COLUMN ONE : Stealth Wealth in Vogue : The rich are less inclined to flaunt their affluence these days. Middle-class backlash, Rolex banditry and a shift in baby boomer priorities give rise to subtle status symbols.
Wendy Goldberg’s Rolls-Royce is in the garage. Her jewels are in the bank. Hard times? Hardly. It’s just that one day, “it all began to seem a little bit much.”
When William Lloyd Davis turned 50 three years ago, 300 people came to his birthday soiree. This year the real estate magnate was feted by just three guests--his kids. The menu featured osso buco. His wife cooked.
Mitchell Cannold used to keep a Mercedes-Benz and a Range Rover in New York and a BMW convertible in Los Angeles. He flew first class, barely glanced at his dinner checks. But these days, the bicoastal producer of “Dirty Dancing” drives a Ford Explorer in New York and rents-- rents!-- a Dodge Shadow in L.A. He flies coach, questions “absolutely every bill” and is “far more interested in spending money on experience, on learning things.”
Fearful of crime, tugged by family and conscience, chastened by soak-the-rich campaign rhetoric and shareholder revolts, America’s wealthy are backing off from the conspicuous consumption that, just a few years ago, so clearly delineated the haves from the have-nots.
Passe are the lavish ball gowns, the jewels and furs, the Cartier clocks and crystal trinkets as party favors. Banished are the Rolls-Royces, the Rolex watches, the Dom Perignon, the six-course dinners, the truffles and caviar.
“People feel foolish if they become too opulent,” said Goldberg, whose husband, Leonard, is the former head of 20th Century Fox. “It’s just not good taste when you know there are all these homeless people and we’re fighting for our lives with AIDS.”
Meanwhile, demographers and market researchers say, a new genre of status symbols has come to the fore, replacing conspicuous consumption with the talismans of what one pollster has dubbed “Stealth Wealth.” Mid-priced four-wheel-drive vehicles. Free-range poultry and farm-raised fish. Sensible clothing. Industrial-grade brown diamonds, generously billed as “champagne” or “cognac” in jewelry ads.
And less tangible but most valuable of all, according to opinion polls, is control over your time--when you work and when you play.
“There’s been an incredible move from external signs of status to internal ones--of what works for me versus what impresses you,” noted Watts Wacker, an executive vice president with the Yankelovich Clancy Shulman research firm.
“The wealth is still there. It’s just less ostentatious in its delivery, and many of the things these people are doing to manifest their wealth are being done underground.”
Behind the shift are factors small and large, ranging from Rolex banditry to the righteous outrage of the middle class.
If the rich were revered in the 1980s, they are on the hot seat now. Shareholders have become ever more critical of fat compensation packages for corporate executives. Dueling tax increases on the super rich have been put forward by at least two Democratic presidential candidates. Meanwhile, the influential baby boom generation has undergone a gradual change in priorities as children, mortgages and the specter of retirement have taken precedence in their lives.
Amy Ephron--a writer and humorist with one foot in working motherhood and the other in Malibu society--believes that the status symbols of the past decade disappeared when wealthy Americans began to have families and “lost the will to shop.”
“The reality of having kids,” she said, “is that you’re looking at $100,000 a year for college tuition, and more than that if you live in L.A. because you have to send your kid to private school.”
Even the old ‘80s-style children’s parties have gone by the wayside, Ephron said.
“I have a friend--one of those people who, you know, the kid has three playrooms--who used to have a clown come on weekends, just because it was Saturday,” she said.
“Well, the clown doesn’t come anymore.”
The current social climate, said USC marketing professor David Stewart, “has caused those who have the money to be perceived as flaunting it. Even people with means have begun to scale back. Particularly in this recession, people don’t want to be perceived as excessive.”
Wendy Goldberg--whose transportation these days is a modest Jeep Cherokee--fretted that it is politically incorrect to flaunt even self-made wealth.
“You know,” she said, “my husband has worked hard since he was a young man to give his family a better life. It’s the American Dream, isn’t it, to work hard and give to the community and be able to reap the rewards?
“But people can’t reap the rewards because you feel guilty doing anything that’s even a little bit extravagant,” Goldberg said. “What’s so terrible about having a pretty piece of jewelry, right? But these days, you feel it’s a sin.”
Ostentation can also be hazardous to your health.
Suzanne Marx--a socially prominent civic volunteer who now works as director of finance for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library--says that on the charitable circuit “people who can well afford” to wear real jewels are foregoing them “because of all the robberies.” Instead, she said, they’ve turned to Chanel chains and imitation pearls.
Developer William Davis’ wife, Teran, couldn’t agree more. Two years ago, she said, her neighbor was held up twice in the space of a few months, both times for his pricey Rolex watch. Shaken, she put both her Rolex and her husband’s in storage, she said. Her husband now wears a $30 Swatch.
But the fear of crime was only partly responsible for Davis’ back-to-basics attitudes. She says she also was inspired by the homespun style of Barbara Bush, who shunned Nancy Reagan’s high-society flair. Then there were the demands of her own family, especially the needs of her youngest, a new baby. Last year, on a vacation at the family’s second home in Aspen, a kind of epiphany occurred.
“We spent five months in Colorado,” she said, “and, I don’t know, I thought, ‘Well, the ‘80s were nice, but this is nicer.’ ”
Producer Mitchell Cannold had an awakening, too: His Mercedes was stolen at gunpoint in Manhattan about a year and a half ago. But, like Davis, he had felt the change coming for some time, particularly when it came to his fleet of status cars.
The BMW was expensive to insure. The Range Rover was expensive to repair. They were either too small for his dog, too fancy for his kids or too tempting to urban thieves.
“A Range Rover is a great car if you live in the middle of the desert,” he said, “but if you live in Beverly Hills, all it shows is that you spent too much money on your car.”
Such sentiments are underscored by recent opinion research that indicates a renewed appreciation among the affluent for intangible signs of accomplishment and deeper symbols of worth--for free time, an understanding of the environment, a social conscience, a knowledgeable eye.
For example, in a 1991 Yankelovich survey of U.S. households earning $75,000 or more each year, material possessions--things like “having a million dollars” and “owning an expensive car”--ranked far below such accomplishments as “being in control of your life” as symbols of status and success.
Asked about the environment, 71% said they were so concerned about pollution that they would be willing to pay 10% extra for grocery products that didn’t harm the environment. (Only 56% of poorer people were willing to make such a sacrifice.)
Another survey, done by Roper the same year among American women, found that leisure time had risen 6% in four years as an important aspect of the American Dream. Free time, in fact, outstripped wealth, a college education and rising from rags to riches as a measure of accomplishment, the survey found, and fell within just three percentage points of top-ranked items such as freedom of choice, home ownership and a secure retirement.
“In the 80s, if you wanted to impress the neighbors, you parked your BMW in the driveway,” said Eric Miller, publisher of the Long Island based research newsletter Affluent Markets Alert. “In the ‘90s you’ll park your rear in a hammock.”
Translated into commerce, experts say, these sentiments have made status symbols of products that imply the owner is a “smart” consumer, has vast stretches of leisure time, is a freethinker, could bail out of the rat race if he wanted and is willing to put her money where her mouth is when it comes to the environment and humanity.
Hence the cachet of such items as Toyota’s Lexus (a “smart” buy), the Ford Explorer (a “smart” American buy), the Jeep Cherokee (a “smart” leisure buy), Gap clothing (a “smart”-enough-for-celebrities buy).
And hence the current propensity among advertisers to flatter upscale consumers by pitching luxury goods on technical merits that only a real smarty-pants would understand--on the assertion, for example, that a Rolex wristwatch is “designed according to the same principle as a submarine hatch,” or that a Lexus is so tightly put together that you can roll ball-bearings across the hood.
The shift has been felt as well in the social realm, as parties, premieres and charitable benefits have become less lavish. Even the party favors at Marvin Davis’ annual Christmas gathering--famed for their extravagance--were reportedly a smidge disappointing this year. In better years, the entertainment mogul gave each guest a stocking stuffed with pricey knickknacks and gourmet foods. This year, according to guests, the take-home was a modest little music box.
“In general, it’s not cool to show off,” said David Corwin, co-owner of Ambrosia caterers. The opening of “City Slickers,” for example, was a star-studded Western barbecue featuring no red meat, Corwin said. And--as at all of Corwin’s events--the beer bottles were recycled afterward, ceramic coffee cups were used instead of landfill-clogging Styrofoam and the leftovers were shipped to a homeless shelter.
In another instance, the annual KCET Women’s Council gala disappeared entirely. Feeling that “the times dictated something a little different,” a council member said, the organization invited donors to “Stay Home and Show You Care.”
“Because this ecologically perfect party will require no gasoline to be burned, no electricity to be used, no food or water to be consumed,” the invitation noted, “you will be gratified to know that 100% of your generous tax-deductible donation will go to support . . . KCET.”
“People have been sending money with a force you cannot believe,” marveled event chairman Judy Zimbert, who said this month’s “non-party” seems to have struck a chord with the burned-out veterans of the charity circuit. Also popular is the postscript being penned by some council members: “Read my lips--no new tuxes!”
The scaling back has been relative, depending on the enclave involved. In Southern California, for instance, the old money of Pasadena and San Marino has never been as flamboyant as, say, the entertainment money on the Westside.
San Marino’s Jean French Smith, for instance, says she has “taken a tremendous fancy to costume jewelry.” But--gems notwithstanding--the widow of the former U.S. Atty. Gen. William French Smith says her lifestyle was never especially ostentatious.
“Three thousand dollars for a dress is absurd,” she said, “but then it always was to me.”
Meanwhile, in Beverly Hills, the glitz deprivation only goes so far--as producer Cannold can attest.
“My industry,” he said, “is still dominated by the sense that it would be tough to pull up to Spago in a Ford.”
