Keeping Up Appearances Can Hurt Your Wallet

New York Fashion Week will leave some delusional

Fashion’s Night Out, the three-year-old celebration of fashion, celebrity and partying, will take place this Thursday in cities across the country. Here in New York, women and men will hop from store to store, sipping champagne, listening to music and (if the retailers get what they want) dropping some cash on fall fashion steals. Many of these folks will have the funds to buy what they want even without the night’s special price promotions, while others wouldn’t be able to afford these top designers without it. Then there will be those who really can’t afford to do any sort of shopping, yet will gladly trick off much of their September rent/cell/grocery money in order to play along.

Faking it until you make it is a delicate art; some manage to do it with style and grace, while others will create lifelong debt attempting to keep up with some sort of façade of attainment. They want to look like ballers, but instead of putting themselves on track to actually obtaining wealth, they’ll just buy the same shoes, the same bags, the same experiences as the folks they admire can afford. It’s a sad, sad thing.

One of the most unfortunate things about faking one’s success or material worth is that it is often done for an audience of people who are also fronting. Talk to any nightclub promoter and you’ll be surprised to know how many of those bottle service packages are purchased by security guards, administrative assistants and other folks who may earn a respectable salary, but don’t really have the income to spend that sort of money on something experiential. And yet they do, often to the detriment of their long-term financial picture.