When Everything Can Be Bought, What Still Remains? — Research Project

Research pre-project developed to investigate how certain consumer objects transcend their material function and come to constitute part of their owners’ identity, in a society oriented by speed, novelty, and the continuous replacement of goods.

The research centers on a core question: how does an object shift from something we merely own to something that becomes part of who we are? Drawing on authors such as Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Bauman, and Grant McCracken, the work proposes shifting focus from acquisition to permanence, analyzing cases like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Princess Diana, Jane Birkin, and Phoebe Philo — figures whose identities remain tied to consistent aesthetic choices over time.

Challenges

Building an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, bridging communication, fashion, design, and consumer culture, to investigate a subjective and often invisible phenomenon: the process by which objects accumulate affective and symbolic meaning, and how that permanence stands in contrast to the logic of constant renewal.

Results

A complete pre-project including research problem, hypotheses, justification, objectives, theoretical framework, case studies, qualitative methodology, and references — laying the groundwork for research that connects consumption, curation, identity, and the difference between accumulating and truly choosing.