Association, dissociation, location and dislocation: Subcultural connections and iconic UK brands – the case of Fred Perry

This article is concerned with the relationship between iconic UK brands and subcultures, which it approaches via a specific focus on Fred Perry. It explores how the brand manages its links to particular, post-war, British subcultures alongside its ‘Englishness’ and/or ‘Britishness’, in what is referred to as a process of association, dissociation, location and dislocation. It suggests that, through this process, the brand’s subcultural connections and Englishness, in particular, are both played up and played down, as a way of establishing ‘authenticity’ in the form of subcultural and locational capital, on the one hand, and managing negative connotations and the brand’s global appeal on the other. It argues that one way to address the processes under consideration is to approach things from an Actor Network Theory perspective, conceptualizing brands as actor networks – or as ongoing, contingent and relational processes involving a diverse range of constituents, human and otherwise – and the branding process as an attempt to manage and stabilize the networks involved. This may be difficult to achieve, however, because of such networks’ ongoing and relational qualities, and because, in the case of subcultures, the things which render them valuable in branding terms may also make them unruly and difficult to contain.