As New York magazine, (who have their own tote) enthused, “Totes communicate in a more nuanced language”. They’re a sign that you’re a tad more discerning and smarter than your average Gucci belt-wearing, Chanel bag -slinging pleb.
Totes might be seen as an extension of book bragging, a trend that took off on Instagram, where (mostly) young women would display the novels of Joan Didion and Sally Rooney next to a vase of short-stemmed chrysanthemums – a perfect vignette of performative intellectual style. That is, until it became common.
The notion of “discreet wealth” is a desire for the uncommon; a contrast to how the elite used to spend their money. No longer content to blow cash on status symbols like sports cars and Louis Vuitton bags, which have now become far too ubiquitous, the rich are, according to business analysts, “investing significantly more in education, retirement, and health – all of which are immaterial, yet cost many times more than any handbag a middle-income consumer might buy.”
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The super-rich, snooty college girls of Foxtel’s White Lotus, took this discreet wealth performance to a new level, sitting by the hotel pool, showing off their education with their books, The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud and The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon propped up in front of them. When a fellow guest asks if they’re really reading their cerebral tomes, their caustic response, “We have a book stylist pick out our books” speaks to their own self-awareness around the trend. But their sarcastic reply was an admission, too, that books, (and other symbols of intellectual curiosity) are, for a certain socially-aware, hip class of clever creatives, the new handbags.
And, we couldn’t help but wonder, if there’s anything really discreet about that.
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