Miranda Priestly: [Miranda and some assistants are deciding between two similar belts for an outfit. Andy snickers] Something funny?

Andy Sachs: No, no, nothing. Y'know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y'know, I'm still learning about all this stuff.

Miranda Priestly: This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

I remember that line.

Also.

"...All I know is that it was very bad when I was twenty-eight. Everything that was said to me I seemed to have heard before, and I could no longer listen. I could no longer sit in little bars near Grand Central and listen to someone complaining of his wife’s inability to cope with the help while he missed another train to Connecticut. I no longer had any interest in hearing about the advances other people had received from their publishers, about plays which were having second-act trouble in Philadelphia, or about people I would like very much if only I would come out and meet them. I had already met them, always. There were certain parts of the city which I had to avoid. I could not bear upper Madison Avenue on weekday mornings (this was a particularly inconvenient aversion, since I then lived just fifty or sixty feet east of Madison), because I would see women walking Yorkshire terriers and shopping at Gristede’s, and some Veblenesque gorge would rise in my throat. I could not go to Times Square in the afternoon, or to the New York Public Library for any reason whatsoever. One day I could not go into a Schrafft’s; the next it would be the Bonwit Teller." - Joan Didion, "goodbye to all that"

-- JessicaCohen - 06 Apr 2010

Jessica and Nona - your quotes reminded me of this quote from the last chapter of The Great Gatsby, especially "Miss This-or-that's":

One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-that’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: "Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?" and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.

-- DavidGoldin - 07 Apr 2010

I myself am no stranger to conspicuous consumption. I buy expensive cerulean handbags, go to Miss This-or-that parties, etc. Nonetheless, sometimes a new product or service comes out which just takes society's quest to create new "needs" too far, even for me. Many of you surely rolled your eyes at this a while ago, but I'm putting it here anyway(particularly because I was amazed to hear two old nurses talking about it on the subway this morning.) That's all.

-- KalliopeKefallinos - 10 Apr 2010

I agree with the comments, and I think that advertising and, to a lesser degree, television have developed exponentially by selling us things that we don't need and wouldn't want otherwise, but think we want or need because the attractive family, or actress or athlete on TV has one. And this all ties very logically to Veblen's arguments about our relationship to 'stuff.'

One potential flaw in the argument, though, is its failure to take into account other deeply ingrained human motivations - interests in security, comfort and beauty, for example - which might drive our social and economic development. A better house, car or piece of art isn't necessarily bought, unconsciously or otherwise, as a status symbol - for many rational purchasers, the society's valuation of the purchase has little or nothing to do with anything. A better car is selected simply because it is just that: better functioning. If today's leisure class (whatever that is, to me the term conjures up an image of wealthy housewives, which is itself an outdated concept)can be identified by their high levels of financial security (and the physical and structural security that implies), can we not reclassify economic evolution in security, not status terms?

-- AerinMiller

Has anyone seen Logorama? It's another artistic take on conspicuous consumption, focusing on the ever-presence of branding. It's a sixteen minute short -- I think it effectively confronts some of themes we've been discussing:

Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.