The New Leisure Class
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory and Tweed in the Twenty-first Century
The American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class remains an influential work in sartorial studies, although it is typically invoked as an Aunt Sally, and a popular subject of criticism and contention. Veblen’s thesis, which is probably better known for enunciating the concept of ‘conspicuous consumption’, identified a burgeoning social elite within nineteenth-century America: the...
