Born Into Taste: The Brahminism of Luxury in Modern India
It happened at a table.
Not an ornate one, not even private—just the kind of table where you sit with colleagues you half-know and laugh at things you half-mean.
We were talking about hiring practices at a legacy global media house. And then, casually, someone said it:
“There used to be a protocol. Only the children of the senior-most executives could work here. You know, people born into luxury understand luxury. That’s why the company stayed tasteful for so long. It wasn’t diluted. The standard remained.”
I blinked.
And then I said:
“So you mean a cobbler’s son must stay a cobbler. And a Brahmin’s son gets to inherit not just the rituals, but the corner office too?”
She laughed lightly, unsure if I was joking. I wasn’t.
That conversation hasn’t left me. Because what she said was not just about one company—it was a window into a larger Indian pathology.
We call it “legacy.” We call it “taste.” But really, it’s caste dressed in Gucci.
This is what we never say out loud in India’s luxury circles—that refinement in this country has always been exclusionary. That taste is often just class passed off as culture. That someone, somewhere, decided what was “too much,” “not enough,” or “vulgar,” and that someone often looked, lived, and sounded the same way for generations.
Let’s go back to that word: Taste.
My friend once told me her mother never let her wear gota-patti after they moved to Mumbai because “it looked too Marwari.”
Another acquaintance—a self-proclaimed aesthete—scoffed at Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla because “it’s for aunties who think money can buy style.”
But who decided that tone-on-tone chikankari was elegant and Banarasi with zari was too loud? Who gets to define excess?
We don’t call it caste anymore. We call it curation.
This isn’t about taste. It’s about access. And who is allowed to appear tasteful.
We worship quiet luxury now, don’t we? Linen saris, raw mangoes, rough textures. We love a minimalist mandir. But the aesthetic is still coded. If you know, you know. If you don’t, you’re gauche.
And it always trickles down to this:
A child of a businessman in Lutyens can wear a FabIndia kurta to dinner and be called understated. A child of a teacher from Patna wearing the same kurta is told it’s too simple. The fabric doesn’t change. The body wearing it does.
The velvet rope in India doesn’t look like a red carpet—it looks like pedigree. You’re in if you speak in a certain accent. If you studied at a school with initials. If your family has “always summered.” If your wedding was featured in Vogue India.
If you grew up calling your grandmother Nani, not amma. If you say “farmhouse” like it means something more than just land.
Because in this country, luxury is not just what you buy— It’s who you are. Or more precisely, who you were born as.
But here’s the rupture: the gates are shaking.
A girl from Ludhiana with a thrifted Prada knows how to layer better than a Malabar Hill heiress.
A boy from Dharavi is making chairs for Rihanna.
Dalit, queer, migrant, multi-hyphenate—everyone’s arriving. Not to be let in, but to redraw the perimeter entirely.
The new luxury in India is not just silk and silence.
It’s agency. Access. Aesthetic disruption.
And to those who still think luxury is their inheritance:
Let me say this—
Luxury that cannot survive beyond lineage isn’t luxury. It’s legacy cosplay. It’s the emperor’s old clothes stitched into a sherwani. Let them clutch their pearls. Let them whisper about “new money. Let them say “these people don’t understand.”
Because we do. We understand it’s not about entering the room. It’s about flipping the script.
Let taste no longer be caste with softer consonants. Let luxury no longer be birthright wrapped in brocade. Let the velvet rope fray. Because India’s future of luxury is not inherited.
It’s made. And remade. By us.