The other week, a girl at an told me she ‘loved’ my bracelet. A bracelet which consisted of nothing more than a giant Chanel logo. For me, the piece has sentimental value she is unaware of, which stands as my main reason for wearing it, as I have been for many years. Independent of this reason, I wondered what she could possibly ‘love’ about a bracelet that essentially says nothing except ‘LOGO!’.

Despite it being my bracelet, I now found myself very bothered at this 2hollis afterparty. I was so enrwapped in thoughts and assumptions about her that it took me way too many seconds to realise that the baddie I had been accidentally staring at throughut my musings is actually rommulas.

It’s most likely not because she’s been loving Matthew Blazy and his recent interpretation of the brand. She actually may not even be aware of his appointment. Does she miss the days of Virginie Viard? Unlikely, she would have to be the only other person on earth to do so other than Virginie Viard.

It’s the coolness of Karl Lagerfeld that’s speaking to her, as this is a Karl Lagerfeld-era bracelet, but that still doesn’t answer why she resonates with it now, many years post-Karl.

The fur of her boots and the wired earphones around her neck suggest the source of her admiration, and it ironically has nothing to do with Chanel’s creative directors. As nostalgia baiting has been particularly reviving the 2010s sleaze era, Lagerfeld’s bold logo statements have been some of the most targeted, from fakemink song covers on Soundcloud to Instagram brands ripping off its accessories. The meaning of the Chanel logo has been recoded for her by someone other than Chanel. Who is it, then, that truly owns the logos? Who is permitted to recode them for different people at different times, why, and what are the effects?

I turn to the most logo-centred pieces I have recently come across, a BISHOP hoodie that consists of a remix of many popular brand logos. It’s not technically a fake, as it doesn’t pretend to originate from those brands, but rather acts as a meta piece, drawing attention to the logo system itself as the subject. It may also be, as it has previously been referred to online, ‘the fastest way to a lawsuit hoodie’. 

‘I’m actually kinda disappointed I didn’t receive a cease and desist from at least one of the brands.’, says designer, creative and entrepreneur BISHOP, @bishhhop, real name Finn Adelman. 

A cease and desist appears to have transformed from something to be feared into a high impact certification to be desired.

Design historian Dr. Michelle Jones reminds us of the logo’s origins in fashion and the way it can be used: ‘It was Paul Poiret in the 20th century that realise he could not patent any of his work in America. You could not patent any designs. The only thing you could patent was a logo, so that’s why designers needed them. The actual object can be copied, but the logo - the sign - cannot.’ The concept of the logo being the only truly protected visual element in fashion is intriguing, but it doesn’t seem to hold up as true in practice. As BISHOP says: ‘Having a trademark is as close as you can get to owning a logo, but obviously that didn’t stop me. What are they gonna do? Waste a bunch of money suing me?’

The interesting thing is that even if sued, that doesn’t always mean much besides momentary obstacle. In fact, history shows us it can even lead to further success. 

In the case of streetwear icon Dapper Dan, one of the many logos he was legally using in the 1980s was Gucci, which reached a level of impact that inevitably got him into the sort of legal trouble BISHOP aspires towards. Yet years later in 2016, Gucci collaborated with Dan, reabsorbing the impact Dan’s unofficial Gucci had back into the official brand. As Dr Michelle Jones elaborates, ‘Dan recoded it as something that’s going it to be in Harlem, taking it away from the original code. Gucci is then bringing it back to the code they want, [because] the fashion industry has to anchor their meaning when it is subverted.’

Legality is thus not the final arbiter. While legal ownership exists, cultural capital overpowers it in practice. The fact that unauthorised use can translate into collaboration further demonstrates that the logo has a second life that is bigger than the original brand. It holds a power which recycling can actually emphasise rather than dilute, as its value is not fixed in authorship but in recognition. A cultural relevancy initially stolen in fragments by Dan from Gucci was then later chased back once he became widely recognised as a signifier of ‘cool’. They now wanted to reuse his reuse of their original use, once he transcended from contamination into asset. 

The logo can be perceived as not being truly owned by the brand, but by whoever is recognised as culturally relevant at a specific point in time and wants to use it. 

The BISHOP hoodie echoes a sort of subversion reminiscent of Dapper Dan’s, through its merging of graphics, that range from brands like Burberry to Supreme. Logos appear to operate like secular talismans, small images loaded with collective belief. Like modern icons. Mixing so many crucially different one would be similar to mixing a cross with a star and crescent, engulfed within the Dharma wheel. It functions as a blurring of their differences and reinforcement of their similarities. ‘At this point much streetwear and luxury have merged together along with its customer base.’ says BISHOP. ‘The quality of luxury is steadily going down, and the prices of streetwear have gone up.’ The hoodie thus flattens the hierarchy between both scenes, exposing that despite their aesthetic and political differences, still seem to orbit the same hunger: status. With their logos inevitably serving serving as social currency no matter their brand philosophy. 

But is true subversion possible through such remixing of logos? ‘No,’, says Jones. ‘I think it reinforces a particular capitalist system. ‘ Designers may remix logos in satirical ways that present as critique, an exposure of status symbols as interchangeable, hollow, or even ridiculous. Yet this remix cannot seem to truly function without the very prestige it aims to deflate: it converts the brand’s accumulated aura into attention, and attention into sales. The customer is mocking but simultaneously consuming these signifiers, and the designer is mocking but simultaneously profiting off of these signifiers. Any sense of critique may be perceived as paradoxical, as the value of the logo mashups depend on the same status economy they question, because their value comes from the recognisability and prestige of the brands being referenced. Jones further questions the value of such pieces entirely, ’Your value should be coming from you and your creativity.’

But perception may exceed ideology. ’Our judgement is so clouded by the power of marketing that it’s basically impossible to see anything for what it is. But I love that,’ says BISHOP. ‘I believe perception is the greatest and most important art form’. People may intellectually reject items while still emotionally or aesthetically responding to them, as they can sometimes just ‘feel’ right.

‘[Perception is] impossible to fully understand. It’s only felt emotionally, never seen. Logos are the best example of this because they store so much information in just a few shapes.’

Michelle Jones has been holding onto a frown for the entirety of the interview, attributed to her perception of logos as an embodiment of superficiality, ‘incredibly bad taste and mainstream.’ As I leave her classroom, she asks to see a photo of the hoodie that started the piece. I watch as her frown turns into a smirk. ‘Ha’, she says, followed by a pause. ‘No, but see, this is fun. It’s a play on the whole thing, it’s playful. It’s clever.’

Who said it wasn’t?