Celebrity(名人) has become one of the most important representatives of popular culture. Fans used to be crazy about a specific film, but now the public tends to base its consumption(消费) on the interest of celebrity attached to any given product. Besides, fashion magazines have almost abandoned the practice of putting models on the cover because they don’t sell nearly as well as famous faces. As a result, celebrities have realized their unbelievably powerful market potential, moving from advertising for others’ products to developing their own. Celebrity clothing lines aren’t a completely new phenomenon, but in the past they were typically aimed at the ordinary consumers, and limited to a few TV actresses. Today they’re started by first-class stars whose products enjoy equal fame with some world top brands. The most successful start-ups have been those by celebrities with specific personal style. As celebrities become more and more experienced at the market, they expand their production scale rapidly, covering almost all the products of daily life. However, for every success story, there’s a related warning tale of a celebrity who overvalued his consumer appeal. No matter how famous the product’s origin is, if it fails to impress consumers with its own qualities it begins to resemble an exercise in self-promotional marketing. And once the initial(最初的) attention dies down, consumer interest might fade, loyalty(忠诚) returning to tried-and-true labels. Today, celebrities face even more severe embarrassment. The pop-cultural circle might be bigger than ever, but its rate of turnover has speeded up as well. Each misstep threatens to reduce a celebrity’s shelf life, and the same newspaper or magazine that once brought him fame has no problem picking him to pieces when the opportunity appears. Still, the ego’s(自我的) potential for expansion is limitless. Having already achieved great wealth and public recognition, many celebrities see fashion as the next frontier to be conquered. As the saying goes, success and failure always go hand in hand. Their success as designers might last only a short time, but fashion—like celebrity—has always been temporary. 小题1:Fashion magazines today .
|