A Lesson in Modern Culture? The Jack Wills Christmas Gift Guide 2014

My sister and I have always preferred physical catalogues compared to online shops. I like the smell and feel of the pages, my 19 year old sister enjoys drawing mustaches and glasses on the models. Like many people, we get flooded with various clothes magazines every year, but this year one caught my eye in particular. I am, of course, referring to the Jack Wills Gift Guide 2014 (Unknown author: 2014).

(Heads up, this is going to be a very visual post and I’m armed with only my Lumia phone)

Page Three

Open the cover and the first thing you see is this:

For those of you with normal eyesight, it says ‘This Book Belongs To’ with a gap underneath for a name. Because a dated gift guide for this season’s choice outfits will always be relevant and have a place on my bookshelf next to my dystopian classics including Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Handmaid’s Tale. I think the feminist author Atwood would particularly approve of the up-skirt underwear imagery. Actually scratch that, I don’t want to devalue this first 1,000,000,000 edition by writing my name on this. I’m no fool.

The Models

These two loveable delights are the main focus for the Jack Wills gift guide:

Wait, I think I recognise these two from somewhere. They have that 90s awkward are-they-friends-or-brother-and-sister-or-girlfriend-boyfriend look. Oh wait, I know these two. OH MY GOD IT’S SAME DIFFERENCE FROM X FACTOR

For those of you too young or hipster to remember these guys (aka the readership of the Jack Wills Gift Catelogue 2014), Same Difference were a pop duo from 2007 who released this classic:

(FYI playing this track may help you get through this post.)

So, Same Difference are modelling nowadays. Huh.

These guys rock all the looks in this gift guide. I won’t drown you in images but here is my personal highlight:

Where have I seen this look before…?

However, my lowlight of the Same Difference models is:

I know the picture is blurry, but as you can see there are four items on this page. One is being modeled (i.e. the coat) and two have additional information (product name and price). The awesome gingerbread reindeer, the only product on this page (and arguably in this entire gift guide) I want to buy is neither priced nor modeled. Where can I buy/eat this?!

Very disappointed by this.

I even hit Google in case I was mistaken and Jack Wills did stock gingerbread, that there had been a mistake when the guide had gone to print but alas all I found was this blog post:

http://http://blog.jackwills.com/biscuiteers-interview-recipe/

I don’t want to read about how they made them, or how I can make gingerbread, I want that gingerbread reindeer and I want it now! I then clicked on the link to their website, to find out where I could buy them…

http://http://www.biscuiteers.com/

Of course the company that makes them is based in ruddy London, why am I not surprised. Not just London, Notting Hill London. Even if you didn’t know this information, one look at the price they charge for their gingerbread men should be enough to guess it. This Alice-after-a-froffy-coffee (sorry, Santa) gingerbread man is £6. £6!

christmas gift card biscuit santa clause biscuiteers, cutout

On finding out this information I decided that maybe a chocolate bar would fill the reindeer shaped hole my stomach craved. It did.

Anyway, all this tangent talk of gingerbread his links me nicely to my next subject of review…

Page Design/Layout

As you have seen, no expense was spared on the models. Expense was however spared was given the job title of product page layouty stuff. The gingerbread reindeer was just one (although I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Jack Wills for teasing me so). This confuses me:

As my old art teacher, Mr. Grover, would have said, “Needs to make more of space. C grade”. Some of these products are priced at £25. I think the logic that was used here is that if your eyesight is too poor to see these products you’re not worthy of buying these products. I know there’s only so much space on a double page, but still, there’s space there to play with. This catalogue has several double page spreads like this. The spacing and size of he products just reminds me of that one time I accidentally went into a fancy shop in St. Mawes, Cornwall. I’m relieved I took this picture quickly, I couldn’t look at this page for that long before feeling judged that I wasn’t buying something.

Something else I didn’t like was Jack Wills, the brand, verus Jack Wills, the reality. This was a real bug bear with me and I’m sure I am neither the first or last person to mention this. The JW slogan is ‘Fabulously British’ and is frequently displayed like so:

…Yet very (and I stress very) few of their products are actually British, in the sense they’re made in Britain. In the whole of this gift guide I found two products made in Britain. A scarf and two perfumes:

It’s good to know that Britain can produce water, rose petals and fern leaves. Stuff to really make the world sit up and realise we can produce a diverse range of products. Like I said, I’m sure this point has been raised a million and one times either in passing as people look at the ‘made in Korea’ swing tags, or in ranty letters. I won’t linger further on this point.

Fun Stuff!

I know right, because going through a gift guide and selecting what overpriced goods you want to buy loved ones can be sooooo tiring. Thank goodness Jack Wills’s put a dedicated team in charge of a fun section to relive the boredom and stress of shopping from home.

“Colouring!! I wanna colour the worldddd!” was my first thought, until I realised I was a grown adult and haven’t had crayons since 1999.

There are some weirdly drawn images in this section, including Fred doing the reverse Alistair Darling with his dark hair and white eyebrows…

Although watch out, it’s those creepy Uncles that are always invited around for Christmas. You know, the ones who have given themselves the name ‘Uncle’ when you pretty dam sure they aren’t related. Yep, they feature in the Jack Wills Christmas Gift Guide 2014 too!

The wave and garish jumpers should speak for themselves.

What Have We Learnt From This Piece of Literature?

So, what can we gain from this glossy clothes catalogue? Well on the surface of it we’ve learnt that Jack Wills has models that bear a strong resemblance to former pop one-hit wonders, they don’t sell gingerbread creations, and I really would like to meet their creative department. That’s all obvious and only goes page deep. Being a History graduate I couldn’t help but read further into this guide as a reflection of modern society and culture.

Everything about this guide screams ‘childhood’ and ‘immature’. I’m sorry, it does. From the ‘this book belongs to’, to the comic modeling, through to the double page colouring-in spread. A dedicated 12 page section of the guide may be fun and lighthearted but it shows the readership of this publication.

I know what many of you will think, you’ll be thinking ‘yes, so what? Can young people not buy clothes now?’ and yes, I totally agree, they can indeed (beauty of free will). But what gets me is the level of it. These are not cheap items, Jack Wills sets itself as a semi-designer high street brand. £198 for a red coat and the £44.50 price tag on their Langthorne scarf shows that. Yet this is a publication which is being targeted at young teen/pre-teen people. Don’t believe me? Can I point out this question in their quiz…

I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but no one over the age of 17 in the UK is a Belieber. I may also be losing it at the grand old age of 22, because I have no idea what a ‘dutty beat’ is.

Also, these stickers came with the gift guide, featuring images from hearts and arrows, to pugs and bacon:

I’m not disputing that pugs and bacon aren’t awesome, they both are, but it’s an odd addition to a Christmas catalogue given the nature of this publication.

The point I’m trying to make here is that Jack Wills is targeting themselves at a younger age group compared to, say, Laura Ashley. But the prices aren’t cheap. Bear in mind I’m speaking as someone who was raised in the 90s and 00s where clothes shopping was limited to what Mum bought you and the only money you got was £1 a week for cleaning cars, the kitchen, living room etc. If JW are targeting themselves towards younger people I don’t understand where their money is coming from.

Maybe it shows that young people are now in possession of more money and are being exposed to fashion at a earlier age. Maybe this catalogue is just trying to be different. I just don’t get it, and I think the fact that I’m 22 adds to the confusion. Surely at my age I should get the point of this gift guide? As someone who has bought Jack Wills products in the past, surely I should be swept away with the products on display here? Why am I not getting the point? Why am I hungry when I’ve just eaten a big meal? Why am I asking so many rhetorical questions?

Of course, the Jack Wills team might say that the fact they’ve had a scarccy blog post written by a nobody about their gift guide does them no harm. Even if I was a somebody in the big hipster world they probably would shrug their shoulders. Bad publicity is better than no publicity and all that. For me such an outcome would be what the young people call a ‘massive fail’, right? I stick by my guns though, this gift guide says a lot about where fashion and the high street has come from and where it’s heading. Dumbing down to get the pounds. Combined with the rise of social media, television and film and the ending of the financial recession, will we start to see more of this creep in elsewhere? Should we not only accept, but embrace it? It wouldn’t be the first, nor will it be the last time big stores chase the consumers with the money and young people have more money than ever before. How they come into such money is another debate altogether, but they must have it. Either young people have money, we’re becoming more simplistic as human beings or I’m reading far too much into this one gift guide. Don’t answer that last point too quickly.

So yeah, that was my first book review/analyis since writing my dissertation about ten months ago. It’ll probably be my last. Glad to see I haven’t lost my commentary skills in the intervening time (hah). Two posts in one week, I’m on fire in the run up to Christmas. Don’t get too excited though, I doubt very much I’ll post anything else this side of the festive season. Work is very busy and my social life is crazy at the moment (eating my weight in chocolate every night while watching Don’t Tell the Bride takes time). But I will be back in the New Year, and you will get more information about my housemates, including my mermaid housemate. Honestly, I promise it will happen!

Anyway, until then, HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A MERRY NEW YEAR ALL AND ONE!!

Did someone say they wanted a terrible Christmas joke, courtesy of Jack Wills? (Of course you did):

What did you think of that Peter?

The Hole in My Shoe: The Next Steps (Pun Intended)

December 10, 2014December 10, 2014 My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) job berry, cake, everyday, hats, Life, mary, Swindon

I was deciding whether to eat rice or pasta this evening (age old dilemma) when I realised that I hadn’t posted anything for a while. So here I am, PJs on, Big Bang Theory on in the background, typing away. Not adventurous, but it was going to be Black Mirror. You’ll be grateful when this post takes a happy tangent as opposed to a dystopian approach where the future is bleak and young people turn into mindless zombies on Instragram. Oh wait…

(FYI, I don’t want this blog to turn into ‘what the office-worker did today at her desk’ or ‘how many cups of tea can Alice drink in a day without overdosing on caffeine’. There are places on the internet that will answer both.)

So, as I recall I left my last post with me getting a job. I’m now 4.5 months through a nine month contract (if not already made obvious, I was hired as maternity cover) and on the whole life is pretty good. There have been ups and downs but name a job that doesn’t have them. All downs and you’re in the wrong job, all ups and something isn’t right (you only need to watch Wolf of Wall Street to know that). Downs include dealing with a new computer system, but ups include my birthday last week. I made cupcakes for the team, and my line manager declared it was ‘wear a hat to work day’ to celebrate my extensive hat collection. Cue team selfie with those in the office…

(Given it was 8:15 in the morning I think we look rather merry. My birthday has that effect on people).

Slight downs, massive ups. Swings and roundabouts. Tea and, urm, cold tea. But without the downs you never fully enjoy the highs. If we wore hats to work and celebrated my birthday everyday life would be rather dull. I’d also be spending a all my time and money baking constantly (don’t give my colleagues ideas).

Don’t assume from that photo that life is all wine and mince pies. Ok, it is bit of that thanks to the food and drink buyer who sits opposite me, but still, life can be tough. While our book buyer has been seconded I’m flicking between handling publishers, new ranges and product reviews alongside tasks set out in my job title dealing with administration, invoices and orders. Depending on how things pan out the two jobs can either create a wonderful Mary Berry-esk trifle, nicely layered, varied, and something you want to want to dive into, or like the one time I attempted to make a fruit loaf. Solid, overcooked and, as a result, can badly bruise one’s foot when dropped (my family dubbed my creation ‘the brick’). Whichever way, both take work and devotion. Some days I get trifle, other days I get brick loaf. So far I’m eating more jelly than carbon so I must be doing something right.

Here seems a good point to stop for now. And as if by magic, I switch over and Master Chef is on my TV (don’t worry, I promise you it won’t stay that way for long). I hope this post has given a little bit more of an insight into what I’m doing in my tangent filled, round about way. My next post will either be about my housemates or linked to the Jack Wills Christmas catalogue (flicking through it is quite an interesting insight into the world of the middle-class hipster.) Now, time to turn off Master Chef and get to work on a true example of a culinary masterpiece, aka…

Nice

(Ps, the holey shoes are now dead, but they still live under my bed. Since the Freeview advert with the singing toys I like to think they belt out classic ballads when I’m at work. Who am I to stop them doing their dayjob? #BonnieBoot

Pps, it’s also because they’re moved to the darkest reaches of the ‘under the bed’ space and I’m too lazy to fish them out, but pretend you didn’t read that…)

The Hole in My Shoe

November 17, 2014November 17, 2014 My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) careers, Shoe careers, shoe

I was walking back from work this evening when I realised my foot was soaking wet. It is a wet evening in Swindon (as ever), and I thought it was due to that. Turns out I have a gaping big hole in the sole of my shoe.

Two thoughts crossed my mind when I saw the hole, 1) ‘great, another thing I need to buy’ and 2) seems like a good time to write my piece about how I got to be where I am. How I got from a sunny graduation in Southampton to a bedroom in Swindon with rain pouring down the window. Linking a holey shoe to that is something only my mind can do.

At the point of graduation I was was actually what you might call one of the lucky ones. I’d got the perfect graduate level job which, before you fill your head with misconceptions, wasn’t a job on a graduate scheme.

A tip to the not-so-wise, just because someone says and makes something out to be true, it doesn’t always follow it is. I sat through numerous humanity career talks during my time at University, either through choice or because they tacked it onto a compulsory History meeting. They all followed the same format.

Firstly, the speaker introduces themselves with some fancy title, e.g. ‘head of humanity careers’ or ‘assistant vice mentor of student career support, aid, engagement and publicity’. Job titles that scream ‘my line manager left me alone with the name-card creator one afternoon, and now I’m not allowed to be near fancy equipment by myself’.

Next, they’ll scare you. They’ll tell you the job market is at it’s worst yet (even if the day before jobs are up ten-fold), and that a degree isn’t enough to get a job. It’s at this point some careers folk may put on spooky voices. Go with it, it’s probably the only chance they get to use their redundant Drama GCSE.

But just as you’re quaking with fear they’ll offer you hope, that there is a way to save your career soul. Cue 25 minutes of generic information about ‘transferable skills’ and ‘internships’ and yada yada. You’ll want to bring either a notepad or a pillow because you’ll certainly need one or the other for this bit.

Apparently 90% of all graduate level jobs are found on graduate schemes. So, if they’re anything like Southampton humanities, careers will make everyone stand up. This forms part of a exercise to show you that even though 200 people can apply for a grad scheme, one by one (quite literally) you’ll be ruled out for the job and made to sit down. In the words of Augustus Waters/careers advice (delete as appropriate) ‘it’s a metaphor’. Eventually one person will get the job. All you’ll learn from this exercise is that you fall into the too-stupid-to-fill-out-the-application-properly group, and the person who gets the job doesn’t actually want to be on a grad scheme anyway. Enlightening stuff.

Careers Advice Tom then says his farewells to a grumbling group of students. If ever there was a modern-day, poor-man’s Shakespeare, career talks take the mediocre biscuit. As useful as a cold cup of coffee.

So, as you can tell, I did not get my job by standing in a crowd of 200 people while my line manager yelled ‘be seated!’ like a Roman Emperor. I applied, was interviewed and, though triumphing at both, I got a job working as an Assistant Retail Buyer.

The day before graduation I travelled down to Swindon to look at house shares up for rent. It had to be the hottest day of the year, and I scheduled in several different house viewings at opposite ends of the town. I can only say I thought Swindon was smaller than it was. It was on that day that I pitched up at my current house, hot, sweaty, and exhausted. It was in that beautiful state I met Sheri (the Hospitality housemate). I’ll tell you more about her and my other housemates soon, but not now this second.

Deposit placed, contracts signed. On the 11th August 2014 I would formally enter full-time employment. By mid July I was one of the few graduates who knew exactly where they’d be six months from now. Starting the job hunt before the crowds and spending hours on repetitive experience questions actually paid off.

Ergh, look at myself, this turning is into a corny student-success story. Give me a folder and a university branded hoodie and I’ll turn into a state of permanent prospectus pose (which is a real condition. See those happy students on University prospectuses? Behind those bleached smiles and sparkling eyes, they’re crying. It might not be obvious, but they’re crying inside.)

That takes me up to August. Christ, 750 words and I’m only a month into graduation. Ok, I promise things speed up from here, keep an eye out for part two of this epic tale of this grimgrad’s prequel. Any thoughts on University career talks? Feel free to comment.

This could be the awkward moment when I discover only Southampton’s Humanities Department do poor career talks, and that everyone else’s feature flame throwers, dancers and John Barrowman on ice…

The Curious Incident of the Wheelie Bin in the Night-Time

November 12, 2014November 14, 2014 My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Everyday Occurances, Minor Crime, Swindon, Wheelie Bins Advertiser, Bin, Crime, Minor, Rubbish, Swindon, Swindon Borough Council, Theft, Wheelie

My second post was intended to act as a fill-in from Graduation to the present day, however that’s going to wait. A scary development has occurred on our housing estate, something that should be treated with the utmost severity.

Our wheelie bin has disappeared.

(I’ll give you a minute to regain your breath).

Better? Ok, let me explain. I left the house to go to work, wheelie bin was there. I came back to the house after finishing work, said bin was still there. Go to bed, and the next morning, woah! The black, cuboidular (it’s not a word, but it should be), Swindon Borough Council wheelie bin was gone!

I don’t know who did it or why they did it, but I can only assume they are a criminal mastermind. I’ve walked up and down the street several times in the pitch black (in a mildly creepy way) and I’ve found no clues as to the whereabouts of no. 12’s wheelie bin. The whole situation has me baffled. I mean, why does anyone on a housing estate need a second wheelie bin when we have a designated area for rubbish bag overflow? Where can one subtly hide and store such an awkward, large object? Most importantly though, why our bin?!

It can only be described as the Swindon crime of November 2014. I don’t wish to scare monger, but I fear this problem will get worse before it gets better. Don’t fret though my fellow Swindonites, I’m on this. I’m composing a letter to send to Sherlock and I’ve been practising my fist shaking all day in preparation for the next attack.

To the bin-stealing culprit, return the bin and we shall speak no more of this. However, be warned, my housemate is a crime journalist. If you continue this charade I will nag him senseless until he reports on this. The deepest depths of hell do not compare to a page 15 paragraph in the Swindon Advertiser.

Now, many of you might say I’m taking this a little bit too seriously, that I need to calm down a bit. At the end of the day, I’m a middle class professional. I’m cool as a cucumber on most things. Loud music at 2am, not offering me tea when I visit, I’ll put up with that. Mess with my waste disposal though and you mess with me. You, me and my black belt in fist shaking.

So bring it in on my friend. Bring it on.

The Birth of the Grimgrad

November 11, 2014November 13, 2014 My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Graduation, Grimgrad, Swindon, Uncategorized, University Ahh!, Employment, Graduate, Graduation, Housemate, Mermaid, New World, Southampton, Student, Swindon

On July 16th something monumental happened. The Ukrainian Government were continuing their struggle against pro-Russian rebels, and Ben Affleck had crashed a Superman-themed party. Neither though can compare to what was going on at the University of Southampton’s Highfield Campus in, oddly enough, Southampton.

At 10:45am I officially graduated from the university with a 2:1 BA (Hons) degree in History.

I walked out of the ceremony all smiles and compulsory posed photos…

However, while this development in my life story was happy and exciting, after 30 minutes the realisation of my new status started to sink in. Photos like this started to appear in the photo real:

(Mumma Bennett was not happy)

I was an actual adult now. An adult with debt to pay off, a job to find, a career to build, a life to make. All that debt and nothing to show for it but some fancy hired robes and making people call me Alice Bennett, BA.

Some say life begins at birth, others pin it on moving away from home, buying a car, or going to a club. They are all wrong. No, the start of one’s ‘life’ cannot be pinned on something we build ourselves up to. It is the sudden removal of a structure or support base that forces one to make their own choices without the help of friends or Google. That’s when our independence is finally marked and when ‘life’, as we know it, begins.

With the removal of my education the inner child was officially dead, but the adult was born. And with the birth of the new adult came the decision to create a blog three months later. Watch this space for more blog posts about my job, outside-of-work stuff, and everything else under the sun.

Hello there Mr. New World, are you ready for me?

My Housemate's a Mermaid

Fiction, book reviews, observational comedy. Author: Alice E. Bennett (and yes, the mermaid is real)

Author: My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett)