Is it a bird? Is it a luxury mop? Or maybe a cosplay of an Upper East Side hawk? No. It's a coat from Saint Laurent. A coat that costs more than the annual upkeep of an average family with three children and a mortgage. Over a million dollars for outerwear made of silk organza and feathers. Yes, you read that right -million dollars. And although it sounds like a joke, it is fashion that writes the most absurd scenarios today.
At a time when most people dream of last-minute vacations in Croatia and butter promotions, Saint Laurent shows that true luxury knows no empathy. Instead, it knows momentum, theater and a price tag that ceases to be a number and becomes a political and class statement. This coat is not a garment. It's a manifesto. It's a story about “being above it all - literally and figuratively.”
Fashion used to be a mystery. A subtle suggestion of style. Today it is a megaphone. If luxury was once like a whisper from a fine salon in Paris, today it shouts from the front row at a show: "See me! I'm the most expensive!" And very well - because, after all, no one buys a million-dollar coat to stay warm. Such a coat is bought to make others cold. Out of jealousy. Out of frustration. Out of that elusive feeling of “I'll never have something so pointlessly expensive.”
Fashion houses that once cared about tailoring for duchesses and movie legends are now catering to the tastes of those with a limitless card and suffering from chronic boredom. That's why more and more ready-to-wear collections resemble performance haute couture. Clothes designed not to live, but to be seen. To make their presence known on Instagram, TikTok, in the showroom or at lounges where smiles are always slightly ironic.
After all, a coat like this one from Saint Laurent is not for walking. He is for contemplation. It's like an image of the modern world - beautiful, strange, disconnected from reality and priced so high that you won't even come close. Because who wears it? Obviously not me, not you, not even someone “known from the Internet.” It's a product made for the elite over the elite - people who don't ask the question “can I afford it,” only “is it exclusive enough for me to consider it.”
A million-dollar coat does not need justification. He is the justification. For all the aesthetics of exaggeration, for the obsession with uniqueness, for a world in which price has more value than product. And, of course, there will be voices saying that this is exaggeration, that it is a manifestation of detachment from real problems - but fashion has long since ceased to be sensitive. Fashion is not here to improve the mood. It is here to dominate, to shock, to mark a hierarchy.
And snobbery? Snobbery is the most democratic elite today - anyone can try, but few reach the level where you can wear a feather coat for the equivalent of a studio apartment in downtown Krakow and still feel good about it.
And that's why fashion still has power. Because even if we can't afford it, we still look. Even if we criticize, we still say so. And this coat? He doesn't have to be practical. He has already won - because we write about him.
Photo courtesy of Saint Laurent
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