Status Symbol for Rent

TRACING THE PATH PODCAST

Every age has its symbols of arrival. Once it was the sword at your side or the family crest above your door, then a coin, sometimes a crown. But the thing about symbols, they’re never really about the thing. They’re all about us and our longing to be seen, our fear of being ordinary, and what we’re willing to trade for the illusion of importance.

This story is about the human race forever searching for meaning in the mirror of material things. Until one day, that’s not what it was about.

Nobody ever creates a status symbol. You can certainly design something expensive or hard to get. You can market it, push it, surround it with velvet ropes, but that’s not enough. A true status symbol isn’t manufactured by a boardroom.

It’s anointed by the people, the people who desire it, by the stories whispered about it, by the envy it stirs. and those who can’t have it.

Status symbols aren’t price tags. They are the emotion that is provoked.

That is why it is hard to believe the archaeologists and historians who piece together clues making observations about ancient life using items and artifacts to create historical facts. For instance, you will read that the stone tools found from 10,000 BC are not not often cut from the rock obsidian. And thus it is assumed that ownership of such tools must have meant you had access to trade networks and thus were a high worth individual.

It is suggested then that obsidian tools must have been a status symbol. But if the obsidian tools were made by people who lived near obsidian rock formations, and if they performed the same as other tools. Maybe there existed no envy whatsoever.

In South America, some of the tombs are found with bodies wearing necklaces of rare shells, suggesting prestige. But rare doesn’t mean prestige. Or modern-day presidents would be buried with four-leaf clovers and 1985 eraser mate pens.

Even the presence of Purple has created stories of purple as a status symbol. In 1,200 BC in Phoenicia, the only way to get purple dye was to extract it from sea snails, a process that is thought to have been expensive. But despite it being expensive and only available to the wealthy, it was also restricted to emperors and senators by legal decree.

Laws, however, don’t create status symbols as we know them today. They certainly do help delineate or characterize your status of emperor or senator, but it does not necessarily create envy or longing.

In today’s story, we’re going to talk about three of the most famous status symbols. One is a flower that people went bankrupt trying to get. Another is a fruit that was so highly envied people would rent it just to have it on the table as a centerpiece. And the third is a status symbol that still exists today, but it’s not a status symbol for everyone and for many for different reasons.

That takes us to the first part of our story.

The Great Tulipmania Economic Bubble

Did you know the term status symbol despite all the historical conjecture didn’t exist until 1955 when Tom Heatherly pair coined it in an article? However, the concept of status symbols have been discussed since 1899 when sociologist Thorston Vein suggested that the new rich created by the industrial revolution were partaking in conspicuous consumption, which is the act of buying stuff just to prove you are rich enough to do so.

You can see this today every time you drive by a home that has installed rain gutters made from copper.

But status symbols existed long before 1899, which takes us to the story of the flower that left thousands of people bankrupt.

It all begins on the Silk Road where the world’s goods were traded and the people of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia got to taste a little bit of each other’s worlds. Part of the Silk Road passed through the Tien Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan to which Kazakhstan’s fertile soil was the original home of apricots, pears, pomegranates, and figs.

Before travelers along the Silk Road gathered seeds, and expanded their reach around the world. And while the fertile ground was wonderful for growing beautiful things, it is thought that the Y.pestis bacteria which was responsible for the Bubonic Plague also originated here, before travelers scooped it up and introduced it to the world.

Beyond fruit, there were flowers in these mountains that were highly sought. One of those for travelers going east was a flower that looked like the lotus flower the Chinese revered. And another from the same species was a flower that looked like the turban worn by Middle Eastern men.

Except unlike a turban, it came in such brilliant colors.

When it was first brought to Turkey to the head of the Ottoman Empire, it was even given a name that meant turban. The Turkish word for turban then was tulbent and thus the flower was named “the tulip”.

Being a flower that had to be harvested 4,000 km away in Kazakhstan and then delicately transported by horse. It was introduced only to the gardens of the richest dignitaries. One of those dignitaries was Suleiman the Magnificent. In 1554, the Holy Roman Empire sent an ambassador to meet with Suleiman, at which time he saw the beautiful tulips in Sueiman’s gardens. 

During his stay, he described the flowers in many letters he sent home by messenger. And at home, word got to the Dutch national botanist, Carolus Clusius. The ambassador made sure Some bulbs were sent to him.

Carolus was fascinated by the flower. His first goal was to determine if the plant would grow and flower in the harsh northern Netherlands climate, which it did after considerable experimentation, including Carolus learning when it bloomed and the depth at which it needed to be planted.

He then started getting and cataloging the different types of tulips and would at leadership’s discretion provide some to wealthy friends and colleagues.

For 30 years, tulips were a flower of the wealthy, something you’d hear about but wouldn’t see. Gardeners everywhere began wishing they too could have these tulips. Then in 1593, Carolus was asked to create Leiden Gardens in Vienna, where his labor of love of could be seen by many.

Many got to see tulips for the first time.

The colors and beauty were more than most expected. Carolus had grown tulips with bright red and white flames and varied petal colors and multicolor variations. He didn’t know that a plant virus created the vibrant combinations, but he did know that grafting the bulbs would replicate them.

The flowers became so coveted that thieves stole many of his bulbs in 1596, propagated them, and distributed them across the Netherlands. By the 1600s, the flowers had been traded by society’s elite and were all over the Netherlands, which was well into the Dutch Golden Age.

It was actually back in 1588 when the Dutch Republic began to flourish in trade, scientific development, and overseas expansion. With all the overseas Dutch colonies needing wares and supplies, the Dutch people were experiencing unprecedented wealth. And the Dutch East Indies Company traveled even further, making even more demands on the products of the Dutch.

As Dutch culture flourished and more money was at hand, every household wanted the garden of tulips, it was the multicolored, vibrant tulips that captured the public’s attention.

What made them even more desirable was their impossible schedule. Tulips bloomed in April and May for about 15 days. Then they went dormant until September. But once fall hit, they needed to be planted for the spring bloom. which meant most of the year you couldn’t get them.

As the flowers grew in popularity, professional growers paid higher prices for the bright multicolored ones, and prices of tulips rose. But this new merchant middle class didn’t care. They had money and wanted their tulips.

As the price rose and rose and rose, speculators felt they could profit if they bought some bulbs now and then sold them later. So, they would approach growers with forward contracts, saying, “When those are ready to be picked in April, I’ll pay $100 for them,” for example.

But the speculators would meet other speculators who would pay more and would buy out their contracts. And it kept happening over and over again as the prices continue to rise.

In 1634, the prices really began to skyrocket. The general public started getting swept off their feet. Everyone wanted to be part of a system where you were guaranteed to make money.

The Semper Augustus tulip was the most famous. It had the most beautiful red and white variations. Its bulbs were being sold for more than the cost of a luxurious house on Amsterdam’s canals. People were actually selling their homes to spend the money on bulbs, knowing they’d make it back, and then some.

The demand became so large, regular markets for their sale showed up on the stock exchange of Amsterdam.

That changed in 1637. Buyers who were trying to sell their forward contracts before the grower put the tulips in pots and demanded payment couldn’t sell. Then a routine tulip auction in Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands, in February was empty.

No one showed up to pay the high price they had promised, and the market collapsed instantly.

The tulip mania crash of 1637 is considered the first economic bubble long before real estate, the.com and crypto was tulips.

All because of a status symbol.

The Dutch middle class wanted what the rich had and were willing to pay a premium to be associated with such wealth. Overnight, people realized tulips had no intrinsic value beyond status. The illusion had broken. Bulbs that were at one time worth more than a house couldn’t be sold for the price of an onion.

When the tulip bubble burst, it left behind more than economic ruin. It revealed something deeper about us. Sometimes it isn’t the thing itself we desire, but what it says about us.

But that isn’t the craziest status symbol story of today because in that story, no one was renting tulips to put on the table just to be part of the elite.

Someone Rented a Pineapple

But that was the case less than a century later. A new symbol of prestige was rising, though this time not a flower. What’s most interesting about these two stories is that in today’s technological age where Lamborghinis, Rolex watches and designer handbags are the stories. These first two are about flowers and fruit.

And so we go back to 1493 with Christopher Columbus. It was his second trip to the new world. On his second trip, he made a stop on a small island inhabited by local tribes that he renamed Guadalupe in honor of the Virgin Mary back in Spain.

No matter what name the island once had by its original inhabitants, exploration and colonization comes with the ego of western ideology.

It was on Guadalupe that Columbus came across a fruit so beautiful and sweet, he took as many as he could to bring them back to the King of Spain. Since the fruit looked a little bit like a pine cone, he named it Piña de Indies.

Sadly, the duration of the trip home was too long for the ripe piña, and only one survived the journey. The king of Spain and guests were bowled over by the sweet juiciness of the fruit.

Sugar cane, after all, was only one of a handful of sweets available at the time, which made Piña de Indies a true culinary delight. Its shaped looked like a crown of fire to the king, so he referred to it as King Piña.

While they very much wanted more, it was immediately obvious to everyone that this tropical surprise was not going to grow in the European climate. Also, since this new fruit was unknown to the old world, it was free of cultural resonance, which meant it could take on any meaning.

The apple, for instance, was forever tied to Adam and Eve in the Bible, and the pomegranate to the Greek goddess Persephony. The king of Spain was obsessed and wanted more.

He asked more explorers to bring some back, and he ordered that a method be designed to grow it.

Around that time, other explorers were bringing the fruit back to their home countries in Europe as well. People like Oliver Cromwell and Charles II of England were all introduced to this Piña de Indies.

It was the British, however, that gave the fruit its enduring name.

Piña de Indies was just a short placeholder until it became known as the pineapple.

Like tulips, it was the Dutch who first made headway cultivating the fruit. They began to build hot houses, a warm type of greenhouse to simulate tropical conditions. But the process wasn’t fast, because it took pineapple years of growth before they even bore fruit.

When Charles II was able to grow his first pineapple, he had a painting commissioned to commemorate the moment.

It was when King Louis 15th started growing them in hot houses in 1733 that the nobility imitated him. To grow their own, in this manner, it costs more than $3,000 to grow a single pineapple.

The relationship of pineapples to the nobility is what led the masses to want pineapples depicted on furniture, pottery, doors, table wear, teapots, and clothing.

Those who attained pineapples were worried about eating them, eating such high value fruit, and so they chose to display them instead. People who grew their own would display them with the top crown and some leaves to make sure everyone knew they were homegrown.

They were valuable enough that some hired security guards to protect their pineapple. In fact, in 1807, several court cases over pineapple theft left the criminals with a sentence of 7 years transportation back to Australia and Van Dieman’s land.

But the most amazing part is the thriving middle class who wanted so badly to be associated with nobility. They opened the door to entrepreneurs all over London.

Entrepreneurs bought pineapples and rented them out for the night so middle-class party hosts could put them on a special plate on the centerpiece of the table. Sometimes they would get rented more than once in an evening, and other pineapples would be seen all over at different parties.

But the status symbol started to go away when steamships began transporting pineapples and the numbers available increased.

The nail in the coffin was 1899, another century later, when James Dole started a pineapple plantation in Hawaii, hoping to sell and distribute them. And for the next seven decades, he would produce 75% of the world’s pineapples.

Today, a fruit that comes canned is far from a status symbol.

When Black America Saved Cadillac

That change is indicative of the 20th century as well.

Status symbols were no longer symbols of wealth, but instead symbols of success.

The industrial revolution created a new world led by trains, planes, and automobiles.

And this final story would not be a status symbol of wealth or success. Instead, it would become a status symbol of freedom.

Which brings our story to the the iconic personality of Mr. Henry Ford. Ford grew up on his farm, the kind of farm his family hoped he would one day take over. But Henry wasn’t interested in farming. He’d rather take apart a pocket watch, fix a tractor, or invent a new engine. That was his hobby when he was working for Thomas Edison as a young man.

In 1898, when he was building a pineapple plantation, Ford was resigning from Edison to create the Henry Ford Motor Company. His partners were a lumber baron named William H. Murphy and another partner, Lemule Bowen.

They had supplied the capital he needed for Ford Motor Company.

But in 1901, they had had a discussion with Henry Ford that ultimately led to Ford’s quitting, which led the investors Murphy and Bowen with a car manufacturing facility and an unknown future.

So they called a friend Henry M. Leland to consult.

Leland was part of Leland and Faulconer, an engine company. He was called to consult and appraise what they had so they could figure out how to sell it. But Leland didn’t give that appraisal. Instead, he advised them to go forward without Ford.

Leland had a single cylinder engine he wanted to start using. His company prided themselves on precision engineered engines and he thought they could make cars as well.

So Leland and Faulconer merged with Henry Ford’s former company to start anew. And being the 200th anniversary of the city of Detroit, they thought they’d named the company after the founder of Detroit. It was the French who settled the place with Lorenzo De Tonti in the caravan and Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac as the lead.

And thus this new company, the fourth automobile company in the United States, adopted the name Cadillac.

They would be the first precision engineered luxury car on the market. To make that point, they let everyone know that they were the first to integrate V8s, dual plane crankshafts, V12 overhead valves, and more, setting the standard for modern excellence.

In 1910, their Model 30 was promoted as a modern, high-quality automobile for affluent buyers and advertised in the Saturn Evening Post where they believed their buyers were reading.

But 1910 was also the year a great cultural shift was happening in America.

A shift called the great migration.

A boll weevil infestation in the south wiped out the cotton industry and cut jobs. All the while manufacturing like Henry Ford and Cadillac had created jobs in the north.

So between 1910 and 1971 over 6 million blacks migrated north.

But leaving the slave culture of the south did not mean it was wine and roses in the north.

White people still made life difficult. White people did not want black neighbors and made it virtually impossible for blacks to move in, if not in the designated black ghetto areas.

Banks didn’t allow them as customers and the media ignored their issues.

So they lived in a parallel economy in the same cities.

Being run by the same people who didn’t want black neighbors, the management of Cadillac felt their luxury cars should only be bought by whites. And thus, an unwritten rule was created for dealerships, no black buyers.

Despite Cadillac and banks and media and whites, black America had a growing middle and upper class as well.

Black doctors, lawyers, biz owners, singers, actors, and Pullman porters had money to spend and no different than anyone else, they too looked for status symbols. However, the culture which was led by white America at the time limited some of the traditional status symbols like home ownership and country club membership.

But the black-owned publications like the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier did provide moments of envy and desire, such as when they photographed prized boxer Harry Willis getting into his Cadillac after a fight, or singer Big Bill Broonzy arriving at his concert venue in his Cadillac.

It was clear the elite in black America had found ways to buy America’s forbidden luxury car.

But the stars who had Cadillacs weren’t buying them because they were status symbols. They were were buying them because they wanted precision engineered, technologically superior cars.

By 1921, in fact, the top-of-the-line Cadillac was the country’s most expensive vehicle. So, Affluent Black America figured out if they paid a white person $300, they too could have a Cadillac. And while it was a purchase to be associated with the wealthy elite, for black America, It was something bigger.

Instead of a Cadillac telling the world they were rich or successful, it told the world they were free. Free to make their own decisions, free to earn their own money, and free to own what they deserved.

What Cadillac didn’t see coming was the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression.

What is the first thing that gets cut in depression? luxury and luxury vehicles.

So when Cadillac was selling 41,000 cars in 1928, it only sold 6,000 in 1930. Cadillac leadership thought it probably wouldn’t make it much further.

So in 1934, after selling only 3,000 cars, the Cadillac board of directors met to decide if the company should shut down. That’s when a knock was heard from the door to their hotel conference room and the head of Cadillac service department walked in.

Uninvited.

Nicholas Dreystadt said, “Gentlemen, I know how to save Cadillac.” And he revealed a stunning insight leadership did not know. On his travels to dealerships, service departments around the country, he would often see black chauffeurs waiting for their cars to be serviced.

Wealthy black owners were paying white people a $300 bonus to buy them a Cadillac.

He asked the board, “Why should these white third party people be getting this $300?”

He said it was ludicrous to try to sell the Cadillac to the country club crowd who were decimated by the the Great Depression when the people who most aspire to own a Cadillac are regularly turned away.

Not only were black Americans worthy, but since they weren’t allowed to keep their money in their traditional banks, they also didn’t lose it when the big banks failed.

The board agreed to try Dreystadt’s plan, and within 2 years, Cadillac sales had more than doubled.

And black American had helped Cadillac reinvent itself, not as the old money car, but the symbol of success for everyone.

And not long after that, Dreystadt was in charge of Cadillac.

And while it was no longer the forbidden status symbol, it was still the sign of success.

This Cadillac story isn’t like the pineapple story where people wanted to flaunt wealth through a status symbol. And it wasn’t like the friend tulip bubble with Cadillac. Black America, instead of fighting with Cadillac, merely found a way around the speed bump.

Its quiet patronage eventually rebranded the company. Since then, Chuck Barry, Langston Hughes, Stephen Fetchett, Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, Louie Armstrong, and Outcast have rewarded the reversal.