The Luxury of Looking Expensive: A Masterclass in Branded Nonsense

 

The Luxury of Looking Expensive: A Masterclass in Branded Nonsense

Hindi Version: https://rakeshinsightfulgaze.blogspot.com/2026/04/blog-post_2.html

Once upon a time, industrialization had a simple goal: to make things cheaper so more people could afford them. Better production, lower costs, improved lives. That was the idea.

Then came branding, and everything quietly lost its mind. Suddenly, the same shirt wasn’t just a shirt. It became a “statement.” Not because of better fabric or craftsmanship, but because someone important wore it. The value shifted from what the product is to who is seen wearing it. Congratulations, we successfully replaced logic with labels.

And here’s the real brilliance: the people making the most money often have nothing to do with actually making the product.

In India, this has reached a whole new level of performance art. Scroll through social media and you’ll find millionaires proudly listing the price of everything they’re wearing shirt, shoes, watch, sunglasses, as if they’re reading out a grocery bill from a parallel universe. The question is: is this wealth, or is this someone who just walked out of a jackpot and is still figuring out how money works?

Many of these individuals, especially athletes, have earned extraordinary incomes through talent. Fair enough. But somewhere along the way, earning money got confused with understanding money. Spending became a spectacle.

And here’s where it stops being funny. Yesterday, I saw a car that gives 2 to 3 kilometers per liter. Its price? Over 325,000 US dollars. Let that sink in. The same company makes similar-sized vehicles for around 30,000 dollars, ten times cheaper. The only real difference? A badge. A “British luxury” identity.

So what exactly are you paying for? Certainly not efficiency. Not practicality. And definitely not responsibility. Because this isn’t just expensive, it’s wasteful. A vehicle like that burns fuel at a rate that makes environmental sense irrelevant. It exists purely as a display. It moves a person from point A to point B just like any other car, in roughly the same time, but with far greater environmental damage. More fuel burned, more emissions released, more resources wasted for what? A logo on the hood.

Branding, it turns out, doesn’t just inflate prices. It inflates ego at the cost of the environment.

And this is the pattern.

When branding drives consumption, prices stop reflecting value. They start reflecting perception. That perception trickles down. Costs rise. Aspirations rise faster. And suddenly, the average consumer is paying more not for better products, but for better logos.

Meanwhile, the local shopkeeper the one actually selling useful, affordable goods slowly gets pushed out. Because when the system tilts toward perception over practicality, small businesses can’t compete with mass-produced, brand-heavy ecosystems. You don’t notice it immediately, but over time, the neighborhood store disappears and gets replaced by a giant retail chain selling you the same thing, just with better lighting and higher margins.

And while all this is happening, the country is busy worshipping spectacle.

Indian Premier League and Bollywood have convinced people that billions are just around the corner. What gets conveniently ignored is the math. Out of billions of people, maybe a few hundred make it to that level. The rest are left chasing a dream built on exceptions, not reality.

But the system bends anyway. Governments stretch resources, block cities, and inconvenience ordinary people all to support industries that already generate massive wealth. The irony? The cost of this “glamour economy” is quietly paid by the very people who will never benefit from it.

This isn’t new. Mahatma Gandhi understood something simple but powerful: if you control consumption, you control the system. By rejecting overpriced imports, he didn’t just make a statement; he disrupted an entire economic model.

Today, we’ve done the opposite. We’ve embraced the idea that paying more makes something better and worse, that it makes us better. At its core, branding feeds one thing: ego. The need to feel different, superior, elevated. And it does so brilliantly by convincing people to pay extra for that feeling.

So now we have a world where a car that wastes fuel is celebrated, a logo costs more than the product, and looking rich matters more than thinking rationally. It’s not just consumption anymore. Its performance. And the environment, the economy, and common sense are all paying the price.