Good Taste is Free. Insecurity is Expensive.
Why a $20,000 watch says a lot more about your anxiety than it does about your taste.
When you buy a watch that costs more than most folks spend on a car, you tell yourself you’re making an expression of taste. You appreciate the finer things in life; you’re a man with an exquisite palate.
And sometimes, and for some people, that’s probably the case. I’m not one of them - but I accept they’re out there.
I think if we’re actually honest with ourselves, most of the luxury goods we buy are actually a payment to silence an undercurrent of doubt about whether or not we’re good enough. They’re a tax on our insecurity, and a sign of our need for external validation because we’ve never achieved internal validation on our own.
The logo obsession
A genuinely well-made wallet from an unbranded leather workshop - or an actual artisan at a craft fair - might cost eighty bucks, and last for twenty years. The same quality of leather, with the same stitching, stamped with the right letters, costs eight hundred. You’re not paying for better leather, and you’re not paying for longevity either; you’re paying for letters that do one thing and one thing alone - they tell other people something about you.
When a product’s value lies mostly in its visibility to others, it stops being about the object and becomes about an audience. A handbag isn’t more functional because it’s splashed with a logo in a dreadful repeating pattern. The watch doesn’t tell the time better. You’ve purchased a signal, and signals are only actually worth sending if you give a shit about them being read. Folks who are confident and comfortable with themselves don’t actually need to announce their status with a series of brands, any more than someone who is genuinely funny needs to announce that it’s time to laugh at their jokes...
The most expensive logos are, broadly, the loudest, and the loudest are usually bought by people who are still climbing rather than by people who have actually arrived. There’s a reason old money is famously shabby or hard to grok; when your position is secure, you don’t need to advertise it as such.
Taste is an alibi
Taste is a respectable cover story for a purchase driven by something far less sophisticated and a good deal more vulnerable. Nobody says “I’m afraid of looking ordinary;” we say “I have an eye for quality.” It’s a scam, a con, and a lie, but we perpetuate it all the same. We spend because we have something to prove.
But if someone questions why you spent a small fortune on a minimalist grey sweater, you can always retreat into the unassailable fortress of personal preference. Who can argue with your particular proclivity for cashmere?
I can’t help but notice how often “taste” seems to conveniently align with whatever happens to be both expensive and recognizable. Real taste is idiosyncratic, and it varies in price. It can be a restaurant that costs a grand a head, or it can be a Michelin-star-awarded noodle shop favored by Barack Obama and Anthony Bourdain. If taste is real, it’s unbounded by cost - in both directions. Manufactured taste tends to march in lockstep with price tags and trends - which is how you end up with millions of people independently developing a refined appreciation for the exact same oversaturated monogram...
Would you still want the thing if no one would ever see it? Are you buying this for the experience of using it, or for the experience of being seen with it?
Not all luxury is a lie
Functional luxury serves you when nobody is looking; status luxury exists entirely for an audience. A $1,000 knife that makes cooking alone in your kitchen an absolute joy is a pure expression of personal taste; but a $20,000 watch you keep flashing at the dinner table is an expression of your need to impress and project.
The luxury tax is a steadily increasing tariff on a feeling you never fully appreciate because status is relative and the goalposts keep moving. No amount of spending ever actually resolves your underlying anxiety. As soon as you buy it, that watch you strived for becomes your baseline, and there’s always a more expensive model.
The luxury goods market stays profitable because they’re not actually selling objects - and they know it. They’re selling temporary relief from a fear they helped create in the first place. Every campaign is designed to make you feel like you need to be more, and do more, and only their exclusively boxed-up piece of landfill will achieve it. And if you’re fool enough to believe their marketing, you’ll never be enough for yourself.
The reverse is equally true. There’s nothing actually noble about poverty or discomfort, and deliberately and loudly performing frugality is a status game too.
The better path is to figure out what you actually like and want, regardless of who’s watching, stick with it, and learn to enjoy it. It doesn’t matter if you enjoy bacon double cheeseburgers more than five-star dinners, or Vans sneakers more than Louis Vuitton. What matters is that you do, actually, enjoy them.
The man who knows what he likes doesn’t need a logo, and he isn’t threatened by the driveway next door; he can buy an eighty-dollar wallet, or even a $50 Belroy without feeling like he’s settled for second best.
The irony is that good taste is entirely free, and it always has been. It just takes the confidence to know that your worth isn’t tied to your wallet; that you were enough before you bought the luxury goods, and you’re enough without them.