Hey {{ first_name | Neighbor }}. Two Williamsburg dads in their 30s chat in line for Superman tickets. “Is Metropolis supposed to be New York?” asks the first. The second shakes his head. “It always looks like Chicago,” he explains. “But maps in the comics put it in Delaware.” The first dad checks his phone.
“I guess that’s where my LLC is based.”
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The “Self Presentation” Survey is an attempt to understand how members of the Oat Milk Elite strategically share (or don’t) personal information in social situations in order to seem normal, cool, relatable, or w/e. Full results will be shared exclusively with Upper Middle Research members and those that complete the survey.
TASTE ❧ Brown vs. Bored and Educated
Given the timing of its release – on the heels of Anna Wintour’s abdication at Vogue and years of public enshabbification – Empire of the Elite, Michael Grynbaum’s new history of the Condé Nast publishing concern, will be read in the context of failure. But it’s actually the story of a grand, century-spanning success.
Between 1909 and when your mom let her Vanity Fair subscription lapse, Condé Nast restructured the upper echelons of American society around a shared fantasy – membership in a club that didn’t really want anyone for a member. Upper Middle spoke to Grynbaum about the power of that fantasy, why it mattered, and why it still does. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Your book makes clear that Condé Nast never just chronicled trends among the elite — that it always shaped them. How did a publishing company come to occupy that role?
At the turn of the 20th century, industrialization had helped a small group of Americans amass great wealth. But these these railroad barons and newspaper moguls weren’t hereditary aristocrats. They didn’t have a clear idea of how they should behave or what they should consume. Vogue started as a society magazine helping this small group figure out what an American upper class should be.
What Condé Nast, who bought Vogue in 1909, understood was the appetite for that kind of content beyond Fifth and Park. There was a upper-middle class forming in cities across the country. It’s telling that his second acquisition was House and Garden – another magazine about expressing status through material goods. Nast was monetizing social aspiration.
Aspirations change. How did Condé Nast’s idea of the “right kind” of rich evolve — from old money to Hollywood to whatever we’re calling it now?
The mid-century Condé Nast magazines that got really popular reflected an Eastern establishment esthetic – threadbare sweaters, elbow patches, beat up station wagons –the whole Groton School look[1]. But through the 1970s and 1980s, they follow the rise of Wall Street and Hollywood. The first episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous aired the same week Tina Brown's first issue of Vanity Fair hit newsstands. Ostentation definitely crept in.
Tina Brown is a low-key towering figure. She didn’t just reshape Vanity Fair and The New Yorker — she arguably redefined elite. What made her transformative?Members of the British upper class are less self-conscious about their place atop the class system because there’s a history there. What Tina Brown brought to Vanity Fair in the 1980s was a lack of qualms. She wanted to publish stories about murder in Newport and sex scandals in Palm Beach – and she wasn't held back by any personal class anxiety. This gave readers of Vanity Fair permission to care about more prurient subjects.
After Brown went to the New Yorker and published a photo spread of O.J. Simpson’s legal team looking like celebrities, which they were, and Daphne Merkin writing about sadomasochism, a bunch of writers denounced her as having trashed a beloved institution. But the articles she published were incredibly erudite and cultured. That high low mix sort of told readers they didn’t have to pretend to like opera. They could be smart about anything.
Brown, Carter, Wintour — they picked fights and played favorites. Why did Condé Nast magazines have such sharp elbows?
If somebody's in, somebody has to be out. There’s a harshness to that.
It’s striking how often obviously wealthy people, like Donald Trump, are framed in Condé titles as gauche or “out.” Why has Condé Nast been so willing to exile the rich?
Conde Nast has never been totally exclusive and it’s not totally focused on the rich. Many of its great editors are middle class. It was a place that outsiders could rise and where idiosyncrasy was rewarded. In its own odd way, it’s a progressive institution. In the 1980s, Condé Nast was one of the few corporations where gay men could ascend to powerful positions. Women could rise were in powerful positions on the editorial side. The corporate sales side was always very male, but the company also paid for the medical care of employees with HIV during the AIDs crisis. Condé Nast reflects – or reflected, anyway – the creative class of New York City.
The company’s been on the decline for years, but your book resists the smug obituary tone others take. Why the absence of schadenfreude?
I grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, which is a well-to-do suburb, but these magazines still represented a certain kind of urban sophistication that was out of reach for me. They shaped my idea of what a writer's life could be like. I got to New York too late for the town cars and first-class tickets anyway, so I never felt too envious of being on the outside. Also, I think we’re watching influencers heavily influenced by Condé Nast brands trying to traffic in exclusivity in a way that’s more corrosive. Magazines provided a fantasy. That was the compact with the reader. Instagram purports to be reality. That’s far more misleading.
Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America is available now via Amazon and better places to buy books. It’s got anecdotes for fucking days.
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STATUS ❧ Local Color
The pejorative “summer people” thrown around by townies in seasonal hotspots like Sault Ste. Marie, Whidbey Island, Kill Devil Hills, and Camden implies a sort of of presumption verging on stolen valor. They act like they own the place just because they own the place. Though that resentment is understandable – summer people tend to winter in more comfortable spots[2] – it’s also rooted in a faulty premise. A few actually.
In 2006, sociologist Richard Stedman did a population study of Vilas County, a second-home heavy part of the woods Wisconsinites call “Up North.” Stedman found not only that seasonal residents had a stronger emotional attachment to the area than year-rounders, but that they had a longer standing relationships with the region—on average 43.5 years vs. 30.3—and knew just as many people. In fact, they were more likely to know their neighbors. Though there aren’t that many similar second home-centric ethnographies (even academics have better shit to do), work by Princeton sociologist Meaghan Stiman suggests that similar dynamics are likely at play across much of the Northeast.
So what are summer people? Not tourists. Not locals. Not interlopers either. They’re people who work elsewhere and make a different kind of claim to a place – one rooted in personal history and appreciation rather than in routine. Presumptuous? Perhaps. Probably…. But not unearned.
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MONEY ❧ Buttoned Down
Discretionary spending is down. Bank of America reported a 2.4% decline in Q2 year-over-year splurge among households earning $125K+ and many mid-tier luxury retailers – Lululemon, Michael Kors, Coach, Sandro, AllSaints, Restoration Hardware, – underperformed Q2 projections. HSBC calls this the “hourglass” effect: ultra- and mass-luxury hold steady, while retailers selling $400 bags and $600 shoes get cinched. But not all of them. Ralph Lauren, the mid-tier luxury standard bearer, saw growth (especially “heritage”). That’s not as strange as it sounds.
With downside risk at a local high – the market is priced to perfection under imperfect leadership – black car/cardless Soho shoppers are value investing their discretionary spend. This has happened before. Post-2008, logos shrank and Brooks Brothers[3] had a moment (before getting dick-kicked by Ludlow-era Crew). When fashion retreats, tradition tends to stand firm – which goes a way toward explaining why Birkenstock is seeing a 23% surge in North American sales while Golden Goose is going full Duck Hunt (*Wawawa Sound Effect*).
Discretionary spending is investing – just with a personal lifestyle thesis[4]. Right now, the thesis on Fifth Avenue is Americana first. That’s not bullish. It’s Polo Bear-ish.
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[1] Arguably, the original sin for Conde Nast – from a business perspective – was straying from prep. By chasing fads instead of reinforcing historical modes of exclusivity, the publisher found a bigger audience and created urgency, but also gave up a defensible social position.
[2] This dynamic gets stronger the further north you go. I grew up partially in Maine, where “Summer People” and “Pussies” are basically synonyms.
[3] Brooks Brothers has always been a particular kind of mid-tier luxury brand. It’s sales are hugely driven by sales and markdowns. The brand itself can’t command prices. That’s been the case since the 1980s.
[4] What we buy is a function of what we think we want, not what we want. Those are not remotely the same thing. In fact, most of us are probably better investors than spenders. Less speculative.