It's just signalling to your crowd.
If I can find clothing that functions just as well as logo'd versions, but for less money, then that makes sense.
With cars, gaming consoles, etc., there's a valid reason to want to spend more money if you're looking for function. PlayStation has games that you can't find on other consoles, or maybe you just like the controller better.
The car I drive is more expensive than I need, but I didn't spend the money to signal anything to anyone. I bought it because it has features the alternative doesn't.
If those expensive sneakers do their job better, then great. But if you're dropping $500 on a limited edition, just for the design, then it's a different calculation. (I am NOT saying it's stupid to do this, just differentiating it from buying features vs. design)
Most people who buy expensive clothing are actually doing it as a hobby, esp those that are being talked about in the article - people who are heavily invested in influences and celebrity culture, they find luxury to be fun and it allows them to hang out in circles of people with similar interests. So it does fulfill functions: aesthetic, social, entertainment etc.
How do we know that you aren't signaling you want that brand? You are just some dude in a Ford, who for all we know is signaling you want a Ford over a Chevy
Funny enough, it is a Ford, though I’ve also owned Chevys in the past.
You don't provide enough details here, but there's a good chance you aren't talking about the feature differences between a 1986 Toyota Tercel and a 2019 Camry. You are probably talking about the difference between your 40,000 or 50,000 (or more) dollar car and a typical 30,000 dollar car. If that's the case, it's probably worth pointing out while you criticize T-Shirt buyers, that you got horribly rooked. Rooked bad. Like, you're just a fat whale to the auto industry.
Once upon a time the costumes of head of state, judges, generals and priests required all kinds of peacock level signalling.
The illiterate masses needed the signals. Especially where authority figures were concerned.
Today we are at a point were a CEO can walk into a meeting in shorts and people have the capacity to understand who has more decision making power.
Are General's and Judges going to stop wearing their costumes? In large parts of the west much of it has disappeared. Not yet fully because when your job is to get people to do stuff that has nothing to do with their own needs distractions work.
As more and more people get in touch with their own needs the power of distraction and manipulative signals will reduce. We are seeing this push back happening all over the place.
In the past both the education system and professional hierarchies at work did a fantastic job of disconnecting people from their own needs to produce obedience.
Today thanks to hyper-connection of the internet, the hierarchies are bypassed, and people are getting slapped in the face, a hundred ways, reminding them to think about their own needs.
This is a new thing. It goes wrong a lot and produces bad outcomes but people are learning. And the learning is very different from the past. Because it comes through a network not from a hierarchy.
I'm all for controlling our inner consumerism but I often find tremendous lack of self-awareness in the discourse. Nobody says MTG fans are "not clever" or shallow or manipulated by the system because they have an expensive hobby. Tourism, cars, good houses, good furniture, art, videogames, eating out, going to concerts, collecting vinyls, having pets - are all absolutely unnecessary for humans and can be considered as luxury from point of view of those who cannot afford these things.
People buy and do stuff because they like it and can afford it and that's it. You're not more enlightened or clever for not doing one unnecessary thing but doing some other.
I don't ever eat in restaurants/cafes and don't have a car. I'm not smarter than majority of Americans, I'm just really shy and don't mind using public transport, so these things are inefficient for me, but they might be efficient in providing some entertainment, comfort, novelty experience, social signalling for those with different preferences.
I don't read too much into changing clothing styles. Suits and ties were starting to be de-emphasized in day-to-day business quite a while before social media was a thing. (Casual Fridays started in the early 90s or so.) And the sort of inverse snobbery hoodie dress thing is mostly limited to some tech circles.
For that matter, there are still a lot of suits and ties worn in business meetings even if they're not near-universal dress any longer.
>The illiterate masses needed the signals. Especially where authority figures were concerned.
It's not that we don't need the signals anymore. We do. But the signals have been debased. Anyone can get any costume. So the signal doesn't signal anything anymore and it's not worth bothering.
Last time I was in court in court the judge was wearing just a casual floral top, summer skirt and flats, it was a small civil case, and no one minded at all. It was still clear that she was in charge.
But not nearly as silly as the powdered wigs I think are still in use in Britain and other parts Europe which seem downright ludicrous.
Cynical observation. Not every human action is automatically designed to impress upon others.
> If you get a brandless tshirt, you are also signaling that you are too smart to buy the luxury brand.
As a matter of fact I buy "brandless" shirts -- actually I own about four black woolen shirts from Costco. It is simply a fact of the matter that a) I am smart enough not to fall for luxury brand marketting, and b) I prefer not to have to choose which 'design' of shirt to wear every day.
A fact is just so; it does not need to be signalled. I perfectly understand that some people value fashion more in line with their values. To each their own.
That is not what the word signalling means.
Signalling is a means of communication. Singalling is much more efficient in many contexts than other communications methods like straight up talking and describing one's life.
Communication has many reasons for it, only one of which (quite minor for many people) is "impressing upon others". Saying signalling is done for "impressing upon others" is a gross simplification of this phenomenon and is just inaccurate.