Pure Obsessions - Archetypes

In one of my recent blog posts I talked about the idea of archetypes and how brands use them to build consumer profiles. Now I thought I would look at it in the context of my new project brief - the Purity trend story. Purity represents minimalist, simple, neutral and innocence. To me purity symbolises something un-touched, natural, beautiful and untainted- almost something that is better than anything else because of the qualities I just said. Its things like Virgin, Angel, Pregnancy, Innocence and Children. But purity can be less obvious things and more conceptual - for example, you can be pure to 'brand you'. Pure to your personal style, morals, beliefs and objectives and sticking with that throughout a time period. If brand you is to always look put together it can be a pure, flawless, perfect face created by makeup to look pure and effortless. I know to me the idea of walking out the house with no makeup is defiantly not pure to brand me!

Now with that in mind when thinking of archetypes and consumer profiles linked to purity, there were a few very obvious ones. Of course the innocent/virgin was the first one that came to mind. The colour white its linked very strongly to purity as a whole but especially the virgin/innocent due to the connotations of being untouched and 'good'. This also corresponds to the idea of white wedding dresses being a symbol of virginity and purity for marriage - 'saving yourself for the one'. The innocent tends to be more conservative and safe with their fashion choices, choosing colours like white and neutral tones as they like to stick to the norm. This is shown in the pictures above of purity in fashion retailers at the moment as they are very much clothes an 'innocent' would happily wear. Covering and minimalistic - every innocent girls dream.

Another archetype/consumer I thought of for this topic was the mother/caregiver. This one isn't maybe as obvious as the first one but still has a very strong and clear link. I heavily associate the idea of purity with children and mothers - the idea that a mother's love is pure and endless for her child. A mother's intentions are always pure and have her child's interests at heart making her motifs extremely authentic and clean. Also the idea of pregnancy and the miracle of life fits in very well here - the creation of another life breed out of pure love between two people. A mother creates a pure, untouched and miracle child for 9 months and keeps in hidden from possible containmination with the outside world. You can't argue with the fact that babies are not only the cutest thing but the purest thing as they are so oblivious to the world and have the most open minds at that stage of life - and the mother is the one that helps and protects that.

For me those are 100% the two archetypes that have the closest links to purity and the notion of it. They both hold a strong theme of untouched and natural which for me is what purity is mainly about.