[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Those who had read Edith Wharton in college were findingher class-obsessed writings of considerable therapeutic value, put-ting their own plight in historical and fictional perspective.LilyBart, the heroine of The House of Mirth, was a particular delight.She had better taste and manners than her rich friends but preciouslittle of their money, much like these Upper East Side ex–Englishmajors holding onto their self-esteem for dear life.Some East Sid-ers, conceding defeat, fled to the wilds of the Upper West Side tobe around people more like themselves, the trek across CentralPark a diaspora as emotional as for any immigrant displaced fromhis or her sacred homeland.37Ruining It for the MillionairesMuch to the delight of less-than-super-rich East Siders and otherswho felt they had missed the high-tech boat, ‘‘the era of cyber-bucks’’ was about to end rather abruptly.Start-ups, out of venturecapital, entered the ‘‘nuclear winter’’ of the dot-com bust in theearly 2000s; the bursting bubble rained on the Wall Street parade.38On the surface, the end of the run seemed to have a dampeningeffect, the frenzy of the late 1990s now over.In fact, the wealthywere spending as much money as ever, but to some, the buyingspree seemed subtler than it had in recent and not so recent times.James W.Michaels and Victoria Murphy, for example, argued thatconsumption circa 2000 ‘‘equals anything seen during the gildedage of the late nineteenth century or the stock market boom of the1920s,’’ suggesting that the current rich were more ‘‘discreet.’’232R ICHDavid Brooks in Bobos in Paradise concurred, observing that, ‘‘It’s hard to find signs of.outright decadence.’’ Not so discreet, however, were the many new mansions that gave William RandolphHearst’s San Simeon a run for its money, nor the 300-foot alumi-num yacht Netscaper James Clark was building that made J.P.Morgan’s famed Coursair look like an old wreck.Foodies were still putting in not one but two or three Sub-Zero fridges, and thosewanting their backyard to be a work of art installed mammothfountains and giant boulders.39 Newly planted but fully grown trees remained a common sight on the grounds of new mega-houses,their owners too impatient to wait for saplings to grow.In 2000,Alamo Rent-A-Car tycoon Michael Egan moved no less than300,000 tons of dirt around to create a Frederick Law Olmstead-like vista of rolling hills, man-made streams, and bridges on his$25-million estate on Nantucket, dissatisfied with the landscapingput in by the original owner, George Vanderbilt.‘‘New money isfast transforming Nantucket from New England paradise intoMiami Beach north,’’ said one reporter from Forbes that year; a not-so-funny joke on the island was that ‘‘the billionaires are ruining itfor the millionaires.’’40The billionaires were also ruining it for the millionaires on theLeft Coast in 2000 by hogging all the best goods and services.Be-sides a major housing shortage that drove the prices for tract homesto half a million dollars, luxury cars, especially Beemers, were stillvirtually impossible to find in the Bay Area.Services catering to thewealthy were also a problem, with gardeners blowing off $10,000jobs for $100,000 ones.The e-rich were flying to L.A.to have theirtaxes done and flying in contractors from Canada to install theirhome theaters, the waiting lists for locals to do each ridiculous.41 If this was discreet, it would be hard to imagine what constitutedblatant consumption.With the possible exception of how the wealthy treated theirpets, no aspect of consumer culture was more over the top at theturn of the millennium than that revolving around kids.For chil-dren of some of the American rich, it seemed, being born with aWHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? 1995–233silver spoon in their mouths wasn’t quite enough.Kate Spade, Ver-sace, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, and Gucci all offered kid clothingand accessories—the latter an $865 diaper bag, $1,280 motorcyclesuit, and $4,250 mink coat sold at Life Size, part of Fred Segal’s, inSanta Monica.Cashmere booties, gloves, hats, and sweaters for lit-tle ones were available at Zitomer in New York, but these weremere trifles compared to what some celebrities were spending ontheir kids.Taherea O’Neal, Shaq’s four-year-old daughter, worethree-carat diamond earrings and played in a $6,000 dollhouse, aMini-Me version of the basketball star’s lifestyle.A Hot Wheelswasn’t quite luxe enough for two-year-old Christian Combs, so hisdad Sean (a.k.a.Puffy, for the moment) special-ordered a $5,000miniature Mercedes-Benz that looked and rode much like his oldman’s.When it came to having the finer things in life, it was clearthat the acorn didn’t fall very far from the wealthy tree.42 ‘‘In an era when it’s all about giving your child an ‘edge,’ ’’ wrote CynthiaHacinli for Washingtonian magazine in 2001, ‘‘no wonder pursuit of the best has become an Olympic sport.’’ Baby chic could also befound in the form-counts-as-much-as-function realm of strollers,with the Italian Peg Perego and Swedish Emmaljunga leading thestylistic pack.43Children weren’t the only ones getting an ‘‘edge’’ in this eraof you-can-have-it-if-you-want-it consumerism.In more and morearenas of life, privacy and exclusivity rapidly defined how thewealthy were getting an edge; their willingness to pay whatever ittook to distance themselves from the public was powerful.For theclothes-obsessed, the fashion concierge replaced the between-the-wars dressmaker, postwar couturier, and personal shopper of the1980s, thus allowing that woman on the go to forgo the dreadfulshopping experience entirely.Boutiques, department stores, andeven designers were hiring fashion concierges to pick out clothesthey knew their clients would like and sending them (sometimesalong with themselves) to these lucky women, most of them social-ites or busy execs.Barneys had a concierge, of course, as did Berg-dorfs, Neiman Marcus, Prada, and Gucci.Anyone who could afford234R ICHsuch a service—often running into hundreds of thousands of dollarsa year—was, essentially, being treated like a celebrity, cold cash nowevery bit as valuable as fame as social currency.Concierges for fash-ionistas were part of a growing trend—anytime, anywhere service forjust about anything—for the wealthy, something that would growinto a key signifier of the American rich over the next decade.44The economic slowdown in 2001, made even worse by 9/11, didlittle to impact the anytime, anywhere lifestyles of American wealthculture.Exclusivity was in fact fast becoming both demanded andexpected by the wealthy as a distinct VIP subculture emerged inthe early 2000s.Those without ‘‘juice’’ didn’t have a prayer of get-ting into velvet rope clubs like the Candle Room in Dallas, CasaCasuarina in Miami, and Frederick’s in New York—the result thosewith VIP privileges wanted [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Those who had read Edith Wharton in college were findingher class-obsessed writings of considerable therapeutic value, put-ting their own plight in historical and fictional perspective.LilyBart, the heroine of The House of Mirth, was a particular delight.She had better taste and manners than her rich friends but preciouslittle of their money, much like these Upper East Side ex–Englishmajors holding onto their self-esteem for dear life.Some East Sid-ers, conceding defeat, fled to the wilds of the Upper West Side tobe around people more like themselves, the trek across CentralPark a diaspora as emotional as for any immigrant displaced fromhis or her sacred homeland.37Ruining It for the MillionairesMuch to the delight of less-than-super-rich East Siders and otherswho felt they had missed the high-tech boat, ‘‘the era of cyber-bucks’’ was about to end rather abruptly.Start-ups, out of venturecapital, entered the ‘‘nuclear winter’’ of the dot-com bust in theearly 2000s; the bursting bubble rained on the Wall Street parade.38On the surface, the end of the run seemed to have a dampeningeffect, the frenzy of the late 1990s now over.In fact, the wealthywere spending as much money as ever, but to some, the buyingspree seemed subtler than it had in recent and not so recent times.James W.Michaels and Victoria Murphy, for example, argued thatconsumption circa 2000 ‘‘equals anything seen during the gildedage of the late nineteenth century or the stock market boom of the1920s,’’ suggesting that the current rich were more ‘‘discreet.’’232R ICHDavid Brooks in Bobos in Paradise concurred, observing that, ‘‘It’s hard to find signs of.outright decadence.’’ Not so discreet, however, were the many new mansions that gave William RandolphHearst’s San Simeon a run for its money, nor the 300-foot alumi-num yacht Netscaper James Clark was building that made J.P.Morgan’s famed Coursair look like an old wreck.Foodies were still putting in not one but two or three Sub-Zero fridges, and thosewanting their backyard to be a work of art installed mammothfountains and giant boulders.39 Newly planted but fully grown trees remained a common sight on the grounds of new mega-houses,their owners too impatient to wait for saplings to grow.In 2000,Alamo Rent-A-Car tycoon Michael Egan moved no less than300,000 tons of dirt around to create a Frederick Law Olmstead-like vista of rolling hills, man-made streams, and bridges on his$25-million estate on Nantucket, dissatisfied with the landscapingput in by the original owner, George Vanderbilt.‘‘New money isfast transforming Nantucket from New England paradise intoMiami Beach north,’’ said one reporter from Forbes that year; a not-so-funny joke on the island was that ‘‘the billionaires are ruining itfor the millionaires.’’40The billionaires were also ruining it for the millionaires on theLeft Coast in 2000 by hogging all the best goods and services.Be-sides a major housing shortage that drove the prices for tract homesto half a million dollars, luxury cars, especially Beemers, were stillvirtually impossible to find in the Bay Area.Services catering to thewealthy were also a problem, with gardeners blowing off $10,000jobs for $100,000 ones.The e-rich were flying to L.A.to have theirtaxes done and flying in contractors from Canada to install theirhome theaters, the waiting lists for locals to do each ridiculous.41 If this was discreet, it would be hard to imagine what constitutedblatant consumption.With the possible exception of how the wealthy treated theirpets, no aspect of consumer culture was more over the top at theturn of the millennium than that revolving around kids.For chil-dren of some of the American rich, it seemed, being born with aWHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? 1995–233silver spoon in their mouths wasn’t quite enough.Kate Spade, Ver-sace, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, and Gucci all offered kid clothingand accessories—the latter an $865 diaper bag, $1,280 motorcyclesuit, and $4,250 mink coat sold at Life Size, part of Fred Segal’s, inSanta Monica.Cashmere booties, gloves, hats, and sweaters for lit-tle ones were available at Zitomer in New York, but these weremere trifles compared to what some celebrities were spending ontheir kids.Taherea O’Neal, Shaq’s four-year-old daughter, worethree-carat diamond earrings and played in a $6,000 dollhouse, aMini-Me version of the basketball star’s lifestyle.A Hot Wheelswasn’t quite luxe enough for two-year-old Christian Combs, so hisdad Sean (a.k.a.Puffy, for the moment) special-ordered a $5,000miniature Mercedes-Benz that looked and rode much like his oldman’s.When it came to having the finer things in life, it was clearthat the acorn didn’t fall very far from the wealthy tree.42 ‘‘In an era when it’s all about giving your child an ‘edge,’ ’’ wrote CynthiaHacinli for Washingtonian magazine in 2001, ‘‘no wonder pursuit of the best has become an Olympic sport.’’ Baby chic could also befound in the form-counts-as-much-as-function realm of strollers,with the Italian Peg Perego and Swedish Emmaljunga leading thestylistic pack.43Children weren’t the only ones getting an ‘‘edge’’ in this eraof you-can-have-it-if-you-want-it consumerism.In more and morearenas of life, privacy and exclusivity rapidly defined how thewealthy were getting an edge; their willingness to pay whatever ittook to distance themselves from the public was powerful.For theclothes-obsessed, the fashion concierge replaced the between-the-wars dressmaker, postwar couturier, and personal shopper of the1980s, thus allowing that woman on the go to forgo the dreadfulshopping experience entirely.Boutiques, department stores, andeven designers were hiring fashion concierges to pick out clothesthey knew their clients would like and sending them (sometimesalong with themselves) to these lucky women, most of them social-ites or busy execs.Barneys had a concierge, of course, as did Berg-dorfs, Neiman Marcus, Prada, and Gucci.Anyone who could afford234R ICHsuch a service—often running into hundreds of thousands of dollarsa year—was, essentially, being treated like a celebrity, cold cash nowevery bit as valuable as fame as social currency.Concierges for fash-ionistas were part of a growing trend—anytime, anywhere service forjust about anything—for the wealthy, something that would growinto a key signifier of the American rich over the next decade.44The economic slowdown in 2001, made even worse by 9/11, didlittle to impact the anytime, anywhere lifestyles of American wealthculture.Exclusivity was in fact fast becoming both demanded andexpected by the wealthy as a distinct VIP subculture emerged inthe early 2000s.Those without ‘‘juice’’ didn’t have a prayer of get-ting into velvet rope clubs like the Candle Room in Dallas, CasaCasuarina in Miami, and Frederick’s in New York—the result thosewith VIP privileges wanted [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]