You say "bespoke" and I get suspicious

On the words and stories we repeat

Ultimately, we all slip (fall tumble relax) into what’s familiar. In journalism, when something bad happens, we say that we are “in the wake of” something. Now in literature, we write in internet images. Recently movies have all become incoherent and tonally wild. In one moment, a character is serene and aloof, in the next they’re earnest and undone. It’s like filmmakers have decided to remove transitions. Do we have no more patience for the gradual?

Anyway, this is about repeated speech, not so much repeated structures or storylines, but I guess they are all connected.

Lately, it has come to my attention that we are using the word bespoke to describe what is not, and never will be bespoke. Plus, it’s an annoying word, conjuring an academic atmosphere. Suddenly, I’m an hour into an english class with a guy who is just too chatty.

A list of services and products that are not bespoke but have been described as such:

• A bubbly beverage

• off-the-shelf software

• 20-mins on the phone with a consultant

• beauty appointments

• A non-creative solution

With repeated speech, the work is removed from the journalist, speaker, studio, and placed instead on the person taking in the repetition. We don’t say what we really mean and so someone has to pause and think. Normally, I would encourage such an intellectual exercise. But stopping and thinking when you’re in search of a simple noun is not fun or engaging, it is simply confusing.

When I was in writing school the big NO-NO no matter what the genre or the class was: don’t confuse your reader. And now, I guess, people think the reader, the consumer, the person is dumb? That bespoke sounds fancier and more important and so, while it often doesn’t describe the thing itself, it adds cool oomph? It’s a word with its pinky up?

The word, if you couldn’t tell, does not have a pleasant impact on me. Other people I have heard, agree. Two separate friends with wildly different careers have both brought this word up to me, inquiring about what is UP with it in branding. One of them works at a Private Equity firm and regularly gabs with the high-finance elite. Another woman, who works in television, is always on set. “Just say you came up with a ‘creative solution!’ the finance gal said.

When I hear the word I picture some form of steampunk atmosphere and someone mad at me. It’s a grumpy adjective with a twirled mustache. It’s an elder, mean millennial boss. I guess, all of this is to say, it reminds me of say, 2015?

So I believe we should all stop claiming that whatever stuff we are selling is bespoke. We know it is not. Your hotel chain is not bespoke. Your CPG whatever is not bespoke. Your software is not bespoke. Your facial is not either. The only thing that counts, per my friend/fantastic writer/Paris Review babe Camille Jacobson: a suit. Nothing else.

Personalized/customized are both OK replacements. But only use these descriptors if it’s true.

There is nothing differentiated or distinct with using a multisyllabic or more "snooty” word when another one will do.

While we’re here, some other words that make me suspicious:

Innovative

Are you really doing something NEW?? That new? Would a nerdy unencumbered non-careerist student think it’s inventive/cool? If not, leave this term out of it. If you are properly NEW you do not have to say it! Show us the product. Say something crazy. You are more than this word.

Membership

I think fees and fraying couches. I’m going to be locked into something that I can’t get out of. I am going to be standing in front of an elevator, waiting to go use the treadmill, watching awful creative shouting at me that I should want it all, and then I am going to go up there and everyone is going to seem stressed. PASS. I am about to pay double for a coffee and be wedged next to a grumpy creative director wearing a graphic T.

Luxury

If you are, you don’t have to say it. If you’re even THINKING of saying it —don’t. I think of this lovely line from cashmere brand Luca Faloni, “Life is beautiful, dress like it!” now that’s luxury, an actual story, a story about the materials, a little champagne when you snoop around for a shirt for your dad (I was just there.)

Bold

Really? Are you bucking convention? If it’s bold that probably means that you don’t have product-market fit. We’re all nerds. We are not bold. If you really are doing something daring, just explain how. Or, use the word daring!

The Future

This one REALLY gets me. You are building the future of what? I don’t want the future, I want the now. Is this code for—we have very few engineers building the product? Or, we don’t have a vision, we don’t know where we are going? It’s great to have a lofty goal to aim for (get people on the moon, free energy for all, etc.) but man! Don’t be so ambiguous!

Signing off to order a BESPOKE iced latte !!