Bespoke This, Bespoke That. Enough Already. - The New York Times


The overused term 'bespoke,' once signifying high-end tailoring, has become a ubiquitous branding trend, prompting discussion about its saturation and diluted meaning.
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Last summer, the director Paul Riccio made a satirical video short about a groundbreaking new product referred to as bespoke water.

It featured a pair of bearded Brooklyn hipsters, the Timmy Brothers, who, in righteous tones, announced that “corporate water is soulless. Our water” — sourced from places like Lake Pontchartrain and the East River — “is about freedom and independence. It has an Emersonian spirit about it.”

Imagine the director’s surprise when, after the film’s release, “inquiries started coming in from Europe about how to import the product,” Mr. Riccio said. “I wish we had a supply on hand, because people actually wanted to buy bespoke water.”

Maybe it was the name. The B word has become an increasingly common branding lure employed by interior design companies, publishers, surgeons and pornographers. There are bespoke wines, bespoke software, bespoke vacations, bespoke barber shops, bespoke insurance plans, bespoke yoga, bespoke tattoos, even bespoke medical implants.

“There has been a distinct fashion for it,” said Michael Quinion, an etymologist who has studied the word’s usage. “At this point, it’s really over the top.”

For much of the last century, bespoke referred almost exclusively to men’s tailored suits, a practice idealized by the fine, and pricey, craftsmen and women of Savile Row in London.

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