MEDIA SCOPE: The pressure to wear certain brands - Nike, Adidas and the rest - has never been greater. Have you got what it takes to resist the marketing machine, asks Louise Holden

We all do it - assume that a well-known brand with a big price tag gives a guarantee of quality. We're constantly reminded that most clothing, from the cheapest to most expensive, is made in the same factories out of the same materials, but we forget. We choose to forget because, deep down, quality has nothing to do with our choices. We choose labelled brands because we want to fit in.

"One of the effects of branding is to make you feel as if you are part of a community," says Phil Knight, CEO of the Nike Corporation. Marketers know that if they sell the idea of a lifestyle along with the clothing, people will pay. The reason our Adidas, Reebok or Nike trainers cost €60 more than an unbranded pair is because Adidas have had to spend so much money convincing us that it's a good idea to spend more. We pay for the ads, endorsements and sponsorships that are designed to make us feel good about the money we have spent. The clothes themselves are secondary.

Wearing a brand gives out a message. The Nike swoosh is associated with sporting achievement. The laziest couch potato can buy into that image for the price of a hoodie. The Benetton logo says that you're sophisticated and international - even if you've never left your hometown. FCUK says you're a bit racy and Tommy Hilfiger says you're urban. All of these perceptions are very carefully and expensively crafted in boardrooms by marketing brains. We pay their salaries.

A brand announces that you belong to a group - you're not out on your own. Even the word, "brand", comes from the marks that farmers put on their cattle to indicate what herd they belong to. In schools across the world, people are relying on brands to feel they belong, because people who appear to be out on their own get picked on. Last year, an Irish schoolgirl was kicked unconscious for wearing no-brand runners. That's how important it is to fit in.

Clothing manufacturers don't want you to be beaten up for not buying their clothes, but they do want you to feel uncomfortable if you don't. Free-thinking individuals are a nuisance that marketers and advertisers would rather do without.

Could that be about to change? Is it possible that young people will themselves decide that following fashion is well, unfashionable?

One recent study into brand obsession among teenagerss discovered that a growing group of young people are starting to take a dim view of brand slavery. According to the researchers, the ratings for nearly all fashion brands dropped last year and one in three participants in the survey disagreed with the statement: "I prefer designer labels".

One youth said: "I won't buy Reebok because everybody has them - I just look like one of the lemmings who has no mind of his own." Another student commented: "Nike trainers must cost around £8 to make, why they hell I am paying £100? I must be mad!" This attitude is likely to grow as the global economy slows down. Shoes costing more than €100 don't sell as well when people are worrying about losing their jobs.

The Irish education website skoool.ie conducted a survey in January, asking students whether or not they liked wearing uniforms to school. Almost 80 per cent of the respondents voted in favour of uniforms and the discussion forum was flooded with hundreds of angry comments about the tyranny of labels in school.

"Without uniforms, school would be unbearable," said Anna, a Dublin student. "As it is, I'm constantly harassed about the shoes I wear because they're not the right brand. How would I face the bullies in a whole outfit of unbranded clothing? School without uniforms would be like a fashion parade. I can't afford to get caught up in that."

Why do we put ourselves, and each other, through this kind of torture? We hand out our hard-earned cash for average products so that we have the privilege of being a walking advertisement? And then we slag other people for having the sense not to do the same.

Educational psychologist John Holt put the matter in perspective when he wrote: "To learn to know oneself, and to find a life worth living and work worth doing, is problem and challenge enough, without having to waste time on the fake and unworthy challenges of school - fitting in with the gang, being popular, doing what everyone else does."