From $85 tomato leaf soap to $2,300 Hellmann's mayo handbags, everyday food is now a status symbol

CNN

13-04-2025

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. A T-shirt stamped with tins of sardines on sale at the famed Lisa Says Gah boutique? $78. Not to mention, lamps made from real croissants ($88), a purse mirroring a Barilla pasta box ($1,500 resale), 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 (now out of stock online).
See also the hype around tomato-scented hand soap, of which there are many variations: Loewe's $85 version, or Flamingo Estate's, a steal at $46.
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 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 as 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.
The Pop art movement also 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,' at just $52.
Even Walmart has gotten in on the affordable affluence trend, launching a new private label last year, called bettergoods, 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, 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.
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, or New York-based La Ligne's use of crusty baguettes in 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, the Kate Spade BLT purse, er, the Kate Spade Heinz Ketchup purse.
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 that's 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 has 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. 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.
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 aesthetic, 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). We can observe how others landscape their fridges, 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 — 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, just because they can.