When I was studying for my Masters in marketing, I became interested in hand-made British watches. These were more expensive than a Rolex but very few would recognize the brand or know how expensive the watch was. Marketing wisdom said that people wore a Rolex as ‘conspicuous consumption’: a way of showing other people how wealthy you are. (I came up with an award-winning theory about why people bought British watches. Ah, one of my proudest moments…)
Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption in 1899. He was born in Wisconsin in 1857 to Norwegian-American farming stock. His parents believed in education and sent all twelve of their children to school and college, including the girls. Veblen graduated from Yale at the height of the Gilded Age: a time of fabulous wealth for a small number of industrialists such as JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Rockerfeller and the Vanderbilts (see my previous blog).
In Veblen’s most famous book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, he described medieval kings providing huge feasts for honored subjects. Sometimes the situation was reversed with a nobleman hosting the king, providing near-ruinous banquets of excess food. What was the point of all this? Veblen thought it was a way of demonstrating wealth. By consuming food in this highly visible, or conspicuous, way, everyone knew where power lay.
He saw this behavior in his own time, such as the huge town houses in New York or the holiday homes in Long Island.
Photo: Matt H Wade, used under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike.
Veblen also describes conspicuous leisure, which I think is an even more interesting concept. It is a way of saying “I’m so wealthy, I don’t need to work; I can spend my days on expensive leisure activities.” In medieval times this might be stag hunting – an activity that took up lots of servants’ time, horses and equipment, all in pursuit of the head of a single animal.
In the late 19th century, conspicuous leisure might be playing polo. To take part in this leisure activity, a man needs horses, stable staff, time to practice a difficult sport, and then be available during the day to play. A perfect example of visible – conspicuous – leisure.
My novel Under A Gilded Sky is set at the beginning of the Gilded Age. The Van Bergens are loosely based on the Vanderbilts, who made their money running railroads. The family spend time at a regatta – sailing being an example of conspicuous leisure.
One of Veblen’s most surprising theories was about women’s dress. Up until the early 19th century, wealthy men and women used extravagant clothing to demonstrate their wealth. Clothing was often impractical; what better way to signify they did not need to do manual work? As wealthy men’s dress became more sober and practical in the 19th century, it became more important for the wife to show the family’s socio-economic standing by wearing clothing that said ‘I do not have to work’: corsets, long and voluminous skirts, heeled shoes, all of which were suitable for sitting in a parlour. And it wasn’t just the super-rich – the middle-class wanted to keep up with the Joneses.
Having grown up on a farm, Veblen knew that even on successful farms, the women had to work hard with livestock and agriculture. But there was a pretence that they didn’t need to work – otherwise the family would lose face. Surely, the farmer was rich enough for his wife to sit at home? This meant that, rather than ditching tight undergarments, or choosing practical pants instead of wide skirts and petticoats, women would battle on in their inappropriate clothing.
My heroine Ginny wears men’s clothing when it is just her and sister Mary Lou at the farm. But when hired farmhands come to help brand the cattle, she reverts to wearing a skirt.
As a side thought – is this what’s going on with women wearing vertiginous heels for the office? They are impractical, painful and slow women down. Are they a vestige of conspicuous leisure?
Conspicuous wealth and conspicuous leisure are with us today. The link to Elon Musk and other super-rich men is clear (yes, it does still seem to be men who have the wealth). The conspicuous consumption of choice for today’s billionaires is space travel. Whether it’s Jeff Bezos providing space tourism, or Elon Musk’s exploding rockets, could there be anything more visible, more conspicuous, than rockets being fired into the atmosphere? Unlike space exploration aimed at discovering new frontiers or understanding the origins of our planet, space tourism is surely the ultimate in conspicuous leisure.
