High street fashion is all about one thing: names. It seems unavoidable that whatever you buy it almost certainly is branded in someway or another with the name of the designer or design house who has produced it. Far from being seen as a form of free advertising it is such branding which makes most garments fashionable with different ‘labels’ appealing in differing ways to different social groups. Whilst one group of girls might look down upon another wearing a Nike top, or Adidas trousers, they will think nothing themselves of wearing a Louis Vuitton handbag, or a Tiffany necklace. The type of designer-ware which you wear says an awful lot about how you yourself are branded, and the social grouping to which you want to belong. Although Gucci might be a high street brand, many feel that such a luxurious name will add to their own image, and by wearing branded clothing and accessories in this way they use the image which is carefully spun by fashion moguls to reflect on their own personality and the type of person they want to be seen to be.
It used to be that if you wanted to buck against this trend and show a degree of non conformity then you had to search high and low for those garments which were plain and unadorned, but there is a movement within the jewellery industry which is allowing expressive girls who reject the uniformity of brands and instead harness their own personal branding, showing their true fiesty individualism: name jewellery. Name rings and signet rings are becoming more common place, as are charm bracelets with initialing and earrings adorned with the name of the wearer. Name necklaces too have become increasingly popular showing this trend to move away from using somebody else’s brand name to raise your own profile to relying on that brand that you most want to express, brand you.
The rejection of label branded jewellery in favour of name necklaces and other name jewellery shows an independence which has been lacking in recent fashion trends, and the growing confidence of girls who have decided to wear their own name rather than that of a high street brand is the ultimate way of stating emphatically that you cannot be pigeon-holed into certain stereotypes. In fact so popular is this movement away from branded fashion to a more individual approach that the wearing of name jewellery and name necklaces seems to appeal to all manner of girls from no matter what their background or interests. What such a trend will mean for the fashion industry in the future is anybody’s guess, but it could be that almost a decade after the Spice Girls split, girl power and individualism are back on the agenda.