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Bobo brand

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Bobo brand is an informal name used to refer to a product that is sold inexpensively under a relatively unfamiliar brand name and often perceived inferior to better known brands. They may be lower in price, but not qualitatively.

Etymology

The term Bobo is a contraction for bourgeois-bohème. Bourgeois, from Late Latin “burgus”, which means “castle” (in medieval Latin ‘fortified town’), means belonging to or typical of the middle class (a social group between the rich and the poor). Bohème, from Middle French Bohême, from Late Latin Boiohaemum, compound of Proto-Germanic *haimaz (“home”) and Boio- ‘the Boii’, the Celtic tribe previously inhabiting the area, means a person with quite a lot of financial means and a non-conventional lifestyle with liberal, left-wing political views, with musical, artistic, literary or spiritual pursuits and often with a Parisian attitude.

History and Sociology

The term “bobo” was first introduced by David Brooks in his book Bobos in Paradise (2000) to identify the rich progressives living in Greenwich Village in New York as a contraction of "bourgeois bohemian". The expression was coined to refer to a particular French socio-economic group.

The Swinging Sixties have witnessed a, often violent, dispute between the middle class culture and the counterculture, or in Bourdieu’s view the higher status group and lower status group. The creation of a third class put an end to this cultural war: the bourgeois bohemians, or Bobos emerged. Among them there were highly educated folk who had one foot in the bohemian world of creativity and another foot in the bourgeois realm of am­bition and worldly success.

Bobos are just normal middle-class people who can't accept that status because they've always hated it: the bobos renounced accumulation and embraced cultivation. Retorically Bobos oppose to traditional class distinction explained in Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption.

Bobo culture

France

In France the term "radical chic" was used to indicate the exponents of the so-called "gauche caviar", a term used for the first time by the French extreme right-wing press to connote in a derogatory way the new left-wing elites in power since 1981. Then with the arrival of the term "bobo”, this word, which was strangely successful in France, not only ended up semantically superimposing the expression gauche caviar, practically determining its extinction, but it also included under the same label all the other leftist voters who had a huge cultural capital, but not necessarily the corresponding economic capital.

Less political and more materialistic than the group of caviar socialist, French Bobos design their lifestyles in a mix that includes the rarest luxuries, middle-class classics and student-style cheap 'n' chic. Bobos are rich people who are stuffed with contradictions: they have money but they want to act as if they don't and they have what money can't buy: almost total freedom of choice. They combine the free-spirited, artistic rebelliousness of the bohemian beatnik or hippie with the worldly ambitions of their bourgeois corporate forefathers and they represent an élite that has been raised to oppose élites. They are by instinct anti-establishmentarian, yet somehow sense they have become a new establishment.

China

In 2002, the original bobo spirit has also touched a raw nerve in China’s rising social elite. Urban China has always been overcrowded with social trends that usually emerge in the West in post-affluent societies where luxury is less about displaying wealth and more about simply being and enjoying. The “bobo phenomenon” provided to China a new elite with an opportunity to reconcile materialism with spirituality and elite status with egalitarian ideals in a country where the bourgeois base is statistically small and where the bohemian equation is non-existent

As the French and American concepts of Bobos, they are seeking products of exquisite taste and quality, but more important, products that display the essence of a free spirit. In contrast to the former two cultures, where boboism is a class formation, in China it is more a pop cultural and marketing phenomenon, since it has never had any bohemians.

Bobo consumerism

Bobos reject “commercial” values for the sake of “natural” values. Such values, are reflected in their consumption patterns. Their consumption is part of their process of self-creation, aimed at claiming their status. In this perception consumption becomes a symbolic act rather than a necessity.     

From a consumeristic point of view, they are not likely to consider themselves within the mass consumption model, although their consumption patterns seem to portrait them as paradoxical. On the one hand, they appreciate expensive products and services, on the other hand they are worried about the environment.  They describe themselves as sustainable consumers, but their appreciation for organic products and eco-friendly services appears to be more a way to claim their own social status and showing their identity, rather than a consequence of an actual environmental concern. Their longing for sustainability is incoherent compared with their actual consumerism.

It is only through particular material objects that Bobo lifestyle can be manifested. This objects include highly specific subgroups of objects of everyday use. The Bobo orientation towards products includes artisanal, custom made, or locally produced commodities in firm opposition to mass produced goods.

Bobos tend to elevate and make aesthetically pleasing everyday objects. They search for goods and services offering exclusive treatment with large attention to small details, in order to satisfy their need to be perceived organic and anti-consumerist.

Generally speaking when it comes to fashion, bobos avoid well-known luxury brands and opt instead for less commonly known designers. They aim for a style that gives a superficial impression that they do not care too much about fashion, despite the amount of thought and sometimes money they invest in their looks.

Examples

See also

• Legal fake
• Hipster
• Yuppie
• Radical chic
• Couterfeit consumer goods
• Gauche caviar
• Gentrification