I guess I still don't/won't understand why so much bitterness & hatred is voiced here. Sure, he's just a businessman extending his financial empire, the clothing is pretty plain, etc etc, but a lot of 'ghetto youth', if you will, look up to Sean Combs as an example of coming out of a sh*thole area and making something of yourself (much like Russell Simmons, and by extension Kimora Lee). Stop to consider the importance of that for a moment.
Sean John is important, I believe, because unlike Baby Phat or Fubu, Sean John, as a label, acts to raise the clothing mentality of hip-hop out of the ghetto, and it allows a young kid the option of looking classy without betraying one's roots to the hip-hop community. True, a lot of people in the hip-hop underground don't care much for Sean Combs, but he certainly resonates much more to those people than, say, Valentino
Because of that a label like Sean John is ultimately good for the health of the fashion industry. There is a large potential market in the kind of customer that both liestens to a) hip-hop and b) rejects the gangsterisms of Fubu and Phat Farm. Sean John puts people in Bergdorf, for chrissakes (which many of you apparently scoff at, and there isn't a rolleyes emote large enough for that), allowing them exposure to a larger sense of fashion and clothing than what they would see at the mall. Even if they are not buying his clothes, they are certain quite aware of it, and gives one something to look forward to.
Like painting/etc, fashion is an aesthetic art form wholly centered in discipline, in both observation & practice. I know in my younger yearsI've had some pretty embarrassing fashion faux pas (think a kmart version of the fresh prince of bel air... ugh), and I doubt many of us grew up thinking conceptually about the thinks we wear. However, in my exposure to the fine arts, I've moved on to more aethetically-oriented sense of looking at things, and I've developed this odd, personal philosophy on what I wear and why I wear it.
Put simply, I can't recall wearing Carol Christian Poell in middle school.