All of the cash, less of the flash: the new way to flaunt your wealth

In the April 1919 edition of Vanity Fair magazine, the editorial board and writer Robert Charles Bentley did an unusual thing. They introduced a new feature under the heading "Dullest Book of the Month".

The honour, described acidly as "the Crown of Deadly Nightshade", went to The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York. Macmillan. Cloth. $2.00 net), a work by one Thorstein Veblen.

The review, coming as it did some 20 years after the book was published in 1899, represented the viciously sarcastic response of the upper classes to Veblen's invention of a new term - "conspicuous consumption".

Veblen, wearing a rakish middle parting over an egg-shaped head that terminated in a flourishing goatee, had caused affront by attempting to analyse and describe the phenomenon of acquiring goods for no useful purpose other than to demonstrate the wealth of the acquirer.

He observed: "In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence. And not only does the evidence of wealth serve to impress one's importance on others and to keep their sense of his importance alive and alert, but it is of scarcely less use in building up and preserving one's self-complacency."

Of course, once one began to work such a treadmill, it gathered speed. "As fast as a person makes new acquisitions, and becomes accustomed to the resulting new standard of wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciably greater satisfaction than the earlier standard did."

Veblen's work is surprising for its sharp observations and its perspicacity. Not only did he invent the term "conspicuous consumption", but he also set the stage for it's subspecies, "conspicuous compassion" - the use of donations of money to enhance social prestige.

Little wonder then that Bentley was moved to skewer the book, removing it from the universe of socially acceptable titles and dampening its impact on the good people who read Vanity Fair.

He was reacting to somewhat of an uproar in New York society circles, which he referred to thus: "From current press reports, it appears that a revolutionary element among the members of New York's exclusive 'demoiselles' refused to attend lectures at the new School for Social Research (a training table for 'The New Republic' squad) because of the presence, on the faculty, of Dr Veblen and several other savants who were suspected of having radical leanings and therefore of being unsuited to act as docents for our social register débutante."

Veblen was now in the company of Karl Marx, who had invented the somewhat less enduring phrase "the fetishisation of commodities" to describe how goods come to have value independent of their usefulness.

I can still hear the late Professor Terence Beard in his Rhodes office quoting Marx on this: "It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race ..."

Neither Marx's nor Veblen's diagnosis led to treatment and for almost exactly a century "conspicuous consumption" endured, grew and mutated into a multi-headed hydra as the ostentatious display of wealth - and of charitable generosity (I see you, Bill Gates) - colonised popular culture.

The apotheosis of this consumer culture occurred when Michael Douglas, portraying Wall Street investor Gordon Gekko, spoke the immortal words: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

Gekko was condemned but at the same time secretly admired. Popular culture loved the idea of greed being good. An explosion of ways for the middle classes to demonstrate wealth was under way.

Cigar Aficionado magazine was on the shelves at Exclusive Books, BMW and Mercedes-Benz produced compact cars to spread the badge beyond the rich. Toyota invented Lexus. Nissan invented Infiniti.

Everybody was flying and arriving early at the airport so that they could conspicuously press the lift button for the floor with the private lounges.

McMansions sprang up in gated estates. Everyone could feel like a billionaire.

To finance these acquisitions, banks unleashed the dogs of debt. On the surface you couldn't tell the super rich man smoking a Cohiba and drinking 18-year-old Scotch from the highly indebted aspirationista smoking a Cohiba and drinking 18-year-old Scotch. Until you got to the parking lot. The 7 Series is a lot bigger than the 3 Series.

That was then. Over the last decade, things have become awkward.

The global financial meltdown brought on by the Gordon Gekkos and the incredible inflatable debt machine recast the super wealthy. Overnight the role models were villains.

Which is a real pity, because the ultimate mechanism for proving superiority - social media - was just being invented. You finally had the means to show how you were rocking a Caribbean island on holiday with a Facebook post that casually mentioned that "this time round, we got it right and flew business class".

But instead of admiration, you got resentment! Some people liked your post, but not the cool people. They remained conspicuously silent. The horror, the horror!

A new way would have to be found to demonstrate separation from the seething middle classes. Enter "inconspicuous consumption", in the words of Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, writing for Aeon.

"This new elite cements its status through prizing knowledge and building cultural capital, not to mention the spending habits that go with it - preferring to spend on services, education and human-capital investments over purely material goods. These new status behaviours are what I call 'inconspicuous consumption'. None of the consumer choices that the term covers are inherently obvious or ostensibly material but they are, without question, exclusionary."

And so, with a world-weary sigh, it was goodbye to the Cristal and hello to caring quietly, but not too quietly.