Taste standards fell to profit motives as cultural capital lost exclusionary power

Evidence

In the aftermath, Wintour quipped, “I think if we just remain deeply tasteful and just put deeply tasteful people on the cover, it would be a rather boring magazine!” Her comment implicitly labeled Kim and Kanye as distasteful, but it also conceded that taste had become an impediment to profit. This statement alone marked a turning point for the Condé Nast empire and signaled the twilight of cultural capital as an exclusionary concept. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 369

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the reader’s goal: this is concrete evidence for the death-of-the-sellout mechanism where status institutions capitulate to audience economics, diluting the distinction that once made them prestigious.