According to a UK newspaper today, David Beckham is asking for £770,000 per week from his team Real Madrid. Apparently this is mainly because of the huge profits they make from selling shirts and other souvenirs depicting his surname, and he, probably advised by his manager and lawyers, wants a bigger 'slice of the cake'.
Whether or not this is accurate reporting, I wonder why so many people are prepared to pay a high premium on goods just to have some personality's name displayed on them? The identical shirt, or whatever, without such embellishment might cost less than half as much, so why pay a lot more just to advertise some 'rich kid'?
Have you ever, or do you still, pay over the odds in order to get a particular personality's name on your clothes?

I've always found that bewildering. After all, nobody's going to think a young man **is** Beckham just because he's wearing a shirt with the name on it!

Why should I wear a shirt with some celebrity's name on it? Do they wear a shirt with my name on it?

You could try to persuade them, but no doubt they'd want a fortune in 'sponsorship' money!

To stretch it further, many people pay lots of money to have clothing with the manufacturer's name or logo on the outside.

I have to admit to owning a number of T-shirts with names of bands or musicians on them. Exclusively these were purchased at concerts. (In other words, I don't just go to the local record shop and buy a T-shirt, I only buy band shirts if I see the band. I'm quirky that way.) But aside from those, I don't see the reason to buy celebrity clothing. I have purchased a couple pairs of jeans that were more expensive because of the logo, but I bought them because they fit me exceptionally well, and they happened to be on sale. So that's a mindset I don't understand, either.

The zest for displaying the maker's name and logo on clothing has always struck me as bizarre. We had to buy our school uniforms from Harrod's but showing off the labels would have been considered - well, how shall I put it? - very vulgar indeed and the school would certainly not have approved.

I'm with Lothruin on the bands thing, but I think that's a bit different. Or actually perhaps it isn't, just a variation. See I'll get deep here and say it's all about 'group identification', about walking through this world of strangers and seeing something you recognise or have in common in/with someone else. So if I see someone wearing the t-shirt from (stretches memory) the farewell Hunters and Collectors tour, for example, I'm going to smile at them and think 'yeah, I remember that gig, that was great'. And then probably get a slap across the moosh and unprintably abused for stopping in the middle of the footpath, grinning like an idiot!

The part of it that strikes me as dumb is when the scope of the 'identification' is made so wide that it becomes essentially meaningless. In the good old days, as I recall, you could only get the tour t-shirt if you went to the gig (I remember being horribly disappointed going back to a venue the day after I'd seen [name of band removed to prevent embarrassment] and, even though I had the ticket stub, being told I couldn't buy the merchandise). But anyone can buy a pair of Levi's or a Gap t-shirt, or (if they can arrange a small mortgage) something with David Beckham's ugly mug on it - heck, your grandma can buy them for you! I guess wearing them does say something about your personality, but not the kind of something I'd want to be saying.

So no, I've never gone out of my way or sold one of my parents' kidneys to buy something with labels or celebritities on it (not even the stipulated band t-shirts for some 15 years now!) Does this mean I don't have clothes with manufacturers' labels on their outsides? No, can't be avoided these days. But 9 times out of 10 I won't have heard of the label in question before seeing the item, and it is invariably the equivalent of 'buy me I'm cheap and will probably mark you out as a dag to anyone under 25'. But then again, there are so many capital L labels these days (I know, I have teenaged nieces!), and fashions change so quickly, that if you bothered to try you could probably convince those who care that "Handmade by Mum" is the latest thing out of Paris!