Unauthorized Burberry Buttons Buttons

For Unauthorized Burberry Buttons (1999), Tobias Wong appropriated the English luxury brand’s iconic tartan design and made it readily available by placing it on the surface of basic, inexpensive pinback buttons. Through this project he questioned the concept of luxury consumerism, but also highlighted how branding, through the use of recognizable patterns or signature styles, has come to permeate the contemporary worlds of fashion, design and art.






In a 2007 interview for Design Observer, Wong shared that the inception of Unauthorized Burberry Buttons was sparked from a magazine he read in 1999 in which Burberry warned readers they would prosecute anyone who reproduced their famous tartan pattern without authorization.1 Wong’s took this statement as a challenge from the British brand. With the hubris, fearlessness and humour of a young creative who was still in school and had come to New York City to make it as an artist, he fully appropriated Burberry’s iconic pattern and applied it on pin-backbuttons ranging from 1’ to 2.2’ inches in diameter. After making them in three different sizes – small, medium, and large – to replicate the scale used by clothing brands, he distributed hundreds of his Unauthorized Burberry Buttons at various events during New York Fashion Week in 1999.


In an interview for SOMA Magazine in 2009, , Wong noted that rather than form or function, it was the context within which he created that was most important in his design process.2 Therefore, inherent to the Unauthorized Burberry Buttons is a real sense of defiance from Wong towards this luxury brand who attempted to assert an exclusive ownership on a certainly iconic, but also simple and common pattern design: the tartan. Key to that defiance is a deeper and more universal message that Wong has embedded within his buttons. By appropriating an instantly recognizable design which is central to Burberry’s identity as an established luxury brand, and placing it on small, simple, affordable fashion accessories, Wong was making luxury accessible to the masses. He handed out his Unauthorized Burberry Buttons for free which highlighted that rather than being confined to the elite few who had the interest and means to procure themselves an expensive Burberry trench coat, iconic symbols of luxury like the Burberry tartan could belong to the many.


Not even a year after their debut, Burberry noticed the success of these buttons and used Tobias Wong’s Unauthorized Buttons in some of their very own ad-campaigns which could then be seen on billboards, in fashion magazines and the brand’s catalogues in 2000. This was the strongest testimony to Wong’s aptitude as a critical conceptual designer as it highlighted that he was right to challenge the notion that luxury, represented by the iconic Burberry pattern, must be exclusive. In this full-circle moment, Burberry re-appropriated Wong’s appropriation resulting in what he called “a knock-off of a knock-off.”3





This was the ultimate demonstration of the pertinence of Wong’s message of luxury for the masses. Wong’s work showed that in the context of the early 2000s, which were permeated by the advent of the internet, the massification of pop as a phenomenon and heightened consumerism, the idea of luxury emanating from a scarcity of products with limited andas it did previously. The visibility brands now had meant that the success of their image was no longer only in the hands of the privileged few, but also in those of the many who because they were confronted to luxury brands more often, had agency in acknowledging and evaluating the status of an object, pattern, design, or brand as a luxury. The Unauthorized Burberry Buttons commodified Burberry’s signature design and in doing so made it fashionable, iconic, but also accessible. This fed the luxury brand’s image because it showed that it was so desirable that I needed to be put on buttons.


into the ,However, there is also a sense of irony to what could be considered as a publicity stunt from Wong for Burberry. By commodifying the brand’s iconic pattern and making it accessible, he is also reducing it to the status of simple product, making it banal. This can also have the effect of devaluing the image of Burberry’s tartan as it enters the mainstream and is no longer a luxury but becomes something disposable. As such, through these strikingly simple buttons, Wong nonetheless managed to make us ask: Who has the power to define a brand, design or product as a luxury? The people that create it? Those that consume it? Or is it the majority that do neither and who through their desire of ownership make luxury attractive, giving it its raison d’être?




Footnotes:

1 Rob Walker, ‘Tobias Wong on Consuming Consumer Consumption,’ Design Observer (12/01/2007), accessed: https://designobserver.com/feature/tobias-wong-on-consuming-consumer-consumption/27248

2 Gustave Ochoa, ‘Provocation in Principle,’ SOMA Magazine, vol. 23, no. 7 (Oct. 2009), accessed: https://www.somamagazine.com/tobias-wong/.

3 After the campaign came out, Tobias Wong ended up revealing his identity to Burberry who had re-appropriated his buttons without knowing who had made them specifically because of their nature as disposable objects





Additional point:





In using the iconic Burberry tartan as the main component of this project, Tobias Wong was also challenging the notion of ownership with respect to contemporary art and design. In an age where celebrity designers and artists who dominated the scene through aggressive branding and marketing of their art and persona, Tobias was more subtle in his approach. Not only is his mark nowhere to be found on his Unauthorized Buttons, but any clue that they are his creation is completely obscured by the fact that their most prominent feature is the Burberry tartan. Furthermore, these objects had a life of their own as they were to be found directly on the streets on all kinds of people’s clothing rather than simply existing as opulent and pretentiously unique luxuries intended for a design showroom, art gallery or museum. By shifting the context in which his pieces are being presented, he prevented them from becoming unattainable high-design luxury goods. Instead, they became actors with an agency of their own, as evidenced by the fact Burberry used Unauthorized Buttons in one of their campaigns. This was an exceptional, yet consciously intended, outcome as Tobias Wong described that seeing his Unauthorized Buttons on Kate Moss for an official Burberry campaign was “the biggest high,” highlighting his own excitement in participating in the exhilarating world of luxury fashion. Rather than emphasizing his role as author, it is the context and concept that Tobias Wong imbues his designs with that he gives primacy to. This is what enables his pieces to remain so effectively striking, thought-provoking, humorous and relevant even 25 years after the specific situation they were responded to and in which they were made.

Unauthorized Burberry Buttons Buttons; Designed by Tobias Wong (1974–2010); metal, plastic, paint; H x diam. (a): 1.2 × 5.5 cm (1/2 × 2 3/16 in.) H x diam. (b): 1.2 × 4.3 cm (1/2 × 1 11/16 in.) H x diam. (c): 1.5 × 4.3 cm (9/16 × 1 11/16 in.) H x diam. (d): 1.4 × 4.3 cm (9/16 × 1 11/16 in.) H x diam. (e): 1.3 × 3.2 cm (1/2 × 1 1/4 in.) H x diam. (f): 1.3 × 3.2 cm (1/2 × 1 1/4 in.) H x diam. (g): 0.8 × 2.5 cm (5/16 in. × 1 in.) H x diam. (h): 0.8 × 2.5 cm (5/16 in. × 1 in.); The Tobias Wong Collection, Gift of Phyllis Chan and Gordon Wong; 2024-4-3-a/h