Featured      Archived      Forum

Student Life

FEATURED ARTICLES           Wednesday, September 08, 2010                                Email to a Friend

American Brand Invasion

For as long as I can remember, I looked forward to the end of summer and the cool autumn weather. Back to school was an exciting time – I looked forward to seeing my friends on a daily basis, eating Fruit-by-the-Foot and countless other high-sugar lunch snacks and, best of all, going on my highly-anticipated back to school shopping spree! We would pack up our mini-van and make the trek south of the border, like many other families, where we would benefit from better selection and lower taxes.

Well, what gives! I was traveling in the States a few weeks before school started back up and thought I’d treat myself to a little back-to-school indulgence. Going through racks and racks in store after store of the same selection you see in Canada was mind numbing. I didn’t think it was possible. Now that our dollar had gained in strength and the more favourable exchange rate would allow us to do more damage than ever (better bang for our buck!), they’d managed to take all the fun out of cross-border shopping!

I don’t know where it originally started, maybe with the GAP way back when, but I can at least trace it back to American Eagle Outfitters when they expanded the brand into Canada in 2001. It was around this same time that Old Navy jumped on the Canada bandwagon as well. Abercrombie and Hollister are the latest additions to the list. There are a ton more but these are the ones that really stick out to me as representing that cool “American varsity” look you’d see in teen movies (you know, the ones where 25 year old actors play 16 and 17 year old high school students).

At least now we’re starting to see the rise of Euro-imports to the Canadian market. Stores like H&M, which opened its Canadian doors in 2004, Mexx, Mango and Zara have penetrated our shopping centres and won over the hearts (and wallets) of Canadians by offering trendy European street styles.

So what’s next?

I have nothing against American brands penetrating our Canadian market, but it sort of takes the fun out of wearing what once were “American-imports”. And now we see the same trend happening with European-based retailers. But with the constant growth of the internet and online shopping becoming the norm, stores don’t even need to jump ship into Canada to be accessible by Canadians.

The twenty-first century has seen a lot of momentum in the move towards a global economy – so much so that these brand invasions have worked to assimilate our fashion culture.

Home    Contact Us    About Us    On Stands Now    Events & Calendar    Forum

Copyright © 2008 Campus Life Magazine. All rights reserved. All trademarks are properties of their respective owners. Reproduction of material from any original Campuslifemagazine.ca pages without written permission is strictly prohibited.