It’s 1636 in the Netherlands, the birds chirp and chamber over the sun, your bobbin lace is looking quite pristine today. Alas, your man failed to present you with a rich bouquet of Tulips today and suddenly the sky grays, the day is ruined. Tulips were prized as a symbol of wealth and status among 17th century Hollanders. Their rich, saturated petals caused a brief period of economic panic when the tulip market crashed. Now, we refer to this event as the Dutch Tulip Mania or Tulpenmanie.
Was the 1636 tulip a modern day equivalent to, let’s say, the Birkin? Not equivocally, in fact, tulip mania was a short lived paradox, one that cost many their entire life savings. Nonetheless, it’s indicative of a repeated pattern of human behavior. Scholars use tulip mania as a primitive example of the dangers of speculative investing, which refers to an investment associated with high risk under the presumption of high returns. You’ve heard of this before: the Dot Com Bubble, the Crypto Craze, the whole idea of NFTs.
Speculative investing is not solely interpreted within an economic context, the term can be analyzed on a social and cultural level as well. We have become a society hell-bent on categorizing ourselves into archetypes headed by representations of material or worldly commodities.
The impression of yourself you present to the physical world, the corporal things that you attach to your body (clothes, jewelry, accessories, hair styles), even the words and framework by which you formulate them into sentences, are all integral parts of a larger social connotation that you curate yourself for. I hate to break it to you, but none of us are ever truly unique
The ever increasing pace of the world has exacerbated the issue. It seems we have boiled each other down to fit within a series of checkboxes — with each high-value, trendy or outwardly desirable possession earning you a big green checkmark. For example, let’s take a look at the Chloé Paddington Bag. The early 2000s chunky handled, decadently detailed, lock-studded purse, has become sensationalized on the internet. A 2013 blog forum dedicated solely to hand bags, Purse Blogs, has a post detailing the resurgence of the bag in reference to its popularity in 2005, “Walking down Madison Avenue a couple of weeks ago, a friend and I saw a woman carrying a Paddington and got to talking about how the bag had aged in the almost-decade since its debut.” The blog reports.
2013, a decade since its debut and the bag was still doing numbers. The ripples created from this wave of resurgence, are just as apparent now in 2024, as they were in 2013, but with major differentiation. The internet told us that the bag was back, we followed blindly like sheep and now seemingly everybody’s got it. Searches for the vintage bag have shot up nearly 129% on the RealReal. Internet gurus were quick to contend the bag, very soon it belonged to a subset of internet archetypes surrounding the “shy, mysterious, yet fashionable and conventionally attractive, girl”.
Luxury fashion is to stand as a symbol nobility, a medal for the lavish. The Paddington however, adopted a whole different set of implications beyond the luxury realm. The Paddington, much like many of the current fashion trends, no longer serves as an ideogram of fashion, but rather a personified contrivance used to identify an “aesthetic” or status. In 2024, to have the Chloè Paddington bag, is to embody a set of principles constituting a persona that someone who may or may, but is likely not, into fashion would occupy.
Purse Blogs remarks, “Our conclusion was, resoundingly, not well. Everything about it – the enormous lock, the abundance of detailed trim, the proportion of the bag, the long handles, the lack of shoulder strap – feels very much of that time.” What are they referencing in their statement of the bag’s rendition, “of that time”. In the sense that the Paddington carries with it, the remnants of the all encompassing “glamor” or “unsightliness” of the 2000’s as it did in 2013, that portrayal has been resurrected, but not entirely for the better.
Social media, and the internet has sensationalized the bag. Now, down the rabbit hole it goes of fake tik-tok early 2000s’, grunge and indie sleaze. Forever to be forgotten as a genuine fashion allegory, reborn as a commodity that owning, indicates your belonging to a category or aestheticism.
The Dutch tulip is the tangible aspect of aristocracy —a desirable social standing that is decidedly not tangible for most 17th century Dutch people. The Chloè Paddington Bag is the tangible aspect of being a “cool girl”, a fashion aficionado, a beautiful and desirable woman — all things that are decidedly not tangible for most people today. The irony being that it’s simply become an accessible commodity to anyone with purchasing power. Owning a bag doesn’t make you anything — but it makes you appear to be x,y,z…. So shoppers keep swiping their cards.
A study conducted by the University of Surrey Guildford and the University of Sussex titled Materialistic Value Orientation and Wellbeing, delves into the wellbeing and habits of individuals with a strong materialistic value orientation (MVO), which is an individual who believes expensive material possessions will improve their wellbeing and social standing.
The study found, contrary to popular belief, “consumption itself is neither good nor bad for wellbeing”. Interestingly enough, “What matters is the motives driving the acquisition of a product and how people relate to the items they are buying”. Evidence found strong correlations between individuals with high materialistic value orientation, and poor quality of life. People with high MVO were even linked to somatic symptoms of ill health and risk behaviors like drug and alcohol problems.
Now, does wanting to buy a purse make you a morally flawed person who may have an alcohol or drug problem. Far from it. However, if buying and owning in excess won’t differentiate you, why do we need to try so hard to differentiate at all? Erifili Gounari, Founder and CEO of a global social media agency, writer, and public speaker, expands upon these notions in her substack blog post titled, “The Era of Categorizing Ourselves”. She stumbles across a line in a book called, The Trial, by Franz Kafka, where he writes, “I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creator rather than an actual person”.
How do we find differentiation, and stray away from the hazards of consumption and social media sensations? The question feels nonviable when we have no choice but to immerse ourselves in the online world and conform at times to assimilate with others. Nonetheless, there remains a silver lining when we look beyond the screens and inwards instead.
With a passion for documenting the most mundane to the absolute hysterical, Emily is a writer in the New York City area as well as the senior culture editor of the Fashion Institute of Technology’s magazine, Blush. Her work spans across the political, cultural, social, and literary spheres. You could find her work in the Taborian but you can find her in Central Park 103rd st, with a guava juice and an Anaïs Nin erotica.
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