Overheard: Street Chic

Overheard on NPR this morning about how Wal-Mart is inserting ads into upscale magazines - in the middle of adverts selling clothing acoutrements that can add up to hundreds of dollars (coat $375, pants $250, scarf $800, etc) there is a Wal-Mart ad (pants $18, poncho $12).

NPR interviewed a fashion expert, someone who supposedly writes a column for Good Housekeeping and several years ago wrote an article entitled something similar to "Street Wise Chic" (. . . sorry, sometimes I'm a little scant on details,) but who proponed that the crafty wisdom behind these ads is that the audience that Wal-Mart is courting essentially consists of people who normally shop at Miss Jacksons and occasionally like to "slum" and buy "street chic" at Wal-Mart or K-Mart.

I take the opposite view. I strongly believe that the majority of people who read those magazines are NOT the riche/chic/whatever, but actually regular average below-middle-class women who for the few moments spent looking that the ads they can actually engage in a fantasy that they can afford to buy such clothes. Then BAM! there it is! - an ad from Wal-Mart with an ensemble that both A) resembles the higher priced clothes and B) is within range.

Wal-Mart isn't courting the wealthy. Never has. Wal-Mart is merely reaching out to the same clientele it's always sought: the average joe (or josephine), who in this case is dreaming of a little higher class of living than they currently enjoy.

Devlishly clever, I might add. Now, if only Wal-Mart could bring the quality of its clothing up to the standards of quality of its advertising, then we could REALLY begin to talk serious biz!

Finally dragged into the 21st Century

Yeah but it was kicking and screaming - you got it my little friends or whomever might come across this churl full of whatnot here in my little blog. Just started it. I suppose I should lay down some ground rules for myself . . . and perhaps for anybody who'd like to post. The groundrules are probably

anything goes, really.

Comments, ideas, suggestions, anything you want to talk about. I talk endlessly, I spout drivel not in rivulets but in rivers and the only poetry exists in my own trembling synapses. So since I have to get back to work at the present moment I will sign off for now, tell a few peeps about my newly created blog - then come back sometime later to see if my few scattered seeds have spouted any fruit.

And by the way, I tried to sign on with the name "Verble Gherulous" but it appears that I couldn't use it in it's current incarnation. However, I always felt certain that I was and am and always will be the ONLY Verble Gherulous out there/in here/around the corner and up the bend. What I'm trying to say here is: if there's another Verble Gherulous would he/she/it please stand up?

Thank you. Más después.