It’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I like to think it’s what gives us our aspirational charm. Look at how we breathlessly declare life’s luxuries with drama and emphasis – that invisible exclamation mark that hangs in the air to allow the heady grandeur of the moment to sink in.
A mountain house is not a simple villa but a VILLa! A dinner jacket is a SMOking! The best whisky was BLACK! long before black became BLUE! And before we discovered the Germans and the Japanese made them better, all 4x4’s were a RANge! By the same token, any boat with a motor (the Lebanese don’t sail) was a LANche and any semi automatic rifle was a KLAshen! I could go on but I think you get the picture. Not only do we do big, we positively bask in the idea of it.
This is probably why we have not embraced eco-friendly cars like the VW Up – in any case try saying “up” with a serious face. We don’t get tax breaks for buying one, so why deal with the manually-adjustable wing mirrors and the cheap styling, when you can buy a horribly overpriced, trimmed-up and optioned-to-the-eyeballs Mini Cooper or Fiat 500?
But while dinky is good, dinky might also kill you, especially with all those bleary-eyed Khazak lorry drivers on our roads, so when it comes to cars, it really is better to buy a fuck-off, gas guzzler. And so what if it has a carbon footprint the size of Wyoming?
Having a big car is one way to show off. Telegraphing to the world that you have more money than taste by wearing a watch the size of a Lancaster’s bombsight is another. Apparently, it is no longer enough to have a Patek Philippe Calatrava in white gold, lurking deliciously under one’s Turnbull and Asser double cuff, that is itself hovering not a million miles from a sandpaper dry martini and a packet of Sullivan and Powell cigarettes and Dunhill lighter, naturally.
The night is now owned by what Evelyn Waugh called “smooth young men of dubious taste”. These creatures wear U-Boat, Bell and Ross or Hublot - all watches that are all defined by size. They drink over-priced vodka, smoke Cohibas and wield a lighter that would have performed admirably at Dien Bien Phu. All in the name of thinking big, sadly.
The most comical expression of the ‘think big’ culture – and this one’s even funnier than the price of a bottle of Grey Goose – must be the advent of the oversized breast logo. Take Ralph Lauren. The wholesome American clothing brand used to announce its presence with a 1-inch polo player, mid swing, reassuringly stuck to our left breast. It said “I’m richer than Fred Perry-wearing casuals and manlier than the crocodile-emblazoned Lacoste Euro-trash”. Now it seems we have doubts and want the same Polo player five times larger to remind everyone, even the legally blind and scientists floating in space, of the shirt’s provenance.
So what has happened to the understated? To which aesthetic Elba has elegance been exiled, leaving us to yearn for a time long gone, a golden age when brands did not scream brawn? Well, here’s something for the ‘size matters’ crowd to mull over. Those nice people at Savoir Beds, the undisputed Rolls Royce of sleeping furniture (their entry level bed starts at $11,000) were overjoyed to hear that, in a recent poll in which girls were asked what was sexier: a man who boasted he drove with a Ferrari or a man who slept in a $20,000 bed, the majority opted for the latter. Clearly, it’s the arriving, not the journey, that matters. As it were.
