It was really funny reading through the article and reading all their examples of people's experiences and thinking, hey that's me!!! A lot of things that have been discussed in this forum including lying about bags, rising LV prices, whether or not to patina and the pros and cons of looking like an LV "newbie" versus a "seasoned collector were reflected in the article.
It's really interesting that Louis Vuitton represents not only a fashion issue for many people, but one also of social and class standing. I included the full thing for those who are interested. I made the paragraphs that mentioned LV directly in bold.
I hope that I'm not violating any rules by posting this since it's only indirectly related to Louis Vuitton and not really about bags per se. An LV loving friend of mine emailed it to me a few weeks ago and I thought it would be appropriate for all of us LV lovers! Sorry in advance!
I also find it really funny that the people who try to get a patina on their new bags so that they could use it and not look like they are so eager to use a new bag, are also the ones that are really eager to use it right away! I am definitely guilty of this!
I would really love to hear what you guys think of this...if you think it's true or totally overblown and exaggerated. It can definitely be a sensitive topic!
Here's the whole article:
May 7, 2006
Money Changes Everything
By JENNIE YABROFF
GRETA GILBERTSON was caught off guard recently when her 9-year-old daughter, who attends a private school on the Upper West Side, requested a cellphone.
"I sort of snapped at her," recalled Ms. Gilbertson, an assistant professor at Fordham University in the Bronx. "I said, 'Don't think that you're one of the rich kids, because you're not.' " Though her daughter rarely expresses envy of her more affluent friends, Ms.
Gilbertson said, it was an "unedited moment" revealing her anxiety over being in a world where other parents have more money than she does.
Carol Paik, a former lawyer who is married to a partner at a prominent New York law firm, found herself on the other side of that money equation. When she returned to school in 2002 to get her M.F.A. in creative writing at Columbia, her diamond engagement ring attracted particular attention from her new group of friends. "When I was working," she said, "I never thought about the ring, it seemed unremarkable."
But at school, she said, "People said things like, 'That's a really big diamond,' and not necessarily in a complimentary way." So she began taking off the ring before class.
If, as Samuel Butler said, friendships are like money, easier made than kept, economic differences can add yet another obstacle to maintaining them. More friends and acquaintances are now finding themselves at different points on the financial spectrum, scholars and sociologists say, thanks to broad social changes like meritocracy-based higher education, diversity in the workplace and a disparity of incomes among professions.
As people with various-sized bank accounts brush up against each other, there is ample cause for social awkwardness, which can strain relationships, sometimes to a breaking point. Many find themselves wrestling with complicated feelings about money and self-worth and improvising coping strategies.
"The real issue is not money itself, but the power money gives you,"
said Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University, who studies issues of wealth and class. "Money makes explicit the inequalities in a relationship, so we work hard to minimize it as a form of tact."
For Ms. Gilbertson, that means not having her daughters' friends over to play because, she said, her apartment in Washington Heights is small and in what some parents might consider a marginal neighborhood.
For the same reason, she had a pizza party for her daughter's birthday at the local Y.M.C.A.
For Ms. Paik, that meant avoiding inviting her classmates to her prewar, three-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side, because many of them lived in student housing and she feared they would think she was showing off. "I didn't want to introduce that barrier," she said.
Money's discomfiting effects are explored in the recent film "Friends with Money," in which three of four female friends are well off while one is barely getting by. In an early scene the friends are gathered for dinner when Olivia, a former schoolteacher played by Jennifer Aniston, announces that she has started working as a maid. A few moments later Franny, played by Joan Cusack, says she and her husband will be making a $2 million donation to their child's elementary school. When another friend asks why Franny doesn't just give the money to Olivia, everyone laughs uncomfortably and the subject is changed.
"Money is talked about with such discomfort; it's so taboo," said Nicole Holofcener, the writer and director of "Friends With Money."
"With close friends it takes work; I have to make a conscious effort to talk about issues of money that come up between us."
Economic barriers to friendship have come about in part because other barriers have been broken down, sociologists say. College, where people form some of the most intense friendships of their lives, is a melting pot of economic differences. Students from country-club families and those on scholarships are thrown together as roommates, on athletic teams and in classes.
"There has been an incredible expansion of higher education,"
Professor Conley said. "More people from more varied backgrounds are going to college. There are also more meritocratic admissions among elite institutions."
According to data compiled by Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute in Washington, 42 percent of young adults (age 18 to 24) from the bottom quarter of family income were enrolled in college in 2003, compared with 28 percent in 1970. Enrollment for students from the two middle income quarters also increased.
Participation of students from the highest-income families changed the least, with 80 percent attending college in 2003, compared with 74 percent in 1970.
Once college friends leave campus, their economic status can diverge widely depending on their careers. While 20 years ago a young lawyer and a new college instructor might have commiserated about their jobs over coffee and doughnuts, today the lawyer would be able to invite the assistant professor out for a meal at a restaurant with two sommeliers and a cheese expert.
At New York University, for instance, instructors make $35,300 for the current academic year, up from $24,500 for the 1985-86 academic year, according to the American Association of University Professors. A first-year associate at a large New York law firm, however, can earn as much as $170,000 with a year-end bonus, compared with about $53,000, including bonus, in 1985.
"In New York City we're on the front lines of the rise in inequality in income because it's happening at the top half of the income distribution ladder," Professor Conley said. "The difference between the middle and the top has grown incredibly."
Although the wealthy can wall themselves off in buildings with doormen or in high-tax suburbs, other trends in society lead the affluent to brush up against the not-so-affluent. Gentrification, an urban movement from Prospect Heights, Brooklyn to downtown Los Angeles, moves the professional class into the neighborhoods of the working class. They mix when their children attend the same school or participate in athletic leagues.
Feeling awkward about the differences in net worth is not just an issue for those on the bottom of the equation. Some wealthy people - especially the young - have trouble admitting that they are different.
"We are allegedly a classless society, and that's obviously completely untrue, but people don't want to acknowledge that those differences exist," said Jamie Johnson, a 26-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. He explored attitudes about money among his peers in his 2003 documentary, "Born Rich." His new documentary, "The One Percent," which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 29, looks at the political influence of wealthy Americans.
Mr. Johnson said that some of his moneyed friends act like they have fewer resources than they do, making a show of taking the subway and saying they can't afford a cab. "It's to avoid that awkwardness of seeing the distinction of social class," he said.
The pressure to fit in economically can be especially intense for teenagers and young adults. Marisa Gordon, a 27-year-old account executive at a midsize Manhattan advertising agency, recalled that as a student at Syracuse University, her roommate resented that Ms.
Gordon had more spending money than she did. The roommate made comments when Ms. Gordon brought home a pair of Diesel sweatpants and cried because she couldn't afford the same Issey Miyake perfume.
Though she and the roommate are still friendly, Ms. Gordon said money issues contributed to the fact they aren't as close as they once were.
Now it is her younger sister, a freshman at Syracuse, who is feeling the sort of competitive pressure Ms. Gordon's roommate felt. The sister recently asked their parents for a Louis Vuitton bag, Ms.
Gordon said, because, "Everyone at school has a Louis bag."
article continued at next post
It's really interesting that Louis Vuitton represents not only a fashion issue for many people, but one also of social and class standing. I included the full thing for those who are interested. I made the paragraphs that mentioned LV directly in bold.
I hope that I'm not violating any rules by posting this since it's only indirectly related to Louis Vuitton and not really about bags per se. An LV loving friend of mine emailed it to me a few weeks ago and I thought it would be appropriate for all of us LV lovers! Sorry in advance!
I also find it really funny that the people who try to get a patina on their new bags so that they could use it and not look like they are so eager to use a new bag, are also the ones that are really eager to use it right away! I am definitely guilty of this!
I would really love to hear what you guys think of this...if you think it's true or totally overblown and exaggerated. It can definitely be a sensitive topic!
Here's the whole article:
May 7, 2006
Money Changes Everything
By JENNIE YABROFF
GRETA GILBERTSON was caught off guard recently when her 9-year-old daughter, who attends a private school on the Upper West Side, requested a cellphone.
"I sort of snapped at her," recalled Ms. Gilbertson, an assistant professor at Fordham University in the Bronx. "I said, 'Don't think that you're one of the rich kids, because you're not.' " Though her daughter rarely expresses envy of her more affluent friends, Ms.
Gilbertson said, it was an "unedited moment" revealing her anxiety over being in a world where other parents have more money than she does.
Carol Paik, a former lawyer who is married to a partner at a prominent New York law firm, found herself on the other side of that money equation. When she returned to school in 2002 to get her M.F.A. in creative writing at Columbia, her diamond engagement ring attracted particular attention from her new group of friends. "When I was working," she said, "I never thought about the ring, it seemed unremarkable."
But at school, she said, "People said things like, 'That's a really big diamond,' and not necessarily in a complimentary way." So she began taking off the ring before class.
If, as Samuel Butler said, friendships are like money, easier made than kept, economic differences can add yet another obstacle to maintaining them. More friends and acquaintances are now finding themselves at different points on the financial spectrum, scholars and sociologists say, thanks to broad social changes like meritocracy-based higher education, diversity in the workplace and a disparity of incomes among professions.
As people with various-sized bank accounts brush up against each other, there is ample cause for social awkwardness, which can strain relationships, sometimes to a breaking point. Many find themselves wrestling with complicated feelings about money and self-worth and improvising coping strategies.
"The real issue is not money itself, but the power money gives you,"
said Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University, who studies issues of wealth and class. "Money makes explicit the inequalities in a relationship, so we work hard to minimize it as a form of tact."
For Ms. Gilbertson, that means not having her daughters' friends over to play because, she said, her apartment in Washington Heights is small and in what some parents might consider a marginal neighborhood.
For the same reason, she had a pizza party for her daughter's birthday at the local Y.M.C.A.
For Ms. Paik, that meant avoiding inviting her classmates to her prewar, three-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side, because many of them lived in student housing and she feared they would think she was showing off. "I didn't want to introduce that barrier," she said.
Money's discomfiting effects are explored in the recent film "Friends with Money," in which three of four female friends are well off while one is barely getting by. In an early scene the friends are gathered for dinner when Olivia, a former schoolteacher played by Jennifer Aniston, announces that she has started working as a maid. A few moments later Franny, played by Joan Cusack, says she and her husband will be making a $2 million donation to their child's elementary school. When another friend asks why Franny doesn't just give the money to Olivia, everyone laughs uncomfortably and the subject is changed.
"Money is talked about with such discomfort; it's so taboo," said Nicole Holofcener, the writer and director of "Friends With Money."
"With close friends it takes work; I have to make a conscious effort to talk about issues of money that come up between us."
Economic barriers to friendship have come about in part because other barriers have been broken down, sociologists say. College, where people form some of the most intense friendships of their lives, is a melting pot of economic differences. Students from country-club families and those on scholarships are thrown together as roommates, on athletic teams and in classes.
"There has been an incredible expansion of higher education,"
Professor Conley said. "More people from more varied backgrounds are going to college. There are also more meritocratic admissions among elite institutions."
According to data compiled by Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute in Washington, 42 percent of young adults (age 18 to 24) from the bottom quarter of family income were enrolled in college in 2003, compared with 28 percent in 1970. Enrollment for students from the two middle income quarters also increased.
Participation of students from the highest-income families changed the least, with 80 percent attending college in 2003, compared with 74 percent in 1970.
Once college friends leave campus, their economic status can diverge widely depending on their careers. While 20 years ago a young lawyer and a new college instructor might have commiserated about their jobs over coffee and doughnuts, today the lawyer would be able to invite the assistant professor out for a meal at a restaurant with two sommeliers and a cheese expert.
At New York University, for instance, instructors make $35,300 for the current academic year, up from $24,500 for the 1985-86 academic year, according to the American Association of University Professors. A first-year associate at a large New York law firm, however, can earn as much as $170,000 with a year-end bonus, compared with about $53,000, including bonus, in 1985.
"In New York City we're on the front lines of the rise in inequality in income because it's happening at the top half of the income distribution ladder," Professor Conley said. "The difference between the middle and the top has grown incredibly."
Although the wealthy can wall themselves off in buildings with doormen or in high-tax suburbs, other trends in society lead the affluent to brush up against the not-so-affluent. Gentrification, an urban movement from Prospect Heights, Brooklyn to downtown Los Angeles, moves the professional class into the neighborhoods of the working class. They mix when their children attend the same school or participate in athletic leagues.
Feeling awkward about the differences in net worth is not just an issue for those on the bottom of the equation. Some wealthy people - especially the young - have trouble admitting that they are different.
"We are allegedly a classless society, and that's obviously completely untrue, but people don't want to acknowledge that those differences exist," said Jamie Johnson, a 26-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. He explored attitudes about money among his peers in his 2003 documentary, "Born Rich." His new documentary, "The One Percent," which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 29, looks at the political influence of wealthy Americans.
Mr. Johnson said that some of his moneyed friends act like they have fewer resources than they do, making a show of taking the subway and saying they can't afford a cab. "It's to avoid that awkwardness of seeing the distinction of social class," he said.
The pressure to fit in economically can be especially intense for teenagers and young adults. Marisa Gordon, a 27-year-old account executive at a midsize Manhattan advertising agency, recalled that as a student at Syracuse University, her roommate resented that Ms.
Gordon had more spending money than she did. The roommate made comments when Ms. Gordon brought home a pair of Diesel sweatpants and cried because she couldn't afford the same Issey Miyake perfume.
Though she and the roommate are still friendly, Ms. Gordon said money issues contributed to the fact they aren't as close as they once were.
Now it is her younger sister, a freshman at Syracuse, who is feeling the sort of competitive pressure Ms. Gordon's roommate felt. The sister recently asked their parents for a Louis Vuitton bag, Ms.
Gordon said, because, "Everyone at school has a Louis bag."
article continued at next post
