature turquoise? These collabs reveal that even official partnerships rely on logos (and other trademarks) as aesthetic elements – feeding into the excessive, joyful, and unapologetically consumerist appeal of brandedness: The more logos, the better. In that sense, they are not so different from the hybrid-fake Chinese handbag I bought in Mozambique.

If both high-end fashion houses & small-scale Chinese workshops create desire by remixing existing logos, are they not equally creative? What does creativity even mean in this context? Is creativity about originality, or is it just as powerful when it involves recombining and reinterpreting existing designs? Does aesthetic creativity matter more than symbolic creativity? And to whom? How does any kind of creativity shape the financial and emotional value of the resulting products? Why do we find joy in logos and brandedness, even when the brands themselves are secondary? And can this joy justify buying counterfeit goods?