Fashion Word of the Week #2

Opposite of Anonymous

Fashion Word of the Week: EPONYMOUS

I know we’ve all heard this word a million times. So and so’s eponymous brand and it makes it sound so fancy, right? For years I thought this had the same ring as “respected” or “lauded”. NOPE. All it means is the brand is named after the creator. Marc Jacobs’s brand is eponymous because it’s called Marc Jacobs, after himself. Almost but not directly the opposite of anonymous. Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Ralph Lauren are all eponymous brands.

A lot of brands are named after their creators; lots of fashion designers name their brands after themselves. Some do it because they really want their name on that back label. Some do it because they literally couldn’t think of anything else to call their brand. Is this a good idea? That’s up to you but the big drawback would be if a much bigger company wanted to buy your brand and you could no longer use your own name. Bobbi Brown and Jil Sander as just two examples. However, you’d have to be hugely successful and get a paid a ton of money to get to that point and isn’t that a nice problem to think about?

P.S. My most recent video kicked off my Black Contributions to Fashion History series with a designer bio on Ann Lowe!