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Great post, interesting observation, keen to hear what others have to say. But two quick thoughts.
(1) how much of this is the rise of wealthy Arabs/Russians/Chinese etc. as potential potential customers? Norms can be difficult to communicate cross-culturally and even harder to motivate (“so what if French people think shorts are just for sport and the beach, if it’s hot I’ll wear them to lunch”). But as the purchasing power of outsiders increases, the cost of excluding them becomes greater, so these codes get retired.
(2) Enforcing these codes requires a certain amount of skill and perspicacity, especially once we get beyond Rolexes into Patek Philippes and Vacheron Constantins. As the role of sales clerk has been shunted down the social ladder, most employees don’t have the knowledge or empowerment to enforce them.
Most sales assistants at the very top of fashion and jewelry are either rich kids or wealthy older women looking for light work after the kids have left home. Quite a few are gay men, usually of upper middle class origin, who can make $200k a year doing very little real work other than hanging around the store and bitching all day in between flattering customers. I wouldn’t really describe any of them as particularly low on the social ladder.
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On (1), it's probably people from other regions of the US as well. Especially California, but the entire West has been informal for multiple generations now. When I was a child, men could dress up for going out either Hawaiian or Texan, and the women would wear their normal dresses, but add some artisinal turquoise and silver jewelry. My family usually dressed Hawaiian -- you can just wear shorts and sandals instead of needing nice boots and maybe a nice belt buckle as well.
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