Recession porn

It’s no new trend that there seems to be a direct correlation between economic downturn and an increased interest in the lives of the mega-rich. In Britain, right up to the 19th century in ye olden days before X-factor, it was a common form of Saturday night entertainment for the tenants or local villagers to watch the lord and lady of the manor eating their voluptuous dinner of roasted beasts before being kicked out the backdoor with the scraps.  Now, even in the year of our lord Simon Cowell, 2011, our bleak recession Christmas was cheered not just by the whine of the musical underdogs on ITV but by a new breed of prime-time show: Recession Porn. Occupying a family-friendly 8 or 9pm slot, recession porn is far from old-fashion porn-porn, although it is mostly old-fashioned. Yes, we common folk love nothing more these days than to sit down in front of the screen to indulge in a full hour of lavish über-posh voyeurism in the form of programmes like Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs, or a trip to the cinema to watch The King’s Speech.
And it’s not just posh telly that got us drooling. As someone who has followed fashion to the point of obsession since I was old enough to buy Vogue with my pocket money, never before has the annual haute couture week in Paris been so extensively covered by the world media, in particular daily newspapers. Last week the Guardian G2 hosted a 3-page spread on the recent couture collections titled ‘How the other half dress.’ Surely, Jess Cartner-Morley, don’t you mean how the other 0.001% dress?  This is fashion designed for human beings so outrageously wealthy that many can’t even stake their claim to their front-row seats, for fear of being caught in photographs and risking kidnapping. As potential kidnappers, we may never get a glimpse of these haute-couture fashion icons, however fortunately, our source of über-posh inspiration has a new face. Kate Middleton has replaced Kate Moss as the Grazia poster girl for steal-her-style commentary. Pictured in a Reiss dress for her official engagement picture, Kate triggered a shopping goldrush as shoppers caught in a frenzy of posh idolatry raced to buy the white ‘Nanette’ dress online, only to find it had sold out. Copycat versions were spawned and appeared in Tesco and Peacocks within a fashion minute. The fascination and excitement of a nation with a young couple on the brink of making the move from quite quietly posh to Über-Posh in a multi-million pound wedding explosion, despite a catastrophically severe economic sinkhole opening under us, is testimony to the fact that the gloriously privileged will indeed reign over us all, and we seem to be jolly happy about it.