Quiet luxury signals elite status through banal expensive clothing

Evidence

As will be discussed later, Star’s disavowal of designer wear is not a disavowal of wealth or excess but likely a move up the ladder of wealth. Star’s turn to heritage brands and a “simpler” style speaks to the rising trend of “quiet luxury,” in which the truly elite and wealthy embrace more banal and more expensive clothes and accessories. This “trend” has roots in the practices of nineteenth-century American industrialists, as well as seventeenth-century French nobility. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 651

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the reader’s prior attention to sumptuary display and dress as class signaling from ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ - the same inversion logic where elite restraint reads as higher rank. — connects to: Wealth judgments from clothing occur within 130 milliseconds. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 196; Elites flaunt status by absorbing the cost of norm-breaking disapproval. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 217; Scarcity of access and time, not money alone, make luxury goods credible signals — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 220
• DEFINE: Defines ‘quiet luxury’ as a contemporary status practice with deep historical roots.