Response to comment

I take your point: one's appearance and one's conveyance matter everywhere--I'm not an actress, but I'd never show up to a job interview in sweatpants. But I don't live in LA, so no one would care what car I arrived in (in fact, metro would be the assumption). The thing is, there's a difference between investing in expensive things because you're in a profession and/or place where that's what your clients expect (like these New Yorkers who felt they had to shell out hundreds of dollars every two weeks for highlights). That's not the same as buying a car you can't afford or otherwise seeking out the trappings of wealth to impress people not in a position to hire you or buy from you.

DC is a solar system apart in its status culture, although the lawyers and lobbyists dress and drive flashy. The rest of us tend to keep it low-key. Tim Gunn has complained about it and Robin Givhan has made quite a career out of pointing it out (to be fair, I should say a fraction of a career). David Brooks' comment also sums it up brilliantly:

"Gail, recently I’ve become greatly disturbed by the cars that are owned by the top officials in the Obama administration. These are people who have been making serious change for many years as president of Harvard and that sort of thing. And yet according to published reports, they tend to drive 1995 Honda Civics and 1994 Ford Tauruses. In other words, they own the kind of cars that are the subject of a hundred “Car Talk” episodes because they only go into reverse when the radio is set on AM.

In my view, anybody making enough money to afford it should be driving an understated semi-luxury vehicle, like an Audi, Acura or an Infiniti. To drive less shows a lack of appreciation for the finer things in life, a lack of sensual acuteness, a certain inner drabness."

Again, none of this is to say that status doesn't matter. David Brooks has made much of a career pointing out that people will find subtler ways of signaling status.