What do we mean when we talk about ‘status’?

‘Status’ describes an individual’s position in the social hierarchy, and since a higher position comes with more beneficial treatment from others, there is a fundamental human desire for higher status – although we’re very careful to seek higher status in ways that don’t risk our current position.

We tend to talk about status as if it’s only describing luxury goods, one-upmanship, and ‘keeping up with the Jones’. But the marginalisation of minorities and the splintering off into subcultures are also important status phenomena, and once you understand how the need for status signaling guides our cultural activity, it’s easy to see the interrelations between taste, identity, class, fashion, tradition, and the direction of creativity. This is not to say that everything is raw status seeking, but status is an invisible grammar behind our values that we should all better understand.

So by seeking status, we’re trying to be more like those in a ‘higher’ group, right? Where does that leave our need for originality?

To be a member of any group means sharing certain lifestyle conventions and rejecting alternatives from rivals. And the choices of our status superiors tend to provide us with our aspirations and desires. Understanding this process is crucial for learning to be more distinct from others. At the same time, I feel that there’s too much pressure on us to be ‘original’ in the first place.

Culture is fundamentally about sharing the same behaviours with others, and the language we speak as well as the meanings and values we take from objects and behaviours are all inherited from society. Originality is important for creating a dynamic cultural ecosystem, but not everyone should be required to make that their goal.

What is the role of subcultures today?

Subcultures have become a bit misunderstood. Our obsession with the youth subcultures of the Fifties and Sixties (Teddy Boys, Mods, Rude Boys, Punks, etc.) has a lot to do with the fact that their signature styles became integrated into the fashion system over time. But we should remember that most subcultures stay marginalised, and their innovations don’t influence mainstream culture.

This has become even more true in the last few decades, as Western society is increasingly permissive of lifestyle differences. Many of today’s subcultures appear on the right-wing of the political spectrum (incels, fascist internet trolls, etc.), which makes it highly unlikely their ideas will be picked up in the fashion system. Art-minded subcultures, meanwhile, have their innovations absorbed into the mainstream so quickly that it’s hard to even consider them ‘subcultures’ separate from the main cultural system.

Fashion has long been used as a way to signal status. Are there trends or changes in the fashion industry that are particularly unique for our time?

The first thing to understand is that fashion happens with or without a fashion industry. In any hierarchy, those at the top need exclusive lifestyle choices to mark themselves out from the group, and as they do something new, those choices become imbued with cachet. Lower-status individuals then imitate those choices, which depletes the cachet, and from there, the top has to find new styles for demarcation.

The internet has messed up this classic model, because there are no longer strong barriers towards knowing how elites live nor barriers towards acquiring similar styles. This means the top can no longer exclusively adopt some new style for a period in which those choices look ‘authentic’. In many cases, they may not choose to adopt new styles at all, resulting in an overall more conservative culture. We’ve also moved away from a singular idea of what is ‘in style’, and when ‘everything goes’, there is no sense of forward momentum.

So is the end result that everything is less ‘cool’ in the 21st century?

Yes, at least in the elite perception of pop culture. Many of our values are stuck in the 20th century. We’re nearly sixty years from the debuts of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, and yet they still reign as definitional icons of our time. The speed, diversity, and fragmentation of the internet just doesn’t allow things to be ‘cool’ at that particular depth and scale anymore, which makes older generations feel like something is ‘wrong’. I suspect that Gen Z doesn’t have this problem and finds plenty of cultural value in participating in the endless, ephemeral stream of video content.

‘Cool’ has often been exclusionary and oppressive in its own way, but it did transform our culture by creating widespread appreciation of the incredible creativity existing within minority communities, working-class subcultures, and avant-garde artistic movements. We can certainly abandon ‘cool’ now, but we should find new ways to make sure artistic and stylistic innovations help refresh mainstream culture on a frequent basis.

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