The web site appears like one thing {that a} generative AI system dreamed up: Lockheed Martin Attire, the place you may get streetwear-style denims and outsized tees bearing the brand of a protection contractor accused of aiding warfare criminals.
However the garments are actual, not less than in South Korea. The streetwear line has stirred up curiosity on X after a person posted a screenshot from the corporate’s web site.
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We reached out to Lockheed Martin to make clear its relationship with the attire model. The corporate responded that it will look into the request however didn’t present any extra info by the point of publication.
Nonetheless, it is doable that the worldwide safety and aerospace firm licensed its title, emblem, and likeness to a South Korean firm that’s now utilizing it to promote garments.
This observe is pretty frequent in South Korea, the place Jeep, Nationwide Geographic, and even defunct airline Pan Am have been reimagined as streetwear manufacturers with their very own brick-and-mortar shops. Within the States, we’d discover this idea a bit odd — I definitely do. However these borrowed-brand clothes traces are extraordinarily well-liked in South Korea in a method that appears indiscriminate of their origin. Even CNN has gotten the streetwear therapy.
I initially assumed that South Koreans is perhaps unaware of the work and status of the Lockheed Martin model, however it seems that the corporate is a significant participant within the nation’s protection market. Maybe, then, the attract for South Koreans is carrying a international language and daring graphics on their particular person, in the identical method that some Individuals get tattoos of Chinese language symbols regardless that they do not converse Mandarin.
Designs from Pan Am South Korea.
Credit score: Pan Am South Korea
Then there’s the query of why Lockheed Martin would enable its title and emblem to be licensed on this method. The corporate has an official retailer, the place you may get its emblem printed on a North Face fleece or on Carhartt overalls.
However the South Korean model, mockingly, does a greater job of selling the corporate. One shirt presently on the market on the streetwear web site contains in its design Lockheed Martin’s values: “Do What’s Proper, Respect Others, and Carry out with Excellence.” It then lists the deal with of the corporate’s Bethesda, Maryland headquarters.
Good to know that the military-industrial complicated propaganda machine is alive and nicely.