We’ve always loved to display our good fortune when we’re doing better than those around us. In ancient China, the colour yellow was restricted to royals. Ditto in ancient Rome, except there it was Tyrian purple. In medieval France, the desire to prove you were privileged enough to avoid physical work drove a fad for preposterous and impractical pointy men’s shoes. (This got so out of hand that the king at the time, Charles V of France, eventually passed a law banning their fabrication and use in Paris.) In the late 19th century, the novelty and scarcity of X-ray technology made it a status symbol for Victorians to take radiographs of their hands and hang them on the parlour walls. 

While tastes vary across cultures and eras, these status symbols tend to have something in common: they’re often stuff, tangible things you can buy, hold in your hand and then flaunt for the world to see. This is why expensive watches, fancy cars, gold chains and designer anything with a prominent logo have long been beacons of social status. 

Recently, however, status symbols seem to be disappearing—literally. The infamous Birkin, which once telegraphed the kind of purchasing capability that hit a certain spending amount at Hermès, doesn’t quite hold the same cachet in the world of the Wirkin by Walmart. The Walmart version is one of the most famous among a sea of dupes available for every other popular signifier of wealth, from Cartier Love bracelets to Chanel slingbacks and Bottega drop earrings. 

There’s a good chance your social media feed is filled with folks flaunting these status symbols, so now these items are starting to feel both accessible and ubiquitous—and therefore less desirable. 

That’s why the new status symbols are things that you can’t buy, per se, although you still need to be incredibly wealthy to afford them. Think: markers of inconspicuous consumption, like leisure time, self-expression and privacy. 

Silvia Bellezza has studied this change in real time. In a 2023 study of changing consumer preferences called Distance and Alternative Signals of Status: A Unifying Framework, the associate professor at Columbia Business School wrote about a discernible shift away from material items as markers of status, and created a framework that shows how the new status symbols are about “showing distance” from what has been a signifier of wealth and power.

For example, if owning a designer dress straight off the Paris runways used to be a status symbol, today you might be showing your mastery of the social hierarchy with something that’s the opposite of new, like a thirty-year-old jacket you found in a dark corner of a vintage shop after spending countless hours searching. And you might have once boasted about how many followers you have on Instagram, in an era when anyone with a ring light and a viral video can be internet famous, but now you’d brag about how you’ve turned your back on social media and use a Nokia flip phone.

“It boils down to the idea that status symbols need to be scarce. They need to be hard to get. They need to be costly,” says Bellezza. “A few decades ago, that used to be the case for traditional luxury goods. Now, that’s all started crumbling because of mass production.”

You used to have to fly to Milan to buy that coveted designer item made by highly skilled craftspeople, available only in one store. Companies now have ramped up production and make those same goods in such huge quantities that they often go on sale (a rarity decades ago), which is why you can find them in outlet malls or at garage sales for a fraction of the original price.

“The counterfeit manufacturers have also become much better, and they’re faster,” adds Bellezza. “Some of the best copycats… even the experts have a hard time distinguishing. This has contributed to the fact that these goods are more mainstream.” 

At the same time, she’s noticed a shift in cultural attitudes toward that kind of very conspicuous consumption. “Before, wearing luxury from head to toe was seen as aspirational,” she says. “Nowadays, there are many dark sides associated with that type of opulence and bragging about the brands that you have. It’s seen as not sustainable, it’s seen as superfluous.” 

Chenelle Montgomery, a content creator known on TikTok as The Millennial Trend Seeker, spends a lot of her time talking on the internet about shifting status symbols. In fact, she has produced a multi-part series—one instalment of which has over 1.6 million views—digging into what are now non-status symbols, like Goyard totes and Van Cleef Alhambra bracelets.

“Many of the cliché, old-money brands that used to be untouchable, like Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, even Gucci, just feel extremely played out to me. Each of those brands had a signature item—the clover jewellery, the Love bracelets, the Gucci belt—that got so ubiquitous it became almost passé,” Montgomery says. “And you couldn’t tell the authentic item from the cheap dupe, which devalued them in many peoples’ eyes. If an item isn’t special, why would you pay a premium for it?” 

That’s not to say the mainstream luxury market isn’t thriving or that high-status people are abandoning the pursuit of social cachet. They’re just finding different ways to do it. Although there’s been a significant slowdown in spending on luxury brands as consumers’ relationships with high-end goods change, there’s a stronger focus on luxury experiences.

“We are social animals, meaning that we’re in a group, and we want to signal how high we are in a group,” says Bellezza. 

To that end, as she hints above, status symbols must always have a cost. Sometimes it’s monetary. Increasingly, however, it’s money plus something else that’s scarce in our world: leisure, for example, or privacy. 

“Status symbols are inherently things that most people cannot have, so I believe the new status symbols will be more wellness and appearance focused,” agrees Montgomery. “One sign of great wealth is that you may have more control over how you spend your time, or your amount of time not spent working. Therefore, if you have the time to be well-rested, work out and spend time on self-improvement, that can show status.” 

This shift from “physical to immaterial” status signifiers, Bellezza adds, is also tied to the rise of social media. “Back in the day when we didn’t have a digital life, to show your neighbours you had stuff, they had to see you physically. It was easier to broadcast your physical property than your experiences,” she says. 

Now, in our online age, when social isolation is on the rise and many people see their friends IRL infrequently, the opposite is true. “Today, if I’m on holiday all the time, it takes me a second to display to everyone,” she says. 

Of course, not everyone is convinced that there’s anything novel in using leisure or self-expression as status symbols.  

“These are both key components of a classic Western world view that’s focused on the self and its independence and autonomy, and there’s quite a bit of research to suggest that people are socialized to hold this world view more so at the top than the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy,” says Kristin Laurin, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. 

But privacy—like making the deliberate choice not to post on social media, for example—is an interesting status symbol, she adds. “As the world gets more interconnected and surveilled, having privacy is more difficult and therefore less accessible to people who don’t have the resources, like time, money and energy, to carefully sidestep all the data that companies are constantly trying to extract from us.” 

Not that she thinks social media companies need to be too worried about some groups considering it the height of chic to eschew TikTok. 

“If privacy is becoming more coveted, that’s just a sign that they’ve successfully reset our expectations around how normal it is to have no privacy…privacy can only be coveted if it’s scarce, and thanks to the social media companies, that’s exactly what it is,” she says. “I guess [it’s] kind of the same thing for the workplace and capitalism. We expect so little in terms of space and time for leisure and that’s why having even just a little of it seems like such an enviable luxury.” 

Flashy logos are no longer doing it; the truly wealthy are now showcasing their status through less tangible, yet far more elusive, assets, like opting out of social media or having enough leisure time to relax with their favourite magazine. Even though traditional luxury is losing its exclusivity, the pursuit of social cachet is alive and well—it’s just looking a little different.  For more thought-provoking stories and exclusive content, subscribe to 3 magazine’s print and digital editions today!