High signaling costs only confer cachet if elites actually choose the item.

Evidence

Cachet and signaling costs are distinct qualities, but they’re connected. Signaling costs are required to create and maintain the exclusion required for cachet. This tends to happen naturally: elites prefer conventions with high signaling costs, which gives their costly choices cachet. The favorite fruit of aristocrats in the eighteenth century was the pineapple, not just because of its delicious taste but because reproducing a warm growing climate in Europe made each pineapple cost the modern equivalent of around $10,000. But signaling costs alone don’t create status symbols. A garbage truck is more expensive to purchase than most Lamborghinis, but no one considers a garbage truck to be a luxury automobile, because rich people don’t drive them. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 214

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The cost-pineapple example is a vivid ‘exclusion requires cost’ mechanism that would enrich the Grafting essay’s discussion of prestige signaling and scarcity.
• CANDY: Eighteenth-century aristocrats spent about ten thousand modern dollars per pineapple - fun light dinner fact.
• XREF: connects to: Status signals require costly barriers that elites can pay with ease — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 213