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Why do rich people abandon status symbols when everyone else can afford them, but love dressing like the working class?
Limousines, jacuzzis and waterbeds went from aspirational to embarrassing. Meanwhile, Carhartt, vintage metal T-shirts and distressed clothing became luxury fashion.
There’s a term for part of this: *prole drift*.
And it says something fascinating about status, class and the psychology of consumption.
When you’re poor, looking poor is a disadvantage. When you’re rich, looking poor is a personality.
#ProleDrift #StatusSymbols #ConsumerPsychology #Luxury #CulturalTrends
Transcript
Why do rich people stop liking things when poor people can afford them, but love dressing like poor people? Limousines were once the ultimate symbol of wealth and celebrity, but no, there's something you rent with 11 friends for a bachelorette party. Jacuzzis once conjured images of the Playboy Mansion, champagne, and beautiful women. Now it's an inflatable tub of bacterial soup in your neighbor's garden. Water better once the ultimate symbol of sexual liberation and bachelor pad sophistication. Now only one suggests you're either a swinger or you hadn't decorated since 1987. And bottle service, you're paying $1,200 for a $60 bottle of vodka no someone can carry it across a nightclub with sparklers. The moment everyone can imitate wealth, the symbols of wealth start losing their power. The German sociologist George Schimmel described this process over a century ago. The wealthy adopt something distinctive, everyone else imitates it, and eventually, the wealthy move on. But there's a fascinating contradiction. Sometimes, the wealthy actively imitate the working class. There's even a term for it, proldrift. Take Carhartt. Originally, they were making durable clothing for railroad workers, construction workers, and farmers. Now you'll find people wearing Carhartt rank expensive Brooklyn coffee shops whose closest encounter with manual labor was assembling an IKEA bookshelf, or the Kardashians wearing vintage Metallica Tier shirts. Music rooted in outsider subcultures become a fashion accessory for some of the most commercially successful celebrities on the planet. Counterculture becomes couture. Historically, upper class fashion was often designed to demonstrate that you didn't perform manual labor. Pale skin, delicate fabrics, impractical clothing, then a tan became a sign you could afford holidays. And no, wealthy people deliberately dress like manual laborers. We went from dressing to prove we didn't work to dressing like we work with our hands. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that taste itself is a form of social distinction. The same object can communicate completely different things depending on who's consuming it. A construction worker wearing Carhartt is dressed for work. A wealthy creative director wearing Carhartt is expressing an aesthetic. And I think that's the key. The wealthy can adopt the aesthetics of poverty without experiencing the constraints of poverty. Someone wearing worn out jeans because they can't afford new ones is a very different position from someone paying $1,500 for jeans deliberately destroyed by a designer. There's also the appeal of authenticity, workwear, underground music, and outsider subcultures carry cultural meaning that luxury brands struggle to manufacture. So they borrow it, and eventually, even rebellion becomes something you can buy. When ordinary people rent limousines, they're borrowing the aesthetics of wealth. Rank when wealthy people wear carhart or vintage metal shirts, they're borrowing the aesthetics of working class life and outside a culture. Both are attempts to borrow status from somewhere else. And that's the irony. When you're poor, looking poor is a disadvantage. When you're rich, looking poor is a personality.
