“Ayoba, Ama Kip Kip, Ayoba”

摘要

Scholarship from various disciplines seems to agree that alongside food and language among others, dress is the starting point for an exploration of the self in society. Although an immensely personal 'statement', dress is absolutely socially constructed and situated as it is one of the ways through which people make public their personal thoughts, feelings, and desires. Through a systematic reading of the emergence of the Ama Kip Kip t-shirt logo, this paper seeks to examine ways through which the t-shirt label has been used by Johannesburg youth to forge a distinct identity, which pronounces them as both black and urban. The central argument in this paper is that Ama Kip Kip's internet marketing strategy(ies) and its position as an urban youth label, not only marks its consumers as black and urban but also as part of a virtual community sharing a particular culture of consumption. When Johannesburg youth sneeze, the rest of the country catches the cold. (DJ Sbu, YfM)