Also, my head’s about to explode from the sociological perspective on quality and branding and marketing because…

Agh… okay, so there’s research (U of Arizona’s trash project being some long term) that shows wealthy people buy and repair and repair and repair goods until they are dead. People from lower to middle income demographics buy and discard when an item breaks because it’s not worth repairing cheap goods.

The idea of having one really good thing (shoes, lamp, jacket, whatever) only works if you have the resources to save up and buy later. But, you know, if your kid needs a jacket THIS season because they grew three sizes over the summer… you have to buy. Or, if you’re not educated through direct instruction or by example from your context on how to manage to buy really good stuff that will last, you do what you know.

So… throw into that mix the research that shows by and large middle class Americans are spending about 17% less discretionary money than we were in 1970 (see Elizabeth Warren on bankruptcy in America- we get into bad debt for homes in good school districts), and it suggests we’re not actually wasting huge amounts of money on stuff we don’t need at all, just stuff we kind of pretty much need and can’t afford. (Shirts wear out even when they don’t have polo ponies on them.) And we know well enough that you have spend some money on nice-enough stuff because employers and peers and so on notice how commodities mark class, and it’s not helpful to look really cheaply dressed.

And on top of THAT marketers are jacking up prices on low-quality, high-visibility items we buy (we need shirts, after all) and… it’s kind of upsetting how much the system is designed to make middle and low brow types pay and pay and pay, and then play on aspirational desires so we pay some more.

This doesn’t make me wonder at the aspirational classes. It makes me mad at late stage capitalism and the people who profit from it.

Late stage capitalism

OK, fantasy aside, there are status seekers and secret handshakes in every venue from the Ivy League to cowboys to Goth. Discussing what those status items are for any group doesn’t mean we approve, just that they exist – and isn’t that interesting from a sociological perspective?

When I was in my 20′s I had a pair of red patent leather stilettos from PayLess that made me feel like a rock star and got me into all the best clubs. They cost $18 but the lines and the proportion were perfect for me. They LOOKED expensive and lasted forever. They were quality shoes.

But I don’t see what is wrong with being able to recognize and have a conversation about the differences between a well made item (whatever the cost and logo or absence of a logo) and a shoddily made item (again, whatever the cost and logo or absence of logo). And I don’t think it’s snobbery to acknowledge that the designers and manufacturers themselves create A and B lines for different socioeconomic status groups. That’s the conversation I see and enjoy on this thread – quality vs crap – regardless of the label. It makes me sad if we can’t hold that discussion without being labeled as elitist.

That being said, I would like my robot butler to look like William Powell….

Here’s the problem I have: is it really a secret handshake if the *New York Times* (mainstream-o-rama) is castigating logos?

At some point if the luxury conversation continues the way it feels like it’s going to me, we’ll be listening to people say redonkulus things like “you can only see real luxury via special eye implants we of multi-billion dollar trusts are given at birth which allows us to truly savor *quality* items like the milk of a one-armed, edamame-fed Tibetan Blood Squirrel handmilked in June by my robot butler who is an exact replica of Cary Grant**.” And yeah, it’s kind of too bad that this would sprout an industry of knockoff implants that don’t work very well and robots that look more like Brad Pitt when he’s gone off grooming than Cary Grant, and still another industry of robot butlers that look more like Ed Asner than Brad Pitt even, but I have trouble believing the latter types of status-seeking are any more pathetic than the first. See: the Paris Hilton story, where money and luxury weren’t satisfying enough: she needed fame, too, and spawned many celebutantes in her platinum blonde wake. Aspiring indeed.

I actually know person who worked as a stripper. A lovely woman.

One of the things I like about Plumcake’s advice is that if she finds a product she likes she passes it along–regardless of whether it’s super-expensive or not. DuWop lipgloss–awesome, affordable, etc. right along with shoes that make you swoon with the price. That’s as it should be.

**Nobody steal this idea as I am warming to it.

“Ironic” apparel and accessories (i.e. indie Chanel supermarket bags) are often the most pretentious and obnoxious of them all.

On the other hand, I do love a lot of the humour of Moschino. (“I am large I contain multitudes”)

Irony is overdone? Big words, coming from someone called “tartandtreacly”. But at least we can agree that stripper nails are overdone.

Irony itself is overdone.