I happen to be reading Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, written in the 18th century. There are a ton of letters and, frankly, most of them are quite boring. But this passage from a letter he wrote in October 1748 stuck out to me. It feels pertinent to the discourse about the coming Swatch x Audemars Piguet collaboration, which has some people feeling a certain way.
An excerpt from his letter:
"What the French justly call les maniéres nobles are only to be acquired in the very best companies. They are the distinguishing characteristics of men of fashion; people of low education never wear them so close, but that some part or other of the original vulgarism appears. Les maniéres nobles equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy. Low people in good circumstances, fine clothes, and equipages, will insolently show contempt for all those who cannot afford as fine clothes, as good an equipage, and who have not (as their term is) as much money in their pockets: on the other hand, they are gnawed with envy, and cannot help discovering it, of those who surpass them in any of these articles, which are far from being sure criterions of merit. They are likewise jealous of being slighted; and consequently suspicious and captious; they are eager and hot about trifles because trifles were, at first, their affairs of consequence. Les maniéres nobles imply exactly the reverse of all this. Study them early; you cannot make them too habitual and familiar to you."
In plainer, more modern English, Chesterfield here says that people of truly high status exhibit emotional discipline and a generosity of spirit, so that they never sneer downward or seethe upward. They are not concerned with small rank signals, such as who is wearing what. Bristling at whether someone is wearing a cheaper version of your watch, and thus possibly diluting your status, is itself a mark of low character and thus status.
I should add that, when you read Chesterfield's letters, you find him to be often very self-serving. He's not concerned about morality for its own sake, but how the appearance of virtue frames him as a gentleman (and therefore a man of higher status). But I found the passage above to be nice, nonetheless.
RTH (@RTHztk7)
We are social creatures. All social creatures have hierarchies, and it is axiomatic that higher is better. At the deepest level, higher = safety, opportunity, access. What could otherwise takes years, can be compressed into instantaneous signaling. These watches compromise this.
— https://nitter.net/RTHztk7/status/2054009570352103764#m