This is the third part of a research conducted over the course of a year covering “Cultural Capital in the Age of Cultural Co-Creation” in the luxury industry. This first part covers Performing: Prestige Through Participation.

Marketing in luxury today hinges on curated participation. This article analyzes how semiotic fluency, discursive performance, and symbolic filters generate new hierarchies of prestige. Drawing from digital ethnography on Reddit and Discord, as well as campaign analysis (e.g., Margiela’s Tabi drop, Dolce & Gabbana’s NFT couture), it examines how exclusivity has become a collaborative, performative economy.

Prestige is now less about ownership than authorship. Consumers who can decode, remix, and align with a brand’s symbolic grammar accrue cultural capital. Margiela’s Discord release demanded fluency in cryptic cues and communal timing: legitimacy came not from mere purchase, but from participatory literacy. Similarly, Balmain x Barbie’s digital styling contests offered structured play within rigid brand parameters, reinforcing narrative control while inviting superficial co-authorship.

AI and AR tools increasingly shape these engagements, allowing for scalable yet curated interaction. These technologies stage interaction as illusion: a simulation of democratization where the brand’s aesthetic sovereignty remains intact. Participation becomes performance, digitally mediated and semiotically policed.

On forums like r/Luxury or r/femalefashionadvice, symbolic capital accrues via knowledge labor. Contributors who reference Phoebe Philo-era Céline or dissect Dior’s design shifts between creative directors earn credibility through insight, not influence. Taste becomes an epistemic skill.

This produces typologies:
Curators elevate niche or archival pieces, shaping resale interest.
Critics interpret campaigns, calling out symbolic inconsistency.
Influencers, in this ecosystem, are taste leaders, not content maximizers.

Sustainability further stratifies this prestige economy. Minimalism, longevity, and restraint have replaced opulence as the new luxury virtues. Platforms like The RealReal and accounts like @organiclab.zip valorize ethics as style. Brands increasingly practice “strategic opacity” (Holt, 2023). Chanel’s hidden couture salons, Cartier’s private viewings, and Balenciaga’s burner accounts all produce mystique. Meaning is not absent but is concentrated. Interpretation becomes privilege.

Communities self-regulate these codes. On Reddit and Discord, users critique inauthentic alignments and moderate taste discourse. Legitimacy is earned through narrative fluency and stylistic coherence.

Exclusivity in the digital age is no longer about denial; it is about aesthetic alignment. The consumer’s role is not passive but performative, an actor in the brand’s symbolic theater. Cultural capital is generated through discourse, interpretation, and the ability to occupy the brand’s semiotic terrain with fluency and restraint. In this evolving prestige economy, participation is not open but curated, and legitimacy is earned through symbolic labor, not simply financial expenditure.

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References:

• Arsel, Z., & Thompson, C. J. (2011). “Demythologizing Consumption Practices.” Journal of Consumer Research, 37(5), 791–806.
• Beichert, T., Schmidt, C., Baur, J. D., & Hinz, O. (2024). “Revenue Generation through Influencer Marketing.” Journal of Marketing Research (forthcoming).
• Goldenberg, J., Libai, B., & Muller, E. (2024). “Targeting Nearby Influencers.” Journal of Marketing Research(forthcoming).
• Holt, D. B. (2023). “Strategic Opacity: A New Approach to Managing Brand Meaning in the Digital Era.” Harvard Business Review.
• Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Routledge.