You know the one. The scene is a masterclass in social cruelty, so exquisitely uncomfortable you can't look away. It's Logan Roy's birthday party, and a hopeful outsider, Bridget, has brought a date and a gift. Her date, a cousin of the Roy family, is trying to network his way into the inner circle. Bridget's offering is her handbag: a large, instantly recognizable Burberry tote in the brand's signature check. It is, in her words, "ludicrously capacious."
Tom Wambsgans, the ultimate status-anxious court jester of the Roy clan, circles her like a shark. "What's even in there?" he sneers. "Flat shoes for the subway? Your lunch pail? I mean, Greg, it's monstrous. It's gargantuan. You could take it camping. You could slide it across the floor after a bank job."
In two minutes of television, a bag that costs thousands of dollars is rendered utterly worthless. Its very size, its famous logo, and its practicality are turned into signifiers of a lower class—markers of someone who doesn't belong. For millions of viewers, it was a clarifying moment. It was the public execution of the logo.
The Language of Quiet Luxury
The entire costume design of Succession was a dissertation on the art of "quiet luxury." The Roy family and their inner circle were almost never seen in logos. Their status wasn't broadcast; it was coded. Their power was communicated through the sublime tailoring of a Tom Ford suit, the impossible softness of a Brunello Cucinelli sweater, or the quiet perfection of a $600 Loro Piana baseball cap.
Stealth Wealth: The Roy family's clothes were a uniform of stealth wealth, a language spoken only by those in the know. If you knew, you knew. And if you had to ask, you definitely weren't in the club.
The Unspoken Rules
The "ludicrously capacious bag" scene simply gave voice to the unspoken rules of this new elite. It laid bare the snobbery that underpins the constant churn of trends. For two decades, luxury brands had sold a dream of democratic access. The logo-heavy "It bag" was the ticket to the party. Buy this, the marketing told us, and you can be one of us.
The problem, for the truly wealthy, is that too many people bought the ticket. When the logo becomes ubiquitous, it loses its power as a signal of elite status. The Burberry check, once a symbol of British heritage, became so popular that it was widely adopted and counterfeited, leading the brand to retreat from its signature pattern for years.
The Roys of the world, real and fictional, needed a new way to differentiate themselves. They needed to move the goalposts.
Moving the Goalposts
Quiet luxury is that new goalpost. It's a return to a more aristocratic form of signaling, where status is communicated not by what is on your clothes, but by the very nature of them—the cut, the fabric, the drape. It's a wealth that whispers rather than shouts.
The New Exclusivity: In that whisper is a new, more insidious form of exclusivity. It's a club with a dress code so subtle and expensive that most people don't even know it exists.
The Eternal Cycle
This shift isn't a new trend; it's a predictable turn in an eternal cycle. As I explore in my book, Conspicuous, luxury's magic is in a constant state of migration. When one form of signaling becomes too common, the elite class abandons it and adopts a new, more coded language to re-establish its distance from the mainstream.
The Succession scene didn't create this phenomenon; it simply dramatized it for a global audience. It was the moment the rest of the world realized the rules of the game had changed.
Looking in Our Own Closets
The scene made us feel for Bridget, but it also made us look in our own closets. It forced us to confront our own relationship with the logos we've bought and the messages we thought they were sending.
The Reality: It was a chilling reminder that in the world of luxury, the desire for exclusivity is the most powerful force of all. The moment everyone is in on the secret, it ceases to be one.
The Full Story
To understand the full story of this timeless cycle and the forces that are once again reshaping what we desire, read my book Conspicuous: How Modern Luxury Redefined Craft, Clout, and Culture.
From the designer handbag that defined a generation to the quiet luxury rebellion reshaping consumption today—discover the untold story of how we fell in love with luxury, and why we're falling out of love again.