I think jewelry shows some signs of snobbery ("look at me, I'm wearing precious materials on my body! - Aren't I awesome?"). Looking at my mother's generation,

I think jewelry shows some signs of snobbery ("look at me, I'm wearing precious materials on my body! - Aren't I awesome?"). Looking at my mother's generation, they are still putting a high emphasis on wearing gold and such. But the kids my generations are a lot more interested in "technology". What I mean by that is they'd much rather get an expensive phone than a gold necklace, and brag about that instead. So why isn't an "expensive" $600 phone snobbery? Because it's actually worth the cost in terms of functionality. A $6,000, or $60,000 "gold smartphone" would insinuate just as much snobbery to me, just like a $17,000 Apple Watch does, which is 100% identical in terms of functionality with a $350 one. This is going to become even more laughable when we start mining billions of tons of precious materials from asteroids in a couple of decades and bring them to Earth. I also find it extremely disappointing that Apple wants to turn from a "premium brand" into a "fashion brand". The two worlds couldn't be anymore different. Premium brands implies high quality for a certain premium price. Fashion just means paying $7000 more for a different watch band. I really hate to see Apple going down this trend, because it only means it will eventually start focusing less on the "technical quality" side of its products, and more on the "fashion side" of its products (kind of how Beats uses poor quality headphones and wraps them up in expensive "fashion" packages - which by the way, Apple acquired).