OP-ED: IS DRESSING BADLY A SIGN OF PRIVILEGE?
Over the decades of watching how people dress in America, this question has preoccupied me. It returned to my mind with renewed intensity over the past several years, as aspirational consumption in this country has kicked into overdrive. This observation comes from various directions: watching kids on the streets of SoHo strut in their logoed gear, looking at my daughter’s boyfriend who spends his hard-earned money on Moncler and Yeezy, reflecting on my own dress habits since I immigrated to America at the age of fifteen. We are all disparate, but we have one thing in common – we have known what it’s like to be poor and we are from ethnic minorities. We have something to prove, namely our worth, to each other and to this country. In other words, we are aspirational.