By: Dami Bankole

If you open social media and search fashion, it’s only a matter of minutes before you’re bombarded with uncanny mannequins saying how bare nails, slicked back hair, kitten heels, subtle jewelry, and clothes with no logos are chic. They’ll tell you how tasteful the people who shop at Brunello Cucinelli and Loro Piana are and how elegant a Birkin is, as opposed to the tacky monogrammed Dior Book Tote or the ludicrously capacious Burberry bag. But what does it mean to be tasteful, and who decides that? What makes some displays of wealth better than others? 

If we zoom out 300 years to the Rococo era, the height of elegance was overt, conspicuous excess. The robe à la française, undoubtedly the most popular women’s garment of 18th-century Europe, is a fantastic example. Worn over a bodice and a wide hoop skirt, and decorated with a stomacher, the robe à la française existed to showcase the wearer’s wealth. The sheer size of the garment meant it required a large amount of fabric. It wasn’t enough for the gown to be covered by fabric, though. It needed to be adorned with the finest, most expensive materials the wearer could afford. These gowns often had expensive silks, ruffles, flowers, bows, metallic threads, and intricate patterns sewn in. Although some might consider the robe à la français gaudy, 18th-century noblewomen adored it, and it was their opinion that ultimately mattered. Taste is and has always been defined by what the wealthiest members of society like. Not everyone could afford a robe à la française, and that was the appeal. Owning one was automatically a signal of status. To have taste was to flaunt your wealth to an obnoxious degree, something that could not be more different from the “if you know, you know” era that we’re in now. 

Today, our clothing is not only cheaper, but also more standardized between those of different class standings. Thanks to the advent of ready-to-wear and machine-made clothing, billionaires and struggling students can dress in virtually the same fashion, and wealthy people have found new ways to differentiate themselves. For many years, this was through luxury-branded clothing, as it was still relatively inaccessible to most people. Many of the earliest luxury logos, like the Louis Vuitton LV, the Chanel double C, and the Hermes name, were initially created to fight against counterfeiting and delight in intricate craftsmanship. The 1980s initiated the trend of logos being fashion in their own right, in a cultural wave we know as “logomania”. 

The 80s saw unprecedented financial growth, globalism, and social change. Society was drowning in the AIDS crisis, Reaganomics, the anti-Apartheid movement, MTV, and young white yuppies. The whole decade was characterized by the “greed is good” mentality, which was reflected in the clothing. People wanted to show their wealth, and in a time of increasingly casual day-to-day wear, luxury logos offered an easy way to do so. Throughout the decade, and into the 90s and 2000s, logomania became increasingly associated with black Americans, with Dapper Dan and other influential figures, like Aaliyah and Missy Elliot, becoming faces of the subculture. What followed were cultural movements such as McBling, which became the must-have, hyper-glam aesthetic that dominated the luxury industry until 2008. Bedazzled Juicy Couture tracksuits, Paris Hilton, and Louis Vuitton multicolor handbags – bright, in your face, and a little tacky – became key indicators of style.

The Rococo era, logomania, and McBling all have a few things in common: they took over the fashion industry by riding the backs of incredibly successful economies, and died with the economic downturn that followed. Across the Rococo era, the 1980s, and the early-2000s, periods of economic boom – from European trade expansion to Reagan-era growth to the housing surge of 2003 – gave rise to aesthetics of extravagance that ultimately collapsed with their respective downturns, revealing that beyond economics, aspiration is the thread that binds these moments. To have a robe à la français, a tracksuit decked out in Louis Vuitton monogram, or a fur-trimmed Balenciaga City Bag showed not only that you could afford these pieces, but they you were cultured enough to understand the societal value they had beyond aesthetics. Once the economy suffers and it no longer becomes aspirational to flaunt your wealth in such obvious ways, these looks are shunned in favor of more raw, pared-down styles. Rococo was traded for neoclassicism, logomania for streetwear, and McBling for Indie Sleeze. 

In every period, luxury fashion has relied on creating distance between those who can afford to participate and those who can’t. When wealth expands, the elite find new ways to make their status visible; when it contracts, they redefine taste to keep others out. Today, in a post-pandemic world of economic uncertainty that we never quite got over, how we define taste is more contentious than ever. We idolize those who can afford to spend hundreds of thousands on clothes, yet condemn others who perform their wealth too loudly. We celebrate quiet luxury precisely because it excludes most people, its refinement built on invisibility. We love the idea of clothing so expensive and bespoke that the majority doesn’t even know about it, but hate the idea of people openly spending our rent on a shirt. Throughout history, fashion has always relied on shifting signals of wealth to define taste. It’s sometimes loud and sometimes quiet, but its power has always depended on exclusion. 

Sources: 

A&E Television Networks. (2025, May 28). 1980s: Fashion, movies & politics. History.com. https://www.history.com/articles/1980s

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Fashion Institute of Technology. (2017, December 27). Robe à la française. Fashion History Timeline. https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/robe-a-la-francaise/

Georis, A. (2024, October 11). The evolution of fashion logos: From discreet to iconic. nss magazine. https://www.nssmag.com/en/fashion/38421/the-history-iconic-fashion-logos-louis-vuitton-chanel-saint-laurent-versace-fendi

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