Leave it to our consumptionist culture to create a “Make A Change” designer handbag with a cause-marketing twist. A portion of the proceeds go to Rock the Vote, but I dare say at $95 a pop, teens are not the target market here.
Any over-spent millennials with student loans out the wazoo want to fork out $95 to help your peers Rock the Vote?
I say give it to Alex Steed’s Millennials Changing America: The Next Generation of Organizing instead! He could use the gas money on his 30-city sojourn of social citizenship, and I dare say $95 a pop would help him ‘rock the vote’ using his own social media magic.
Most of the “Rock the Vote, Be the Change” bags that I know of went out as freebies to youth VIPs at both national conventions, snapped up as reusable eco-swag.
Now they’re sold for $6 a pop on worthy eco-fundraising sites like GreenRaising.com. (along with pricier eco-bike messenger bags and some playful gum-wrapper-as-fashion-statement artisan weaves, but nothing remotely close to a Ben Franklin! eep!) I love the earth-friendly fundraising idea of GreenRaising, instead of those lame ‘back to school’ magazine drives…
Don’t get me wrong, $95 as ‘wearable art,’ via commissioned collaboration with painter/filmmaker and L.A. artist Greg Miller, definitely puts the Alexis Hudson handbags in the elegant-entrepreneurial realm…
The design has a certain ‘she’s gotta have it’ celebrity product placement appeal to youth fashionistas…but frankly, in our financially strapped-immediate gratification culture, seems that’s EXACTLY what we need to ‘Change.’
According to the bag’s co-creators, Rachelle Copeland and Emily Ironi, (now there’s a last name for ya!) the black nylon bag is created in support of the election for “everyone who believes in hope, change and our political system. It’s a statement bag.”
Hmn. Well, the statement is up to interpretation, since consumption as an art form has become our pop culture trademark, which is part of what got us into this credit-crunched fiscal mess in the first place! Not to mention the fact that their main site carries the tagline, “Therapy for the handbag addict” which smacks of ‘shop til you drop’ hyperconsumption for gratification cues…
Can’t say I’ve found even a smidge of the Rock the Vote logo on the site, nor a cross-promo via Rock the Vote themselves…which leads me to ask the obvious media literacy question…
Anyone know what percentage is being donated to Rock the Vote? Curious.
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