For the past decade, the move among rich Americans was to look rich without looking rich. Stealth wealth. Low-key logos. The "Succession" coat no one could quite place.
That whole vibe is dying off. The rich are getting loud again. Think gold leaf, big logos, and Met Gala excess.
Showing off your wealth on purpose is an old idea. Thorstein Veblen named it at the end of the 1800s. He called it "conspicuous consumption."
For the past 10 to 20 years, the rich went the other way. They dressed down. They picked decor that whispered.
Then it all flipped. Trend spotter Sean Monahan named "normcore" in the 2010s. He now calls the new era "boom boom." It means wealth that's loud and proud.
The shift is everywhere. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez at the Met Gala. Trump's gold-leafed Oval Office and his plans for a new White House ballroom. Wall Street's young guns posing for magazine spreads.
"Aspirational stopped coming from taste and started coming from the lowest common denominator," brand advisor Ana Andjelic told Business Insider. She added that having a lot of money doesn't always come with taste and status.
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Tastes shift. Luxury stocks tend to follow. For the past decade, money flowed to brands that sold restraint. Low-key logos. Quiet design. Stealth wealth on the shelf.
If the loud era really is here, the winners look different. More logos. More bling. Brands that lean into loud, maximalist style stand to gain.
Kate Wagner is an architecture critic who wrote the blog "McMansion Hell." She told Business Insider that Trump's taste has "always trended toward tacky." He "just openly embraces" the gold-leafed look, she said.
There's a feedback loop driving the change. TikTok and Instagram reward attention. So people copy what the apps reward. The result, Business Insider noted, can be a flatter, more generic kind of taste.
"The internet ate reality, and our reality is cartoonish and pixelated," Andjelic said.
The big question for investors: is this a fad or a real cycle? If the shift sticks, luxury earnings could start to split into two camps. The loud and the quiet. They would stop moving as one.
Watch how brands plan fall and holiday lines. Watch where the ad dollars go. TikTok-friendly bling, or the legacy stealth-wealth pitch.
Tastes move in cycles. The brands that read the cycle right tend to win the decade. The ones that miss it tend to fade fast.
A loud era can be a boon for some brands and a slow drag for others. Watch which group your stocks fall into. The next earnings cycle will tell us which ones bet right.
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