I won’t say who because I didn’t check on the publishing front when we were chatting, but by their own empirical evidence, a Lemaire bomber jacket won’t get you into Berghain but a Bottega (unbranded, unmarked) one will.

The bind experienced by the “nouveau riche.” Although these upwardly mobile individuals may have the economic capital to adopt elite culture, they continually reveal their social origins by the “mistakes” they make in their execution of taste, or the insecurity of their conduct

If we study traditional status mechanisms in society, just generally, it’s always the case that someone is always going to create something even more scarce to differentiate.

By their very nature, brands trade in status: they promise us to be younger, more attractive, smarter, happier, more accomplished, richer. For the longest time, brands operated according to Veblen logic that status is linked to wealth and desirability to price. Now we all have the opportunity to flip the script and link worth and values to our busi

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