SHEPARD FAIREY ROCKS SAKS FITH AVENUE Consumers of the World Unite

Shepard Fairey is really starting to blow up or sell out you decide.


Consumers of the World Unite

SHOPPING, these days, is a political act. If you are brave enough to buy a $2,000 Prada handbag, you might rationalize that you are helping to stimulate the economy. Solidarity, people!

Saks Fifth Avenue, which has surely felt the recession’s sting, is taking just such a fist-raising stand with its spring marketing. The campaign is inspired by the bold graphic designs and propaganda spirit of Constructivist art — although it is intended to be tongue-in-cheek.

The store hired Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the stylized Hope poster of Barack Obama that became one of the most highly visible, though unofficial, images of the presidential campaign, to design its catalog covers and shopping bags. They bear a rather unsubtle allusion to advertisements made in the 1920s for state-run department stores in the Soviet Union.

“What we do every day, really, is propaganda,” said Terron E. Schaefer, the senior vice president for marketing at Saks.

So why not go whole hog?

The Saks slogan, “Want It!” is printed in lettering similar to the graphic designs of Rodchenko, the Russian graphic designer who was one of the founders of Constructivism. The images, largely realized by Cleon Peterson of Studio Number One, Mr. Fairey’s design company in Los Angeles, depict the season’s trends in black-and-white images with geometric slashes of red, some of them shown on models posing as if they are champions of workers’ rights. An ad for a slouchy bag, for example, tells shoppers to “Arm Yourself,” while a style of relaxed, cropped shorts are described as “Brave Pants.”

Asked if his work could be misunderstood as some sinister form of retail indoctrination, Mr. Fairey noted that he was also looking at agitprop posters made for the Works Progress Administration in the 1940s, to lift morale.

“Some people might think it could be making fun of what’s going on right now,” Mr. Fairey said. “But I think most people are sophisticated enough to realize it’s a way of grabbing attention. It’s commerce. I don’t think there is really any political statement embedded in this.”

Given the pricey goods Saks is selling, it’s not likely anyone would accuse the store of being socialist.