Role models
Reality TV and social media make people FEEL like they KNOW these people. These people are very talented at scamming you into wanting to "be" like them and looking to them as -- cough -- "role models" that you enthusiastically emulate so you will stupidly buy their products.
That's specifically about Kim Kardashian and her ilk, but I recall reading a blurb that Colin Kaepernick imagines his upper class clothes is him setting an example for Black American men for what Black manhood should look like or something like that.
Most Black Americans have no hope of affording the clothes he wears. "Black" or "Ghetto" or "thuggy" style with stuff like oversized jackets comes from Black Americans almost universally living in poverty and wearing hand-me-downs that don't actually fit.
Years ago, I saw a Black designer who actually was extremely creative and making a name for himself based on his wild designs and part of that was something like eye-catching mismatched decorative buttons. That aesthetic of his was rooted in growing up poor.
He told a story that if he lost a button, his grandmother sewed a replacement button on and it was whatever she had on hand, not a matching button. And he looked down one day while walking to school and saw that no two buttons on his shirt were alike.
I don't know if his grandmother had a good eye for putting together mismatched buttons artistically or if he is artistic bent influenced his appreciation of that.
My mother's mother was from a low level noble family that sold the title long before I was a twinkle in anyone's eye. I grew up with a dress code similar to the British royals, where it was not okay to have bra straps showing.
I don't think you should need to be a millionaire to dress the way I dressed growing up.
My parents weren't millionaires. They had material comfort and security that seems rare in the US today but was fairly common for World War II veterans like my father:
A house in the 'burbs, a garden in the backyard, access to affordable sources of food, clothes and education for their children in a low crime area with plenty of greenery.
My mother shopped sales a lot and sewed a fair amount of my clothes. She did the work to provide me clothes she felt was appropriate for a little girl.
Those clothes weren't necessarily fancy or flashy, though sometimes I did have stuff covered in rhinestones because that was in style at the time.
I'm sick to death of the Red Queen Effect on fashion where we all run faster and faster to look more like expensive harlots with zero self respect and you can either dress "pretty" -- aka like a hooker -- or you can dress affordably, comfortably and extremely drably.
Colin Kaepernick seems to have somewhat inadvertently become a positive symbol for Black Americans, one he likely didn't really plan to be. He was raised by a White family that adopted him and likely has a lot of stereotypically White expectations, ideas and behaviors.
He's openly Christian, from what I gather wearing it on his "sleeve" in the sense that word gets used to describe a plethora of tattoos, and from what I read after the fact without particularly following it live, simply quietly exercised his right to express his opinion and sit out something he wasn't feeling.
I'm not aware of his subsequent game for taking a knee making a real difference in quality of life for Black Americans and I don't think he really thought much about the political and social impact he was having because I don't think he was trying to make an impact.
I think it was picked up precisely because he wasn't seeking attention nor trying to shit stir and was behaving in an extremely White coded fashion that most Blacks wouldn't have any idea how to pull off.
I can pretty much guarantee you he knows a lot less about the social importance of clothes and how Black Americans dress and WHY as a guy raised by a White family with interests in two different sports.
Most likely, he got rich and other people dressed him well for a pretty penny and his stylish outfits aren't anymore a personal statement rooted in Black American culture or ideas about Black self respect or whatever he imagined he meant by trying to be some kind of role model with his clothes than the outfits most actors wear in a movie which are typically chosen by a professional stylist.
I think about this a LOT: clothes, furniture, anything visually appealing trends towards getting stupidly expensive and out of reach for most Americans and out of touch with the needs of the common man if it gets "popular."
HGTV was originally inspired by the PBS TV show This Old House and only aired three hours a day of original programming, all done on a budget. It became successful, the money began pouring in, they had original programming all day and bigger budgets and last I saw it was very much Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless BS.
It's no longer useful education for middle class homeowners trying to make life work on a budget, with time constraints and limited skills.
Many shelter magazines also trend towards showcasing high end styles many of which are rooted in upper class activities that aren't remotely relevant to a middle class lifestyle and frequently aren't relevant to the actual lives of people who are currently obscenely wealthy.
A certain kind of high table was designed so nobility on horseback could get a bite to eat without getting off their horse during a hunt. Rest assured, New Yorkers who buy this style of table because they saw it in Architectural Digest aren't using it to get a bite to eat from horseback in the middle of a hunt.
Historically, European nobility worked extremely hard at serving the people. Only nobility had the right to hunt in certain lands to ensure overhunting didn't occur but their catch helped feed the villagers in winter when food stores were running low and the sons of nobility frequently died in battle because they served as officers.
Idle rich is a relatively modern concept. Large castles weren't the private homes of nobility. They were where the people retreatef to for safety in times of war and had staff living there because "dish washer" meant "the person doing that job" not "the fancy machine doing that job."
They had large tables and guest rooms to host visiting diplomats because there were no phones, TVs, live video conferencing etc. visiting dignitaries and their entourage of security personnel etc. didn't go on booking.com and find a hotel. They stayed at the castle.
And now millionaires and billionaires live in houses larger than a lot of castles as their personal residence and frequently have no real reason for needing all that space.
The clothes you see on wealthy people in articles and on social media is not typically anything an ordinary American should aspire to own while flipping burgers or even being the manager at a burger joint.
I would like to raise the bar on quality of experience for clothes pertinent to the needs of female office workers instead of acting like how they dress is somehow unimportant or inherently inferior to that of rich people. Clothes are a practical matter and should be designed to serve a real purpose, such as being pretty enough to be platonically attractive and covered up enough to try to minimize social friction between the sexes while at work.
Rich people pretending that expensive clothes is important are people with their heads up their butts wanting to feel important who have no real respect for the common person who is the driving engine for the economy and needs work clothes that work for them so they can focus on getting the job done, not on "Will they think I'm trying to seduce my boss because I dressed in a fashion that's currently trending???"