In psychology they call it an affective response, where you have a gut response. Earlier this year, Chris Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower told the Financial Times: “Fashion and politics are almost the same industry, in many regards, because it’s about identity, and it’s cyclical, and people get really emotive about it. In the age of social media, the fashion image has been weaponized. If anything good is going to emerge from the sorry saga of this red hat is the reminder that fashion is powerful. A friend commented, “For a minute there I thought you’d gone full Kanye!” I recently posted a picture of myself on Instagram wearing a red Ferrari baseball cap signed by Sebastian Vettel, which I got for my birthday. So what does this mean for your wardrobe? Well, for a start any kind of red baseball cap is now a no-no.
The fact that the hat is made in China runs totally against the spirit of that,” says Finkelstein. Which is, ironically, not dissimilar to the Trump business model: “The key word on the hat is ‘Again’ - closing the door on the outside world.
Demna Gvasalia of Vetements and Balenciaga has made millions turning corporate symbols, most notably the DHL logo, and also his own take on Bernie Sanders’ campaign logo (Bernie-lenciaga), into ironic high fashion - all sold at a massive markup, of course. Meanwhile in fashion-land, the post modern appeal of ‘merch’ is hotter than ever. In the age of social media, the fashion image has been weaponized Can you summon up a single ‘I’m with her’ image? It makes Obama’s ‘Hope’ poster seem positively pedestrian, and showed up a distinct lack of ideas from Hillary Clinton’s camp. If political campaigns are essentially a war of communications, then the MAGA hat is an Exocet missile which laid waste to its competitors, cutting through the visual clutter of social media and 24/7 television news with a single, iconic image. The MAGA hat is yet more evidence that Trump gets his message out harder, faster and more effectively than any of his rivals. I’ve got tons of political memorabilia but I can’t think of another example when the candidate wears his own merchandise.” “It’s unusual that the candidate wears it. But where does the MAGA hat derive its peculiar power from? “It’s a brilliant piece of political branding,” says Daniel Finkelstein OBE, political columnist for The Times, former advisor to John Major and William Hague, and also, coincidentally, a major collector of American presidential campaign merchandise. It exists in a category of one fascist fast fashion which does what it says on the tin: mark the wearer out as a loud and proud racist bigot. There’s no way post-modern #merch way to wear this thing.
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