Housewife Luxury Will Never Be Quiet

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Picture a Housewife. Not a “housewife,” but a capital-H Housewife. Whether she’s NeNe Leakes, Teresa Giudice, Lisa Vanderpump, Luann de Lesseps or any other woman under the umbrella of the Andy Cohen Extended Television Universe, you probably have a few adjectives that come to mind when you conjure her image. “Loud,” “flashy,” “campy.” Maybe “tacky” and “drunk,” if you’re not feeling charitable. She yells at her fellow cast members. She occasionally throws drinks, bread, or prosthetic limbs. She accuses her friends’ husbands of infidelity and storms out of restaurants with hair extensions and camera crews trailing behind her. She is the creation of 18 years and counting of the Bravo TV juggernaut. But most importantly, she’s very rich, bitch, and she wants to make sure you know it.

In the last few years, there’s been a steady stream of online trend pieces discussing and dissecting the concepts of “quiet luxury” and “stealth wealth,” driven largely by the aesthetics of Succession and celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow. (I would argue that Paltrow’s existence as Hollywood’s premier actress-turned-lifestyle-influencer would negate any claims to quiet or stealth, but this isn’t a column about Our Lady of Goop.) What started as a Gen Z social media discussion soon bloomed into a larger conversation taken up by legacy media like the Associated Press, Vogue, and Glamour. And inevitably, that discussion has trickled into a few corners of the “Real Housewives” fandom, including the r/BravoRealHousewives subreddit.

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