Marketing scourge wraps up as special K

CELEBRITY spotting will take on a whole new meaning this summer when it will be possible to spot Kate Moss look-a-likes in Limerick, Lily Allens in Sligo and Madonna wannabes in North Cork.

This is thanks to the latest devil child spawned by the worldwide marketing industry — the celebrity clothing range.

As if it’s not annoying enough that you can’t pay for your groceries without being assailed by yet another magazine cover depicting Kate falling bleary-eyed out of a club at 6am, Victoria staring beseechingly into David’s eyes or Jordan launching a tirade on some other Z-list idiot, they are now going to dress us.

Sorry, but isn’t there just something frankly ridiculous about all this? Wearing celebrity clobber is little removed from donning a Batman or fairy costume when you were five — except even the most enraptured five-year-old will grudgingly concede that the cape alone won’t make you fly.

Do the hundreds of young women who camped outside TopShop in Dublin and London since 5am really believe that they can capture some of the Kate Moss magic by donning a cheap, cotton waistcoat or a shapeless floral dress?

I can just see the Croydon supermodel leaning back on a bar stool somewhere, taking a long drag on her Marlboro, arching an eyebrow and bursting out laughing ... all the way to the bank.

Moss is long recognised as being a style icon due to a natural flair for fashion that suddenly sees bizarre items like punk-era skinny jeans and men’s waistcoats coming out of the museum and on to the high street.

She is a heady cocktail of Anita Pallenberg, Bridget Bardot and Edie Sedgwick — the ultimate edgy London girl whose trademark is her individuality, party lifestyle and refusal to conform to the norms expected of a 30-something mother of one.

But, does the average girl on the street really think that by throwing on an impossibly tight pair of skinny jeans (supposedly inspired by her personal wardrobe) that they will suddenly be turned into this androgynous queen of cool?

Many of the girls photographed in queues outside TopShop stores in Dublin, London and Cardiff would be lucky to get the top button closed on a regular pair of size 12s.

Our obsession with celebrity may be some infantile attempt at escaping reality — but, in something akin to the Emperor’s New Clothes, it has got to the point that we can’t differentiate between our reality and their gilded lives.

Editor of fashion industry magazine Drapers, Lauretta Roberts said she was not at all surprised by how well the range was selling.

“There has been such blanket PR to the point that we are almost sick of hearing about it. It’s been in every single magazine and newspaper. Of all the celebrity collaborations there have been this is the most successful. It’s a killer collaboration.

“She is appealing to TopShop’s core market — you could imagine Kate Moss going in to Topshop and buying clothes and wearing them,” she said.

However, she agreed that she did not understand why shoppers would want “to be seen wearing something every second person in the street would be wearing”.

Such was the frenzy in fashion surrounding the launch of the collection that last Tuesday was being named as ‘K’ day.

By lunchtime, much of the collection had sold out at TopShop’s superstores in the main British cities and items were selling on e-bay for three or four times their high street price.

“She has fulfilled every teenage girl’s dream by letting them loose in her wardrobe. Instead of aiming for a high-concept album, she has simply issued the Greatest Hits of Kate,” wrote Jess Cartner-Morley, fashion editor for the Guardian newspaper.

The term “building market profile” used to be confined to corporate boardrooms but, as image smothers substance, it is often a pension fund for ageing supermodels and rockers. In an another cringeworthy attempt to appeal to the “yoof” audience, even Madonna put her name to a rack of spurious tracksuit-style ensembles.

lwww.katemosstopshop.com