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PORTSIDE CULTURE

FROM $85 TOMATO LEAF SOAP TO $2,300 HELLMANN’S MAYO HANDBAGS,
EVERYDAY FOOD IS NOW A STATUS SYMBOL  
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Leah Asmelash
April 13, 2025
CNN
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_ Food, especially seemingly modest ingredients, is a way to signify
wealth and luxury tastes. Fashion and design are an extension of that.
Wearing food as a design choice signals both that we have a palate for
that product and that we can afford it. _

The scale of "Motte de Beurre" (Mound of Butter) mirrors the
importance of the ingredient., Fine Art/VCG Wilson/Corbis
Historical/Getty Images

 

Take a look around your kitchen pantry, and what do you see?

Boxes of pasta stacked high, maybe, alongside tins of sardines or a
jar of olives. Maybe you have some fresh fruit lurking, olive oil or a
bag of rice.

But food motifs might also be popping up in your closet or living
room. Perhaps some tinned fish on a T-shirt or a farfalle-shaped
candle? The notion might seem strange, but across home decor and
fashion, even luxury sectors, there’s been an influx of food-centric
design. And it’s costing a pretty penny.

A stool resembling corn on the cob, made famous by influencer Emma
Chamberlain? $245
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A T-shirt stamped with tins of sardines on sale at the famed Lisa Says
Gah boutique? $78
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Not to mention, lamps made from real croissants ($88
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a purse mirroring a Barilla pasta box ($1,500 resale
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and a faux-diner experience where, instead of the real, affordable
food such restaurants are known for, one can pay $40 for a stuffed
waffle [[link removed]] (now out of
stock online).

See also the hype around tomato-scented hand soap, of which there are
many variations: Loewe’s $85 version
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or Flamingo Estate’s, a steal at $46
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And these are just some examples. Seemingly everywhere one looks,
there’s an example of an expensive, designer food item. Not the
thing you might cook and eat; instead, food imagery has somehow become
caught up in our ever-churning trend machine. And while these items
(corn, a tomato, a box of pasta) might be accessible pantry staples,
they’ve now been transformed into symbols of luxury.

This trend of food on clothing and in design has been percolating for
a few years, but it’s flourishing now as everyday foods, like eggs
and produce, are becoming increasingly inaccessible.

Food is no longer just something we eat, this current moment seems to
signal. In the midst of an escalating tariff war, food iconography —
both in what we wear and what we buy — has become a status symbol,
too.

THE TREND STARTS IN THE PANTRY

The incorporation of food imagery in design predates the present
moment. Antoine Vollon’s “Mound of Butter,” a 19th century still
life of a heaping tuft of butter, highlights the importance of
familiar ingredients, while Salvador Dalí used lobsters
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a motif for sex and pleasure — also inspiring Elsa Schiaparelli’s
1937 design of a billowing, off-white evening gown with a giant
lobster printed across the front
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The Pop art movement
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frequently featured food motifs, (perhaps best exemplified by Andy
Warhol’s 1962 Campbell’s Soup can artwork), while drawing on
everyday mass culture and consumerism for inspiration.

But what has led us to the current wave of such designs today?

It starts with Millennials and their pantries, said Andrea Hernández,
the founder of food and beverage trend newsletter Snaxshot.
Millennials were the first to embrace a sort of “premium pantry”
item, she said, i.e. buying a higher-end version of an everyday item,
like viral olive oil in a squeeze bottle (rather than grocery store
bottles of extra virgin) or luxury hot sauce (versus Tabasco).

Those higher-end versions may purport to be “better” in some ways
than household brands — better ingredients, healthier, or maybe just
more aesthetically pleasing — but they also come with a higher price
tag. (Cloud23, Brooklyn Beckham’s hot sauce label, comes in a
textured glass bottle and promises “authentic ingredients” and
peppers grown in “organic soil.” A pack of two costs $34.99.)

It’s a type of affordable affluence, Hernández said. And it’s
everywhere: see viral Brightland olive oil ($37 per bottle), Fishwife
tinned sardines ($32 for 3), and Fly By Jing chili oil ($15). If none
of those interest you, what about Hot Girl Pickles ($12.99 for a
32-ounce jar)?

This isn’t to say these items aren’t worth their price tags, but
they often cost more than their supermarket equivalents. And they look
nicer, with colorful, vibrant packaging that screams “trendy
product.”

“We can’t afford cars, we can’t afford houses, we can’t afford
anything,” Hernández said. “It comes down to the last chair of a
musical chair game, which is ‘okay, I can still buy food,
snacks.’”

This normalization of high-end food items goes beyond the pantry.
Think of Erewhon Market, that renowned Los Angeles grocery shop that
in recent years has become known for its celebrity smoothie
collaborations. Its famous Hailey Bieber collab is a $20 strawberry
smoothie blended with hyaluronic acid and sea moss gel. While you’re
there, you can also grab one of its signature tote bags, which
recently cameoed in an episode of HBO’s “White Lotus
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at just $52.

Even Walmart has gotten in on the affordable affluence trend,
launching a new private label last year, called bettergoods
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clearly a more modern and Millennial and Gen Z-friendly approach than
its other private label, Great Value. (Among items branded as
“bettergoods”: organic chocolate milk, plant-based mozzarella
cheese and single origin Colombian coffee).

Put bluntly, Millennials and Gen Z are willing to spend more money at
the grocery store for products they deem “better” than the budget
option, Hernández said — or at the very least, marketed better. In
the case of Gen Z, spending money at the grocery store has become a
way to splurge, according to a report from McKinsey
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at a time when many people are tightening their belts amid a worsening
economy. Call it a lipstick effect for the post-pandemic era.

Now, this elevation of everyday grocery items is also leaking into
design and fashion.

GROCERIES SEEP INTO ADVERTISING AND DESIGN

As hype around regular grocery items grows, food has also wedged its
way into advertising and luxury designs.

Part of this surge is just practical, said Elizabeth Goodspeed, a
graphic designer and writer. Food is an affordable prop for brand
photoshoots, cheaper than flowers or other products that may bear
another brand’s imagery. Especially now, with everything being
expensive, brands may be even more motivated to use food as a prop in
their imagery. (Notice the way French fashion brand Jacquemus stamps
its label on whole butter next to gold croissant earrings
[[link removed]], or New York-based La
Ligne’s use of crusty baguettes
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another campaign).

Yet there is still, she noted, some class signaling. The same person
that might be able to spend money on a bushel of picturesque apples
from the farmers market, Goodspeed said, might also have the
disposable income to spend $2,000 on a luxury bag. Follow the same
logic for small-batch butter or bread fresh from a local bakery.

But these luxury connotations have leapt from the glossy pages of
magazine adverts and into real life. Food isn’t just pictured
alongside the luxury good, it’s the luxury good itself. It’s the
corn on the cob stool, the pasta box purse, the Jacquemus milk carton
[[link removed]], the Kate Spade BLT
purse
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er, the Kate Spade Heinz Ketchup purse
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You could dismiss these examples as just kitschy trends, a way to
weave personality and vibrancy into a drab mainstream aesthetic. And
of course these products can be cute, said Jess Rauchberg, who studies
digital culture at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. But what’s
beyond the cuteness?

“It’s important to understand how is this being shown to us, and
what does it mean?” she said. “What does it mean when we see
an egg plushie
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really cute, but thinking about the cost, thinking about are eggs
accessible for every single American consumer right now? And if not,
who has access to these products and to these consumer goods?”

This sort of food-inspired trend
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happened before. In the 2010s, we had cupcakes on dresses and bacon on
everything — a shorthand for a gendered Americana energy. Today,
there’s been a slight change; we’ve traded our emblazoned bacon
and cupcakes for pickles, olives, tinned fish, preserved lemons,
heirloom tomatoes, ramps and butter. Case in point: Circa 2016, quirky
American designer Rachel Antonoff embossed dresses with a
multicolored tropical fruit print
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Almost 10 years later, she’s swapped the design for rainbow chard on
knits and blue coffee cups on puffer jackets.

“It’s just that the foods that we have assigned the value to have
shifted,” Goodspeed said.

NOW, EVEN EVERYDAY GROCERIES ARE LUXURY ITEMS

So if people are spending more money on groceries and pantry items,
and these items are seeping into luxury fashion and design, then what
exactly does that indicate about us, the consumers?

Buying certain kinds of products says something about ourselves or the
way we want to live, Goodspeed said. A tinned fish shirt might say you
care about seafood sustainability or accessibility. Spending $100 on
the Loewe tomato leaves scented candle might say you care about
organic produce or you enjoy the outdoors — see also the aptly
named tomato girl summer
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featuring silk scarves, sunglasses and a coastal state of mind.

What we ate used to be a largely private experience. We grocery
shopped, we cooked, we dined, with little fanfare to those not under
the same roof. But the advent of social media put that entire process
into the spotlight, opening it up to critique from everyone in our
circles. Now, there’s pantry videos analyzing not just what snacks
you have in your pantry, but how neatly it’s organized (Khloe
Kardashian’s pantry has become a gold standard
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observe how others landscape their fridges
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or their freezers, eyeing what interesting products and organizational
bins they have. And we can compare ourselves to what others are doing
online.

“What you eat is being dissected and observed as much as anything
else that you do,” Goodspeed said.

And so food, especially seemingly modest ingredients, have become
another way to signify wealth and luxury tastes. Fashion and design
becomes an extension of that. By wearing food as an accessory, or as a
design choice, we are signaling both that we have a palate for that
product and that we can afford it. I’m wearing this $78 shirt with
Fishwife tinned fish, which means I can also afford to spend $10 on a
single tin of sardines, which means I have disposable income — and
so it goes.

This logic extends even to foods that might not usually be expensive,
like corn or tomatoes, Rauchberg said. These humble ingredients become
luxury emblems.

“It signals that I don’t have to worry about where I’m getting
my next meal,” Rauchberg said. “Or I don’t have to worry about
these very basic life requirements because they’ve already been
fulfilled.”

In other words, removed from the anxiety surrounding grocery bills,
these items are then elevated in fashion and decor.

That this trend is coming to a head now, when grocery prices —
especially seafood, fresh fruits, and vegetables
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are poised to see a sharp increase with proposed tariffs, might be
significant. As eggs, and eventually other staples, became more
inaccessible to the average person, they may show up even more in
fashion and other consumer products, Rauchberg said.

You might not be able to have fish for every meal, she explained, or
eggs, or even fresh produce. But just by wearing something with the
product on it is a status symbol, she said.

“The purse, the T-shirt, the dress, the Jellycat, is a sign that
you’re able to be part of that consumer environment,” Rauchberg
said. “And status right now means everything.”

As food prices rise, there will be people unable to buy
once-affordable staples. But for those with the income, they might
shell out $2,300 for a designer bag inspired by Hellmann’s
mayonnaise
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just because they can.

* food
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* name brands
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* Fashion
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