My Journey Through Life

In the last month or two, I started to question what my personal brand is.  I’ve changed a lot in the last six months, so this thinking has had to change along with it.

Part of defining my new personal brand has been putting together a new wardrobe.  If you don’t talk to me often, you might not know that I’ve lost about sixty pounds since late June 2014, with most of the weight loss occurring since September.  This means that nearly everything I own from the past looks less like my clothes and more like some pajamas I got at some point.

I decided to ask friends and family for help picking out things that would look flattering.  This has meant three trips to outlet malls as well as numerous trips to a neighborhood second hand store.  Time and time again, I found myself buying clothes from the same few brands.  Shopping for new clothes made me realize that some of the clothes I was buy reflect the image I want to show others.

In the past, I had rarely shopped at Banana Republic, Brooks Brothers, or J. Crew, but if you look in my closet today, that is the majority of what you’ll see. I saw these clothes as an investment in my personal brand.  I wanted to show people that I care a about my appearance and show semblance of a fashion sense.

My feelings about these companies speaks more to the work that these companies have done to develop and maintain their brands than it does about any individual person.  In my upcoming blog entries, I will be looking at these brands as well as a few others and how people my age interact with these brands.

My interest is specifically is in the space of premium apparel brands.  How do these brands stay ahead?  How do they maintain value while catering to changing consumer taste?  Along the way, I will talk to people in this industry and people who purchase from it.  I plan to also explore the biggest challenger to brick and mortar premium apparel, the web.