I’m around people who spends thousands on a single garment from brands that the unacquainted wouldn’t know about, but the trained eye can tell the difference. There’s a saying in fashion, “if you know, you know”. Some people just like well designed and nice clothing, and yes, they want to look cool, but they don’t need people to know it’s expensive.

It depends on what OP think of as “luxury”. Maybe for fashion, OP will think of Louis Vuitton, Gucci, but those are Veblen goods as other commenters have mentioned. Ann Demeulemeester, Raf Simons, Dries Van Noten, Maison Margiela, basically all the Antwerpen fashion designers are equally expensive as those “luxury brands”, but the untrained eye would not recognize them. Dover Street Market, not Sak’s Fifth.

Vacheron Constantin is an analogy with watches ( in terms of brand familiarity ).

With this said, the real elitism is the people who buy expensive stuff with the intention of being esoteric or that people don’t understand/recognize.

> people don't tend to want to bring up their new 9 dollar Casio or their 1997 Corolla, go figure.

But people do bring up what’s great about Toyota. I think you’re projecting. I’ve spent $200k worth of men’s wear over the past 5 years, but I’ll still praise and highlight Uniqlo, especially Heatech.

It just happens to be that stuff from H&M and Zara is trash. And niche, therefore expensive, products are making an interesting or artistic statement, whether that is functional or not. No one is buying these thousand dollar watches for the function. A Toyota is about function. It’s literally designed to be utilitarian, and utilitarian is usually not the most provocative as with art.