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This summer alone, Justin Bieber has released four separate collections of memorabilia for his Purpose World Tour. And now he's back at it again with lucky #5.
The merch obsession all began with a well-trafficked, two-day pop-up earlier this year, which then spilled over to a high-end riff on his stage wardrobe. The latter proved to be a little price-prohibitive, with its $1,675 Bieber-branded leather jacket, so the performer and Bravado (the licensing company behind the sudden pervasiveness of all-Purpose-everything) released yet another iteration of memorabilia at Urban Outfitters, with everything ringing in under $100. (This is all on top of the official Bravado swag sold at concert venues and online, of course.) Now Purpose pieces have reached new heights — and an even lower price point — with a new offering available at Forever 21.
To be honest, the pieces aren't much different from what we've already seen: T-shirts with Bieber's face printed on them, the "Purpose Tour" logo featured prominently, and the phrase "Justin Forever" used throughout. (Hmm, where have we seen that before?) The thing about Forever 21's selection, though, is that everything is under $35.
As if there were any lingering doubts about where the whole merch phenomenon was going, clearly something is working. "The fashion sensibility of the tour merch has made it cool to put the name Bieber on the front of your chest and wear it proudly," Scooter Braun, Bieber's longtime manager, told The New York Times following the first series of pop-ups with VFiles. "Whether it brought new fans, I don’t know. Whether it made closet fans step out into the open? I believe so." Mat Vlasic, chief executive of Bravado, noted that the audience at the ephemeral boutiques went beyond committed Beliebers: “It wasn’t really Bieber fans on the line," he explained to The Times. “It was made up mostly of streetwear guys. That was the most interesting thing.” Bieber himself, though, doesn't think of his merch as "fashion" — rather, he's "really happy we were able to dial in to something cool the way we did," according to the article. That was one month and two capsules ago. So we'd venture to say it's going pretty well.
Forever 21's collaboration with the Biebz is already available online and will hit stores August 29. Click through to see the range, which starts at just $17.90, in full.
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