Obama Fashions

In Eastern Europe in the 1990's, and to some extent, still now, it seemed Calvin Klein designed everything anyone wore. His logo was plastered on anything from cheap baseball caps to plastic shopping bags. Bootleggers had deduced that anything bearing the prestigious CK logo had more chances of selling, and for more money. None of it was real of course. All of these dubious Calvin Klein fashions and accessories had probably originated in a Siberian warehouse or a Chinese sweatshop.

Well, nowadays in DC, I feel almost as if we are going back to those years, but the popular name plastering everything now is not Calvin Klein anymore, but Barack Obama. All types of new products appear everyday, and the trend just seems to grow. There are of course the ubiquitous Obama shirts, which every third person seems to be wearing. Their numbers multiply the closer one gets to a university campus. I saw a man on the street with an Obama tuque yesterday. On the metro, a young woman had an embroidered Obama backpack. On television, the gaudiest product anyone could imagine - plates, coins, figurines - are up for sale, all bearing the president-elect's smiling face. Already all souvenir shops in DC have huge window displays of all their Obama wares, ready for the giant profits of inauguration day. If Obama could copyright his name and his image, there's not telling the amount of revenue he could rake in!