Consumer generation

Status Bib. The bib, originally a pragmatic garment designed to protect infants' clothing, is here transformed into a symbolic device. Once a utilitarian object, it is reimagined through the lens of consumer culture: adorned with the insignia of high fashion, it becomes a fetishized accessory—stripped of function, laden with meaning.

Branded not for protection but for projection, the bib becomes an emblem of social aspiration. Within late capitalist society, status is no longer defined by utility or necessity, but by the semiotic value of possessions. It is not what one owns, but which brand one displays, that determines one’s position in the social hierarchy.

This dynamic extends even to infancy. Parents, projecting their own desires, inscribe their children into the logic of consumerism from birth—draping them in logos, embedding them into systems of recognition and exclusion. The child becomes a canvas for status signaling, an unwitting participant in the performance of class.

Logomania, a term emerging in the 1980s alongside economic acceleration and the rise of the yuppie class, captures this obsession with branded identity. The yuppie—urban, aspirational, professionally elite—embodied a new materialism, marked by the desire to be seen, distinguished, and desired. Branding thus transcended commerce; it became a language of visibility, a performance of belonging and separation.

This work invites reflection on the visual codes of consumption, the early conditioning of capitalist desire, and the ways in which identity is constructed—often before we even know how to speak. 

Master’s Thesis