Inconspicuous Consumption

This past Thursday, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Pia Sarkar took us comparison shopping for women's black T-shirts. A black tee that costs $7.90 at H&M and costs $14.50 (two for $20) at Gap. Go to the Armani section of Bloomingdales, however, and a woman's black tee costs $275.

There are subtle differences: the shirt at H&M is cotton with a bit of spandex woven in; the Gap tee is 100% cotton; and the Armani tee is 70% nylon, 25% polyester, and 5% Elastane. The Armani shirt is also "superior in cut and finish." Is that alleged superiority really worth more than $265?

Unlike much of branded designer clothing, the brand on an unadorned black T-shirt is invisible to everyone except the person buying and wearing it. The value of the brand is invisible. Why, then, would anyone buy it?

Milton Pedraza has an idea why. He's the chief executive of the Luxury Institute, "a research company that focuses on the top 10 percent of the country's wealth." Says Pedraza, "It may be incredibly wasteful to some people, but it makes you feel powerful. It makes you feel wealth. You're paying for that intrinsic value."

(I do not think "intrinsic value" means what he thinks it means.)

To be sure, even Pedraza notes that when times get tight, "[t]here are some things you're going to compromise and some things you aren't, and in my mind the black T-shirt is the first to go."

In essence, Pedraza is telling us that people with sufficient access to money will buy $275 T-shirts because they can. It's the same impulse that leads someone to light a cigar with a hundred-dollar bill.

I wonder, though. Nobody is going to Bloomingdales just to buy a T-shirt. They may well be bedazzled by the Armani brand, but it seems to me that a more likely scenario is that the tee is intended to complete ensembles the shoppers are buying. It isn't that the shoppers value the tee that much; but rather that the $275 is buried in the overall cost of whatever ensembles. The shoppers simply don't notice that they are paying that much for the T-shirt until perhaps they get home and examine the receipt. If they ever examine the receipt, that is.

A $275 T-shirt makes me think of the $300 that defense contractors are reputed to bill the government for hammers.

It also makes me wonder what is going on in the minds of the people at the highest levels of wealth in American society. Could it be that they are as disconnected from reality and reason as the people they have hired to run this country?