The Taxonomy of Merch

Merch as Identity Signalling

In December, I went to see Oh Mary! by Cole Escola at the Trafalgar Theatre, fresh off its successful Broadway run. Of course, I immediately hit up the merch stand afterwards and bought the cap. I popped it on straight away, and was immediately hit with a skin-crawling sense of cringe.

The idea of wearing it so soon felt wrong in a way I couldn’t quite explain at the time. Even though no one around me would have known I’d only seen the play that week, it still felt too immediate. I felt like I needed enough distance from the event before I could wear it sincerely.

the merch in question

A few weeks later, in a surf town in Morocco, I noticed people wearing the small knitted hats sold ubiquitously in this surf town. That same feeling came back. Why does wearing merch in real time, in the place it belongs to, feel so icky?

After mulling it over, I realised what was bothering me. It’s something about the collapse of distance between the thing and the wearing of the thing. No time. No mediation. No space for meaning to build. The buying and the being happen in the same moment.

When merch works, it usually does so after the fact. It signals memory, taste, a specific moment in time, alignment, or long-term attachment. Worn too soon, it reads less like expression and more like endorsement, and that collapse is what feels cringe. Without distance, the object hasn’t yet moved from commodity to identity.

Of course, not all merch works this way. Some merch is explicitly designed to be worn in the moment. Mickey Mouse ears at Disneyland are the obvious example, they only really make sense there. Other merch, like a football scarf, which is anchored to fandom and ritual is usually worn in a very specific context.

Traditionally, that’s what merch was for: souvenirs, mementos, proof that you were somewhere, that you experienced something. A way of marking an event after the fact.

But that’s not really what merch does anymore

I kept coming back to something Ana Andjelic and Lee Maschmeyer talk about on their Hit Makers podcast: the journey of merch itself.

At first, merch functioned as an artefact of a specific time and place. A concert t-shirt you could only buy if you were physically there. Subcultural, scarce, and deeply tied to participation. Wearing it later signalled memory, belonging, and credibility, something you’d earned.

Then came the commercialisation of merch. Run club t-shirts for run clubs that don’t really exist. Fake football shirts worn without allegiance. The Disney merch industrial complex. Meaning loosened, scale increased, and merch became increasingly detached from experience. Scarcity turned artificial, think the Supreme brick; merch shifted from artefact to product.

What we have now feels different again. Much more niche. More specific. Less performative, more personal. Merch that only makes sense if you already know, an IYKYK signal that reflects the fragmentation of audiences, interests, cultural fluency and identity. It’s less about broadcasting affiliation and more about quietly finding your people.

Today, merch functions as identity shorthand. It’s not about where you’ve been so much as who you are. We wear merch as a way of branding ourselves, announcing taste, interests, values and cultural alignment without having to say anything out loud.

You can usually identify someone in a nanosecond by the merch they have. It’s become one of the fastest ways we make ourselves legible to each other. Merch now does the work that introductions used to, pre-packaging identity, signalling who we are, what we’re into, and which worlds we want to be associated with before we’ve said a word.

Which is why merch has quietly become one of the most important tools in brand world-building. Not as product, but as meaning-making; a way for brands to create worlds people want to step into, align with, and carry on their bodies.

If you think about world-building in its simplest terms, it’s made up of a few core elements: lore (the stories a brand tells about itself), symbols (the visual codes and references it uses), objects (the things that allow people to physically participate in the world), and rules (the behaviours and values that signal belonging).

Merch sits at the intersection of objects and symbols. It’s a physical thing you can wear or carry, but it also functions semiotically, compressing a brand’s values, references and cultural cues into something instantly legible.

That’s why merch is so powerful when it works. It allows people not just to buy into a brand, but to embody it. To move through the world carrying a set of signals that say “I belong here” or “this world makes sense to me.”

On its own, merch is just stuff. But when it’s grounded in clear lore and governed by shared rules, what feels sincere, what feels earned, what feels cringe, it becomes one of the most effective ways brands can turn abstract ideas into lived experience.

In that sense, merch is as important to world-building as product itself. It’s often the most accessible point of entry, the thing that allows someone to signal alignment before they’ve fully committed, or to carry a brand’s meaning into their everyday life.

In a fragmented cultural landscape, where identity is increasingly self-authored and affiliation is chosen rather than inherited, merch becomes one of the most tangible ways brands can participate in people’s lives.

The irony, of course, is that the most powerful merch often needs distance. Time to move from transaction to meaning. Space to be absorbed into identity. When brands understand that, when they design merch not just to sell, but to signify, it stops being an accessory and starts becoming part of the world itself.

We’re currently developing a new Culture Strategy (World-Building) offer, designed to help brands define where they genuinely belong in culture, and translate that into coherent worlds across product, content, partnerships and platforms. We’re testing this with a small number of selected brands. If you’re interested in exploring it, get in touch: hello@sibling.studio