Converse teams with Target for "One Star"
Regular blog readers will know my affection for Converse's old Chuck Taylor All-Stars (once the beloved sneaker of my youth, now a high priced, one-ply Nike product made overseas).
A few months ago I bemoaned Converse's 2003 transformation from classic footwear proudly stamped "Made in the USA" to overpriced Nike imprint.
Well...it seems Converse has now teamed with Target to produce "One Star" -- an exclusive line of clothes and shoes that are cheaper than Chucks, but look more or less the same.
I'm ambivalent about the whole thing...
I'm an unabashed Target fan -- and I'm always interested to see what they do with their men's clothing. They've had a lot of luck with bringing name designers in for their women's lines, but to date the biggest deal in the men's section was the line of clothing inspired by David Bowie, which seems to have disappeared as quickly as it arrived and with not much of it showing up in our local stores.
It's harder to sell designer clothes to men, I suppose -- which is why a lot of the One Star stuff looks like sort of anonymous, casual pseudo-hipster wear. That snap judgment is confirmed by the weird videos they're using to promote the line on the website featuring a hipster girl named Tacee and a generically foreign guy named Mathieu (I'm pretty sure that's pronounced Matthew) talking about how important music is to him and then naming a laundry list of disparate styles that he loves -- something for everyone, nothing too specific.
Which pretty much describes the clothes.
The shoes, which is what made me the most curious, seem mostly to be knockoff Chucks (made by the company that now owns the Chuck Taylor brand...which makes my head hurt). The shoes feature a single star on the side rather than the distinctive All-Star logo. There are also some slip-ons, skate and basketball shoes.