My main shock from Obama’s birthday party is that these are all immensely rich people but the outfits are hideous. Were they pretending to be slumming, or something?
12 responses to “Fashion Sense”
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Reply to Fashion Sense
Wealthy people, at least in his country, seem to have no interest in anything that might be viewed as a status symbol. I once, in he early 1960s, was a house guest in the home of someone very wealthy. He drove an old battered VW Beetle.
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“Wealthy people … no interest in anything that might be viewed as a status symbol”
That’s the old money/new money divide.
Old money – no interest in displaying their wealth or having people notice them. They live in houses that are old, grand, usually tasteful and often a bit threadbare.
New Money!!!! – “Look at my new car!!! I got 8 of them!” Feel that wealth is pointless if you can’t show off. Live in spotless brand new palaces and throw out anything older than 30 seconds….
But at present in the US the old money esthetic is dead – as increasing social inequality and reduced social mobility have led to all out status whoring among the wealthy (because failing to publicly compete is a kind of social death).
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I went and looked at the pictures, just to know what y’all were talking about.
This isn’t a case of “I don’t need to display my wealth”. It’s people paying tremendous amounts of money to look ugly, which is different. I think Clarissa nailed it above: the outside reflects the inside.
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Obama keeps buying gigantic seaside properties. I wouldn’t say he’s one of those people who are not ostentatious about their wealth. Plus, the whole idea of a birthday party with 700 guests is quite ostentatious.
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“Obama keeps buying gigantic seaside properties”
But aren’t rising ocean levels going to destroy them all?
But yeah, he and Michelle are new money.
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In my defense, I didn’t seek them out. They are all over Twitter because people are stunned by the hypocrisy of this crowd.
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Maybe they were just being “trendy”. You know, the “style of the day”,
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In my experience, a lot of rich and wealthy people got rich through inheritance or corruption. Most are, essentially, lazy people with low standards. Keeping up with fashion is a lot of work unless it is something that someone is passionate about, or if they are young/have low self esteem.
So, in the case of the people I know, their lazy low standard behaviour continued on as they grew wealthier, meaning that they never stopped looking like bums, except at weddings etc. where their daughter or whatever forced them to look nice for photos.
Trophy wives are excluded from the above obviously.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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