Jezebel
Donna Karan does a lot of typically ridiculous fashion industry stuff in the name of not being the average typically ridiculous fashion industry person, but her orange bicycles take proverbial ayurvedic macrobiotic unitarian wedding cake. In the name of reducing our dependence on foreign oil/increasing our dependence on branded objects, DKNY's guerrilla marketing team chained these orange bikes all over Manhattan during Fashion Week. Yeah, chained. Meaning, the bikes were:
- Locked up and therefore unusable
- occupying valuable parking spaces that might otherwise be used by actual bicyclists
- and/or chained illegally to trees
- shamelessly/tastelessly aping the "Ghost Bike" phenomenon whereby bicyclists killed in the line of carbon footprint reduction are memorialized with decorative bikes chained near the intersections at which they died.
The reader writes:
well when i cut the lock at prince and west broadway this old lady looked incredibly frightened. she sort of froze and her jaw was hanging open. i think she thought i was going to mug her. then i headed over to prince and broadway to free the bike in front of dean and deluca. while i was setting up the bolt cutters an old couple walked by. it was saturday afternoon and they were out shopping. the man said: I hope that's your bike. i said: it's not mine, it's donna karen's. and i'm not taking it. i'm just taking off the lock. at this point they looked perplexed. i said, it's like graffiti, trash. they leave this stuff all over the city. and expect somebody else to come clean it up! well, that's what i'm doing. and the woman said: 'ah, yes.' the couple nodded with understanding and approval. by this point 20 seconds had passed and i was still struggling with the bolt cutters and the chain the woman said: i think we'd better get out of here.But they had seen it with their very own eyes: the Bernie Goetz of the hedge fund bonus-bloated, corporate-controlled, Fashion Week-addled, iPhone dependent New York. And they were pleased.
Happy fash week, Donna!
It's A Bike! It's A Message! No, It's An Ad [Portfolio]
The Orange Bike DKNY.com Marketing Scheme Thwarted In East Village [Flickr]
Five Things We Liked Tuesday [New York Mag]
DKNY Orange Bike In Trash [NYC Bike Polo]
Comments
I saw one this weekend and was disgusted. Shame on you, DKNY!
wow. are the bikes real or just bike dummies?
How are they not fined for this?
i haven't seen a ghost bike in person, but i love the sentiment. for some reason, my fixie-riding boyfriend/friends aren't thrilled with the concept.
can anyone explain why?
Ooohh.. who was the reader? We should send her like a gift certificate to like.. uh.. Donna Karan?
i just heard about this yesterday. the bike kids are riled up about it, too. if they weren't so ugly...
I like orange and all but this is just plain stupid.
Urban justice!
There are red ones around Austin that have to do with AIDs. That's ok, right? It's the branding and advertising that's distasteful here, I think.
But I do feel better about being annoyed by them.
@incurable paranoiac: Oh, bike kids will get riled up about anything. When they're not stoned.
"it's not mine, it's donna karen's"
Hilarious.
This campaign doesn't even make sense to me. What?
"the Bernie Goetz of the hedge fund bonus-bloated, corporate-controlled, Fashion Week-addled, iPhone dependent New York."
Brilliant!
Am I the only one who instantly connects that shade of bright-ass orange to Nickelodeon?
Also, this is tremendous.
@hortense: No, I always think of "You Can't Do That on Television" and gak when confronted with just that shade of orange.
Gainesville, FL used to have a TON of bikes all over the city that were painted bright yellow. The awesome thing was that they were ostensibly made available for anyone to use anywhere. You simply saw one, picked it up, and returned it to a bike rack when you were done.
The lame part was that crackheads and rich college kids stole them all and repainted them. Assholes.
Yeah. My brother was killed by a car when he was on his bike and this is pretty distasteful to me.
Good for you, Jezzer!
Not that gak is orange, but the packaging and whatnot.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!@
titania1285: Oh noes! Not fixies!
@skinnybonejones: boyfriend stopped with the fixie and is back to road bike. thank god, i hated that thing.
Round of applause for the lady with the bolt cutters!
@Reluctant Financier: Maybe she'd appreciate a nice angle grinder more?
WORD!
@LadySkittlehattington: I thought I read she was lending the bikes to people, to help fashion week be more "green" but chaining them to things makes no sense at all.
Donna, Love that you're crazy and kooky and all those things, and I really do love the sentiment, but damn, it was ridiculously stupid in execution. xo, clever.
@titania1285: My boyfriend rides a track bike, which I think is fixed gear. When he talks bikes, he might as well be speaking in a foreign language. He also has a trek and wants a steel frame bike. And, yes, they're stored in the living room.
@mightymouth: I gotcha. Gak was awesome...for about three minutes, until you dropped it on the floor and it got dog hair stuck to it everywhere.
@MissCricket: So sorry. My husband is a big cyclist and this terrifies me. Especially since my step-cousin's girlfriend was killed by a truck when they were riding together.
@Go Like Hell Machine: It's called the Yellow Bike Project. They have it in a bunch of cities.
@incurable paranoiac: As someone who occasionally hangs, it don't take much to get their bike shorts in a wedgie.
I have no problem with the ghost bikes. These are just dumb.
@hortense: What was that show where they had the pool of gak? Double Dare?
@hortense: Where I'm from, we call that "blaze orange" and it is worn by hunters so they don't shoot each other. Not always effective, though.
I am assuming that this is another trend borrowed from the hicks like the trucker cap. (we call them gimme caps, because companies give them out free for the advertising space on your forehead)
@MissCricket: Bless your heart. :(
This kind of marketing is so transparent and ridiculous. She was obviously jumping on someone else's artistic vision, without recognizing the spirit or message behind it. Whatever.
I'm sure the woman was thinking, Donna Karan rides a bright orange bike?
Aww, way to go anonymous Jezzie!
And I'd never heard of Ghost Bikes before this. That's sweet. I guess it's kind of like the roadside crosses/memorials we have in my neck of the woods for car accident victims.
@blondegrlz: So basically, I'm not insane. It really DOESN'T make sense? Good to know.
@notaclevername: I feel you. It was a big argument to convince my husband that the bike rack should not go next to the fancy dining room table in our new apartment.
@Go Like Hell Machine: That's awesome about the yellow bikes. It's like in Amsterdam. It's too bad they were stolen.
@notaclevername: my boyfriend worked at a bike shop (until he was waaaay illegally fired, but that's for another post, i'm sure). he's up to two road bikes and a fixed-gear track bike. they're all stored in the front hall, just outside the doors of the closet that they are supposed to be in. the spare bedroom is littered with tools and greasy paper towels, where he often repairs and fixes his FRIENDS bicycles.
he tries to 1) get me to ride and 2) teach me about bikes. but i work in the warehouse district of LA, and i really don't want to be impaled by a forklift on my way to work at 7:30 am. i just tune him out, until he asks me if something looks pretty, and then i tell him yes or no.
Idiotic. If you want to be all guerrilla marketingish, LEAVE THE BIKES UNCHAINED. Like the yellow bikes.
@Go Like Hell Machine: Same thing happened in Charleston. You still see the occasional stolen yellow bike cruisin' round the city.
I wonder how many of these they made - they could have donated logo-ed bikes to delivery guys and urban messengers while getting their point across and making something useable.
@mightymouth: I think so. That show was a mess, in the best way.
@midwesternmom: Most likely. It is an attention-grabbing color, for sure.
@treecut: It is terrifying. I've had some biker "friends" who totally judge me because I drive a car. I'm traumatized and cannot even fathom riding a bike (esp. in Boston!), but they just tell me I should "get over it". Fuckers.
@titania1285: they aren't? I always thought it was so sweet. I saw one around park slope a couple of months ago. It was painted all white and had flowers in the basket in the front. I think there was also a note explaining who had died and when. It really makes you stop, read and consider things even for just a minute. I can't imagine anyone who would be against that.