Pretentious Peacocking

When Creative Rebellion Becomes Cultural Currency

I was recently studying Maison Martin Margiela’s Fall/Winter 1989–90 collection, the house’s second collection, presented at the Paris nightclub Le Globo. The models seemed to be styled like young party girls: free-spirited, adventurous, unconventional and expressive, but with the resourcefulness of someone who could build a look without fashion’s finer things. Black ribbons were tied around their fingers like rings, while thicker ribbon wrapped around their necks and hair, creating a billowing faux bob. These ordinary materials could be found around the house or purchased inexpensively, yet they elevated the looks in a way that said, I’m doing this intentionally. I’m expressing myself. The house was still young, establishing its standards and defining its creative voice.

Margiela’s collection suggested that fashion could be found anywhere and created from almost anything. Yet the early work that communicated that radical idea would eventually become an exclusive cultural signifier within fashion.

So why is it that once creative brands achieve cultural prestige and establish themselves as tastemakers, they so often become synonymous with exclusivity? And why do the spaces built around art begin to feel most pretentious when art represents the freedom of creative expression, not the restriction of it?

Art requires excellent editing and refinement, but refinement is different from restriction. The former calls on the artist to let go of or cut away anything that does not serve the larger vision or purpose. The latter prevents the idea from being explored at all in order to remain acceptable. It requires the art to live within a defined box, which is the antithesis of great art in the first place. In environments governed by unspoken standards of taste, artists can begin editing themselves before they have made anything—avoiding what might appear cheap, excessive, naïve or unsophisticated. That premature self-consciousness is where creative expression begins to die.

Simple economics explains part of it. When demand already exists, scarcity can raise an object’s economic value, while prestige gives it social meaning. But scarcity is only part of luxury value; craftsmanship, fashion media, historical storytelling and the social construction of desirability teach consumers what is worth wanting. In Margiela’s early years, the house operated on a relatively small scale. Its use of repurposed materials and artisanal techniques made certain garments difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce exactly. Decades later, surviving pieces from that period carry both material scarcity and cultural significance as artifacts from a formative moment in fashion history.

Pair the mystique created by the house’s early commitment to anonymity, which resisted the cult of designer celebrity, with its later commercial prestige, and a paradox emerges: work created in opposition to fashion’s hierarchy is now increasingly collected as a symbol of access to it.

Another contradiction exists: the cultural spaces most inaccessible to people without money often romanticize the image of the starving artist. The aesthetics of poverty become seductive once translated into resourcefulness, rawness and bohemian freedom—especially for those protected from its material consequences. The fantasy can be consumed without the instability, stigma or constrained choices that accompany the reality.

Once rebellion becomes canonized, it is safe to consume. Its symbols can be purchased without requiring buyers to incur the creative or social risks that first gave them meaning. What once disrupted the institution becomes evidence of one’s privileged position within it.

This transformation of creative experimentation into a marker of knowledge and wealth is the commodification of “cool.” Pretentious peacocking is the performance of intellectual sophistication as proof of taste: the use of obscure references, expensive objects and proximity to creativity to suggest that one possesses an artistic and cultural instinct that cannot actually be purchased.

Creative engagement is restless, driven by exploration and curiosity. Status performance attempts to claim the resulting taste and intellectual insight through the acquisition of art.

This can be observed in the reception of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s nonconformity. His work was praised, exhibited and assigned extraordinary market value, even as he remained subject to racism and tokenization. Along the way, the persona projected onto him became part of what the market consumed: an unruly young genius whose supposed wildness affirmed the connoisseur’s cultivated sophistication. In these spaces, the artist can become an extension of the exhibition, their presence offering proximity to the creative instinct embodied by the work.

The artist’s position within these spaces remains uniquely precarious. Access depends not only on the strength of their work but also on their self-presentation, relationships and an institution’s willingness to recognize it. Even then, timing and luck must be on their side. After gaining entry, the artist may feel pressure to continue producing work that feels original enough to sustain attention yet palatable enough to retain institutional support. Those who receive acclaim and achieve longevity may eventually be cemented as icons. Death can also fix an artist’s public image and, in some cases, intensify canonization and market attention.

There is no clean division between the artist and the consumer. Artists consume culture, and collectors can possess genuine curiosity. The distinction lies less in who purchases the object than in what they expect it to communicate: an encounter with another person’s vision or evidence of their own sophistication.

Of course, there is an irony in writing this at all. To recognize Margiela, invoke Basquiat and diagnose the performance of taste is also to demonstrate my own cultural fluency. I know this performance because I participate in it. I enjoy the satisfaction of recognizing a reference, but I also fear being the person in the room who does not—the one judged, dismissed or quietly laughed at for what they have not yet learned. What troubles me is not knowledge itself but the use of knowledge as a gatekeeping device: a way to make sweeping judgments about someone’s intelligence or worth without considering their access to education, their experiences or simply the subjects that have inspired their curiosity. It is a form of cruelty I actively try not to reproduce. Perhaps none of us is entirely outside the performance, but we can decide whether our knowledge becomes an invitation or a barrier.

The question is whether taste remains a pathway into genuine curiosity or becomes a costume we wear to be recognized by others.

While these environments may feel highly controlled and stifling, they also often promise beauty, validation and proximity to people whose work has shaped culture. The artist may appear exempt from the room’s rules, but that freedom is often conditional. Their nonconformity is welcomed only while it remains legible, profitable and entertaining to the institution. Exceptionality is often the price of that permission.

The artist’s role in these spaces is not to master the performance of taste or fall victim to the rules of the game. It is to remain curious enough to keep finding inspiration where tastemakers do not yet see value: in the cheap, the ordinary, the overlooked and the supposedly unfashionable. Taste tells us what the world has already learned to value. Curiosity leads us toward what it has overlooked.

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Sources & Further Reading

The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Maison Margiela, Fall/Winter 1989–90 Ensemble

The Met’s collection entry identifies Fall/Winter 1989–90 as Maison Martin Margiela’s second collection and discusses the house’s use of vintage and repurposed materials.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Maison Margiela, Fall/Winter 1989–90 Waistcoat

The Met discusses Margiela’s refusal of interviews and portraits, the house’s emphasis on collective labor and its use of found materials and exacting craftsmanship. Additionally, their collection material provides further context on Margiela’s use of deconstruction, found objects, vintage fabrics and repurposed materials to challenge established conventions of high fashion and luxury.

The Broad — Jean-Michel Basquiat

The Broad examines Basquiat’s rise within the 1980s art world, the racism embedded in his reception and the simultaneous celebration and tokenization he experienced within the art establishment.

Whitney Museum of American Art — Jean-Michel Basquiat

The Whitney provides biographical and institutional context for Basquiat’s career, including his early international recognition, participation in Documenta and the Whitney Biennial, and the museum’s 1992 retrospective.

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