Fashion in the Age of Post-Provenance
In today’s luxury landscape, the signs of quality—hand-finished details, artisanal production, and traceable materials—have not vanished, but they have been rendered optional. The symbolic value of provenance, once tied to history and labor, is increasingly displaced by the performance of exclusivity. The rise of dupes and superfakes, the normalization of knockoffs, and the embrace of mass-market versions of luxury all point toward a culture of post-provenance luxury. In this world, what matters is not whether something is crafted in a Florentine atelier but whether it looks expensive and resonates with familiar codes of luxury. In this cultural shift toward post-provenance, quality has been displaced by spectacle and luxury has become an atmosphere. At stake is the symbolic infrastructure of luxury itself—its ability to anchor identity, signify value, and organize aesthetic hierarchies.