Spice Girl's Cheap Nostalgia Misses Target

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The clothes are ugly. And so is the commercial. Victoria Beckham's snoozer of a hotly anticipated accessible "fashion" line hits Target on April 9, and as the just-changing-hands Us Weekly reports, the ad is just out, dusting off the 20-year-old Spice Girls hit "Spice Up Your Life" to get us stoked about a bunch of weird, monochromatic women's and children's dresses, pants and tops. The set and production values are as cheap as the drab duds—even the models don't look happy to be there. (Then again, do models ever look happy?) It's hard to believe one of the most high-profile names in fashion would put her stamp on this crummy collection, or let this embarrassingly low-budget atrocity of a promotion on the airwaves. (Maybe that's why she didn't appear in the ad? Or maybe, like stores such as Old Navy, Target has tired of employing celebrities in its campaigns, at least for the time being.) Is the Target ad just a singular, creative miss—or is it, as Digiday contributor Mark Duffy recently griped, part of a larger trend of fashion marketing having lost its juice? Marketing trends notwithstanding, what seems certain is that Target has another flop on its hands, the onetime trendy sophistication of its wares a distant memory, leaving shoppers (including former devotee me) bored and staying away. If you've been following the news out of the retail world the last, oh, decade or so, you know that nobody's actually going to stores to shop anymore—making the financial standing of chains like Target wobblier and wobblier. Does anybody think Posh's anything-but rags are going to have people rushing back into those brightly colored, florescent-lit aisles? It is time for a major overhaul for our once-beloved Target—one much more bold and forward-thinking than this phoned-in effort from a 90s pop star.

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