User:Francisgmurphy/Promotional clothing

Promotional Clothing has been used for many centuries, it could be argued that it goes back to the earliest days of history when men wore battle dress in times of war to promote fear in their enemies and to promote their "brand" albeit that in this case their brand may have been a tribe, army or nation. Today we see not just armies of soldiers wearing uniforms that help to identify them from their enemies but we also have millions of people around the globe wearing team shirts that identify where their loyalties lie. The need to identify oneself from the opposition is not the only reason for the wearing of Promotional Clothing, there is also the need to visibly demonstrate an allegiance to one flag or team so that like minded people can identify with each other to promote a feeling of kinship, security and togetherness. It could also be argued that class distinction can be defined by the wearing of certain types of fashionable Promotional Clothing, upmarket fashion brands such as Dior or Chanel are no more than Promotional Clothing brands that promote their exclusivity to the wealthy classes whilst garments such as Hoodies manufactured by Fruit of the Loom or Hanes are more identifiable with the less wealthy. There have been many cases where whole sections of society have been given a unique brand purely by their choice of clothing. Groups such as Hippies, Hoodies, Chavs and Bikers can easily be identified by what they wear, these groups of people are happy to be defined and promote their lifestyle by their uniform which in itself defines the term Promotional Clothing.

Promotional Clothing strictly in terms of fashion, whilst being a separate industry from that which is used to promote products, still blurs at the edges as fashionable items such as Polo shirts for example are used in both arenas. The main difference is that in the Promotional Merchandise industry the garments are given away by the brand owners in the hope that their brands will be advertised by the wearers. Literally millions of examples of this can be seen on the street and TV every year especially at soccer grounds, festivals, charity fun runs in fact anywhere that a brand owner can think of. The industry has spawned some amazingly creative productions with images from the likes of Andy Warhol, Vincent Van Gogh and many more artists appearing, in addition famous T-shirts such as those sold at Rolling Stones concerts can be seriously regarded as legitimate art forms. At the other end of the scale we have the "My parents went to London and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" designs and many more that are used to argue against any issue from global warming to ban the 3rd runway.

How these garments are branded has also shown what can be done with new print and embroidery techniques, advances in printing inks have enabled printers to produce Glow in the dark garments, scientific advances now enable the printing of high visibility safety wear all of which can be branded with logos or messages once again defining these items as promotional Clothing.