8 luxury brands that rich people avoid but every middle-class shopper chases

Tension: The middle class seeks luxury to signal success, while the truly wealthy often avoid overt branding, creating a paradox of perception versus reality.

Noise: Social media spectacle, marketing strategies, and culture’s fixation on visibility distort our understanding of wealth, equating logos with legitimacy.

Direct Message: True wealth doesn’t need to be advertised; it’s the quiet confidence that never has to shout.

Read more about our approach → The Direct Message Methodology

The rise of “quiet luxury” isn’t really about fashion. It’s about power.

In the HBO show Succession, the Roy family—a billionaire dynasty circling its own moral drain—dresses with clinical restraint. No gold chains, no logo bags, no big designer names stitched across sweatshirts. Shiv Roy wears Loro Piana. Kendall favors stealthy baseball caps from obscure brands that cost more than rent. Their clothes whisper the same message their money screams: we don’t need you to know.

And that’s the point. Quiet luxury isn’t subtle—it’s strategic. It inverts everything the middle class is taught about how to be seen.

Because for most people, fashion is aspirational. It’s how we signal taste, status, success. Owning a piece from a “luxury” brand is more than a purchase; it’s a declaration: I’ve arrived. And in that space between perception and reality, a strange tension blooms—where the brands most desired by the many are quietly avoided by the few.

Here are eight of those brands. Loved by the aspirational. Often skipped by the truly affluent.

• Michael Kors
  Once the face of attainable glamour, Michael Kors became a victim of its own success. When my friend Emma finally bought the Jet Set tote she’d been eyeing for months, she was elated. Six weeks later, she spotted the same bag on a teenager at a train station and again in a TikTok haul. The shine wore off. What once felt aspirational started to feel common. And in the world of luxury, common is the kiss of death.

• Coach
  Coach’s signature “C” pattern was once a flex. Now, it’s a relic. My colleague James told me his wife, once a diehard Coach fan, now refers to it as “entry-level luxury.” She’s not alone. Though Coach has leaned into Gen Z appeal with bold rebrands, the elite tend to view it as accessible—and that very accessibility disqualifies it.

• Guess
  Guess built its empire on bold logos and sex appeal. But times have changed. As noted in Yahoo Finance, these days, “prominent logo displays often backfire, making brands seem inauthentic and less cool.” I’d say that cultural shift has been devastating to Guess, whose loud design DNA now feels out of sync with the silent codes of quiet luxury.

• Armani Exchange
  The “younger” sibling of Giorgio Armani, Armani Exchange was created to make designer fashion more accessible. And it worked. Which is precisely the problem. Its affordability and mass-market availability mean it rarely shows up on those who want to signal exclusivity, not just style.

• Hugo Boss
  Hugo Boss built its name on precision tailoring and corporate polish. But now? It’s in limbo. Analyst Yanmei Tang put it bluntly: “Hugo Boss’s repositioning has left it in a no-man’s land.” It’s not fast fashion. But it’s no longer luxury either. 

• Ralph Lauren
  Few logos are as globally recognized as the polo pony. But that’s part of the problem. Its sheer ubiquity has drained it of status. As the brand stretches from outlet malls to runways, only its higher-end lines like Purple Label retain true cachet among the discreetly rich.

• Tommy Hilfiger
  The revival of Tommy Hilfiger brought with it a kind of nostalgic cool. But even its founder admits where the brand really sits. “If I can sell an affordable version of luxury, that’s a great position for our business,” he said. And that’s exactly what it is: affordable luxury. Not the real thing.

• Tory Burch
  Loved by the middle class for its clean lines and logo flats, Tory Burch often feels too visible for the truly wealthy. A luxury concierge I interviewed put it best: “My clients like her designs—but they’ll pay extra to remove the hardware.” In quiet luxury, recognizability can be a liability.

The direct message

True wealth doesn’t need to be advertised; it’s the quiet confidence that never has to shout.

In the world of quiet luxury, absence is a presence. The lack of branding is the flex. The absence of flash is the signal.

The ultra-rich aren’t immune to vanity—but their vanity takes a different form. They care about fabric provenance, perfect tailoring, invisible markers of cost that only the equally wealthy might notice. What they’re wearing isn’t meant for you. It’s meant for themselves, or for others in the know.

But when you’re not already in that world, logos become like passports. They say: I belong here. They say: I’ve made it. And for many in the middle class, that feeling—however fleeting—is worth the price.

Still, the risk is real. When success is defined by visibility, we start performing instead of living. The dopamine hit of a new bag lasts weeks. The debt might last years.

So maybe the most radical thing we can do isn’t to chase the next item or mimic the wardrobes of the ultra-rich. Maybe it’s to cultivate a version of self-worth that doesn’t demand confirmation from a logo.

Luxury is shifting. It’s not in the stitch count or the shoe line. It’s in the silence.

In a world desperate to be seen, maybe the rarest form of wealth is being content to go unnoticed.