It is not often that I pay too much heed to what is going on in the fashion world, but recently at the Amsterdam Fashion Week show, a large statement was made at the expense of some large egos.

Zeeman, a famous Dutch low budget textile retailer, conducted a cunning guerrilla style campaign to prove it's point : fashion does not have to be expensive and the whole concept of brands and high end pricing is a gimmick in itself.

They engaged a firm to create some stir around the launch of a new line of clothing to be sold for very little in mainstream clothing chainstores - the end result is quite funny, and well thought out if not an entirely new concept.
(this is in Dutch so click on the CC button to get the captions)

The Emperor's new clothes?
I can imagine that the company that ran this campaign has probably burned a few bridges.

What a huge stunt to pull at any fashion show, let alone at the Amsterdam Fashion Week.
The end result is a bit of a poke in the eye of all of those that buy into the concept of fashion, really you are buying into a consensus that "this is cool, hip and fashionable".

For more of a background this comes from AmsterdamAdBlog.com:

"If there’s one retailer in the Netherlands with a cheap image it’s Zeeman.
Last week the clothing (and textile) brand that sells t-shirts for €2.5 tried to radically turn this image upside down by buying a show during the Amsterdam Fashion Week (AIFW) to introduce the fake brand ‘Frank’ – nice pun.

The brand is named after the Swiss designer Frank Kungl of whom 6 designs will be sold at Zeeman. Though Kungl is not as famous as Karl Lagerfeld, it’s clear that the Dutch brand was inspired by H&M.
By doing the same thing Zeeman wants to prove that ‘looking good doesn’t have to be expensive’.

The show was hyped by spreading fancy leaflets and seeding rumour around the brand.
At the end of the show – that featured among other items a slip dress with padded cups for €14.99 – Bart Mausen of the AIFW commented that from a distance it looked ‘quite nice’, but giving it a closer look the quality proved ‘inferior’.

Though the guerrilla stunt – organised by Amsterdam based Coz – has already proved very successful in harvesting free publicity, the idea is not new. TBWA did the same thing for IKEA in 2006 by introducing the new brand D-Project during the Amsterdam Interior Design trade show – this won a golden lamp in 2007.

In September Zeeman will also be selling underwear designed by Bas Kosters."