New Suite: How Status Things Have Changed (in fact, not)
Text: Daria Kosareva
"How is this possible? She's not even leather!" - My friend and I are fascinated by the view of a beaded handbag made from flax brand THE ROW, sold in one of the Russian online stores for 410,500 rubles. Four hundred. Ten. Five hundred. On Net-A-Porter, these were sold for three and a half thousand pounds, but they are no longer available, they all sold out. Who could have liked this rather unnoticeable at first glance thing at the price of an airplane? This is not Hermès and not even one of the so-called it-bags, helpers of elitism, whose task is not to hold a laptop, two phones, a removable pair of sneakers and a sandwich, but to decorate a social outlet or instagram. That is, not to mention the cost, the social value of this thing is close to zero. But this is only at first glance.
With luxury goods, conditional gilding began to fly rapidly.
From luxury goods, whether clothing or a car, which for a long time served as unshakable markers of success and status, the conditional gilding began to fly around rapidly. Or rather, not quite so: over the past twenty or thirty years, social elevators have so rapidly raised completely different characters to the very top that the previous status attributes have ceased to function. If earlier, if you met a woman with Birkin on a narrow Parisian street, you would know for sure that she was either “old money” or Jane Birkin herself, who ran into the next boulanger for a fresh baguette, now this bag may turn out to be in wardrobes and a business woman from Wall Street, and MGIMO students, and one of the wives of the Arab oil tycoon.
Once such a bag or any other visual marker helped to accurately distinguish its from others: their owners were agreed to leave each other during the conversation, and the more so there was something to eloquently keep silent. But as the world became more global, the social class system was fragmented and rebuilt, and the elitist sentiments were recognized as increasingly outdated, the process of “recognition” .
A successful gallery owner from Brooklyn, a collector of contemporary art, an art college student and the creative director of Garage magazine, Shyla Monrok, may well now encounter one exhibition. But, as before, they are able to combine a highly specialized social marker, only a new sample: for example, a bag of a niche, a very expensive brand founded by former Hollywood twin actresses, released by a dozen copies and inspired by the work of American abstract art artist Helen Frankenthaler.
So, sign accessories are replaced by more significant ones: not comprehensible, but encrypted "for those who understand." The same "Birkin", of course, did not surrender their positions as a symbol of wealth. But accents have shifted mercilessly: many things that previously served as refined signs of a certain status can now signal only that their owners want to demonstrate their capital in the most visible way, taken in the past twenty years.
The rarity, inaccessibility and non-proliferation of things is now appreciated.
The result of all these perturbations today is the established system of fashion tribes, or, if in Russian, "fashion tribes", fashion micro-societies consisting of people not so much equal in material wealth as they have similar lifestyles and interests. This is still the same caste system, although it was built according to a new principle and with new rules. Best of all, it is illustrated by the gossip of modern gloss, where on one turn the girls are dressed in little-known designers' clothes from one foot to the other, and on the other is a reportage from a completely different flank with a conservative wing in Chanel.
What is interesting and significant in this process is that, firstly, today, new luxury items do not have to be luxurious by themselves, made from the most delicate cashmere, cast in the highest quality gold or turned out of the rarest marble . Far more valuable is the rarity, inaccessibility and non-proliferation of things, which, by the way, are still designed to demonstrate a financial situation, multiplied by an exceptionally demanding taste.
However, the social value of these things also does not remain unchanged. If you used to want you to have "no worse than others," then today any distinctive sign and symbol, including taste or wealth, has time to become morally obsolete in two days. The avant-garde and very expensive Céline jewelery is replaced by the modernist Sophie Buhai jewelery worth one and a half thousand dollars for a metal alloy necklace, but this is only for now. The system of consumption of symbols will not disappear (as well as bags for 410 thousand rubles) until the need for it disappears - but such a revolution, so far, by all appearances, is not yet foreseen.
Photo: Aizel, THE ROW, Chanel