<p>WWAHW? (What would Audrey Hepburn wear?)</p>
<p>Designer, expensive and visible logos are not interchangeable concepts.</p>
<p>Cartier watch is classic style. Same with Burberry coat. Most Prada is high style and people who can really afford it also can buy the new styles each year. Are you really going to wear these next year?</p>
<p>[Prada</a> Slideshow on Style.com](<a href=“http://www.style.com/fashionshows/complete/slideshow/S2013RTW-PRADA/#1]Prada”>http://www.style.com/fashionshows/complete/slideshow/S2013RTW-PRADA/#1)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.style.com/fashionshows/complete/slideshow/F2013MEN-PRADA/#11[/url]”>http://www.style.com/fashionshows/complete/slideshow/F2013MEN-PRADA/#11</a></p>
<p>I have a Pendleton shirt that has lasted more than 30 years. High status item back at my PNW high school…</p>
<p>Part of why the PNW is considered a style wasteland.;-)</p>
<p>@Bigdoglover - sorry you took offense at my poking a little bit of fun at GWU. If there is no Concierge, then how do you explain this, obtained from GWU’s website concerning Marvin Center policies:</p>
<p>“The following policies govern the behavior of patrons visiting the Marvin Center. Copies of these policies can be obtained from Concierge, located on the 1st Floor and Marvin Center and University Conferences (MC 204).”</p>
<p>You can google it.</p>
<p>The Concierge is located right next door to the Visitor’s area. I didn’t make it up. I really have no idea what the Concierge does, just remarking on how… odd … it struck me to see the sign for one in a college’s student union.</p>
<p>^^^ Well if it was good enough for dudedad it was good enough for grunge!</p>
<p>A concierge gets you tickets and good restaurant reservations when you are out of town, or helps you to figure out a good walking route, or recommends a good car service or gets the car for you.</p>
<p>If you travel there often, they will know when you are in the hotel, and they might make recommendations. If you spill on your clothing, they can help you to get things taken care of. Or if you happen to want to take an architectural tour of a city, or go out into the mountains and go fly fishing, the concierge will get you hooked up.</p>
<p>If it’s a special event or day and you forgot the gift, which happened once to me on my anniversary, they can get you something fast and having it waiting in the room when you get back. that kind of thing.</p>
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<p>In what sense is clothing any different from other consumer goods or purchasable privileges? Children benefit from their parents’ wealth in all kinds of ways. They don’t earn their privileges. We are talking about 20-year-old full-time students attending an expensive private university. They are are not out there working at gas stations or touring Afghanistan courtesy of the US government. Every single one of them is privileged relative to their peers, whether they are on financial aid or not.</p>
<p>A “rich kid” seems to be defined as “anyone whose parents are richer than mine.” Affluent people buy their children clothes, experiences, and educational opportunities, and have done so from time immemorial. Why the emphasis on tangible tokens of wealth when the “social capital” aspects of consumption are so much more important, but never criticized?</p>
<p>Would it be better if the tailor and concierge and the high end retail clerks had no job?</p>
<p>My s was rejected at Uof Chicago and now choosing between GWU, fantastic aid (we are not rich), Univ. of Vermont, and UMASS. He is undeclared liberal arts. We just visited a second time (hated the rich kid vibe the first time) and we thought that the kids seemed alot more normal. Anyone want to chime in on which they would choose? Why?</p>
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<p>On the other hand, expensive spending habits shaped when young can be hard to undo later, leading the kids to make financially foolish choices later (e.g. going to New York University with $120,000 of student loan debt instead of the state flagship with no debt).</p>
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<p>Well, if they’re wearing designer clothes, I would guess there parents can foot the bill for college. </p>
<p>Also, maybe the desire for expensive things would spur them to work harder to maintain their lifestyle. A popular poster on college dorm rooms in the 80’s and 90’s was a picture of a garage with expensive cars with the phrase, “Justification for Higher Education.”</p>
<p>I do think there can be a danger in giving your kids everything if they don’t understand what it takes to acquire these things. However, I don’t think people are bothered by displays of wealth by college kids for this reason. </p>
<p>Income, the ability to have material possessions, or to provide for one’s family are tied to feelings of self-worth, and this is really what bothers people. If people are displaying wealth that they didn’t earn or deserve, then this hurts them because it’s like someone cheated the system somehow, or at least is a sign that life isn’t fair.</p>
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<p>However, high spending on status symbol goods and other expensive indulgences for the kid may deplete the money that the parents might have otherwise saved for the kid’s college fund.</p>
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<p>That’s a different situation. The kids should not be living beyond their means.</p>
<p>Let’s bring back the sumptuary laws so that people can’t wear what they don’t “deserve”!</p>
<p>The real “rich kids’ schools,” of course, can fund some poorer students so as to diminish the unseemly stink of unearned privilege. On the other hand, these schools often have cruelly and finely honed systems of arcane status display that outsiders can never hope to crack. At least a handbag is available to anyone with the money, and money doesn’t care who has it. Money is very democratic.</p>
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<p>I was only responding to the argument that kids shouldn’t spend on designer clothes because they won’t be able to maintain this lifestyle later.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t care about clothes, and wouldn’t spend my money that way.</p>
<p>You don’t have to spend your money that way. Would it be better if nobody bought anything expensive or ate in any expensive restaurants? Where would those people work, now?</p>
<p>No, really, I think this is a serious question. What do you suppose those who work in these fields ought to do for a living instead? what is your proposal?</p>
<p>Ah, poetgrl, yes, I do grasp what a concierge does. What I was trying to say is that I don’t know what the GWU Concierge, specifically, does. It looked like an information desk. </p>
<p>The words we use do convey meaning, and calling a desk with such a function a ‘concierge’ certainly appeals to those used to having a concierge around, I would guess. Frankly I prefer the merely perfunctory ‘information desk’.</p>
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<p>To be clear, I don’t think there is anything wrong with it. I don’t care either way. Designer brands tend to go over my head, anyway.</p>