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(A grotesque article by former Verso editor Colin Robinson on the marketing of the Communist Manifesto. No wonder Jacobin posted it.)
The following Tuesday, I was shown into Doonan’s office by an assistant who informed me he would be arriving shortly. The ambience of Barneys’s headquarters, located above the store on Madison and 60th, was ‘70s corporate modern, with lots of stripped wood and neon lighting. A glass wall, covered by a partially drawn Venetian blind, gave on to a busy corridor behind Doonan’s desk. Photographs and correspondence littered all available surfaces, including the floor. I was admiring a large picture pinned to the wall of a man with David Cassidy hair and polyester flares when Doonan rushed in, breathless, with a sheaf of papers under one arm and a limp handshake at the end of the other. He turned out to be English, with a rich accent that one could imagine Americans thinking sounded like Ian McKellen. I silently congratulated myself on not dressing up for the occasion; my best jacket from Club Monaco would not pass muster here. Doonan sported a dark brown suit that gleamed under the neon, with a matching brown shirt and a yellow silk tie. His spectacle frames were bold tortoiseshell, giving a callow face a serious demeanor
We got down to business. Doonan wanted to know what I had in mind. I’d thought about this in some detail and now set out the vision of a dozen militant mannequins marching across one of the store’s large Madison Avenue window, fists in the air, beneath streaming banners proclaiming YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS! Peeping out from their dress pockets or clutch bags, I suggested, could be copies of the Manifesto. The question of the particular brand of dresses or bags to be featured would, I recognized, be best left to the greater authority of Doonan and his colleagues. But if necessary, we could supply the banners.
full: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/05/communist-manifesto-marketing-class-struggle-barneys
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