Earlier this year I was out in Hong Kong with two Englishwomen. We saw a handbag in a shop window. The women were moderately tempted. It was priced in Hong Kong dollars. “What’s that in pounds?” we wondered. Eventually we worked it out: £12,000. We staggered off, amazed. Later I asked an executive in luxury goods who would buy that handbag. “A secretary,” she replied.
That handbag is a key artefact in our current status game. Nobody has understood better than the luxury goods industry how status works today.
Humans seek status, and usually deny they’re seeking it. The best route to status used to be high birth. You were born posh, and then marinaded in posh codes from the nursery. Nancy Mitford, in her essay “The English Aristocracy”, divulged some upper-class speech rules. Crucially, if the topic arose, you had to say “lavatory paper” and not “toilet paper”. “Lavatory paper” was upper-class (or “U”, in Mitford’s code) while “toilet paper” was “non-U”. However, Mitford doubted that “non-U” people could ever become “U”.