TikTok wants me to host a dinner party. Is that an actual recession indicator?
TikTok wants me to have a dinner party, but the year is 2025, and I'm not a billionaire.
It could be that it's spring, the ultimate dinner party season, but being fed constant streams of dinner party content on TikTok during the economic thrill that is April 2025 seems — at the minimum — worth consideration. Even the term "dinner party" eludes a sort of quiet luxury; no one is encouraging us to have potlucks or reinventing picnics a la, the cottage core trend of 2018, despite its enduring presence.
Instead, I open the app and am bombarded with overflowing tablescapes, monumental floral arrangements, beautiful ceramic plates adorned with scalloped edges, and so many tapered candles.
Is this the clinking of glasses at your favorite influencer's Lower East Side dinner party — the sound of a true recession indicator —or just that of a new hot status symbol entering the villa?
Let them eat cake
Food has always been, and likely always will be a status symbol. In the 18th century, for instance, pineapples were a sign of wealth because they were so difficult for people to get their hands on. And in the 19th century, only the wealthiest of folks had celery in their homes. Rich people cornered the market of dinner parties during the Victorian era, not only because food was so expensive but also because it provided the crucial ability for people to maintain social connections and depended upon people having all day to prepare to host such an event — an ability sequestered to the elite who didn't have to go to work or do manual labor.
Food is an indicator of wealth in 2025, as well.
Fresh food has become a status symbol and the ultimate indicator of wealth as groceries become increasingly expensive. Vogue Business pointed out that "hotspots" like viral TikTok bakeries or Erewhon's $19 strawberry "have evolved into cultural status symbols much like streetwear."
Hailey Bieber cradled an armful of colorful carrots, bananas, and tomatoes tumbling out of a brown bag in a new ad (Read: "Who cares if the carrots fall to the pavement! I'm rich!") Tradwifes are offering up a dystopian-level look at their unattainable lifestyle through making food from scratch, ingredients and time abound. Lori Harvey hosted a dinner party for her birthday. Loewe, Rachel Antonoff, Lisa Says Gah and other designers are putting pasta or cocktail shrimp or tomatoes on every other shirt, skirt, and bag they sell.
Ultimately, as Bon Appetit writer Megan Wahn wrote, "Food and clothing used to be essentials for survival — now they’ve come together as things to enjoy. They're objects of spectacle."
"[Groceries-as-luxury] is definitely a post-2020 sentiment, and as we’re halfway in the decade, it’s no surprise to see it permeate into the mainstream,” Andrea Hernández, the author of the food and beverage trends newsletter Snaxshot, told Fast Company. "Food scarcity and grocery prices skyrocketing is real, and our generation made fancy smoothies a form of affordable affluence. It’s Gen Z’s 'avocado toast trope.'"
So, is it a recession indicator that instead of bragging about expensive homes and clothes, we're zoning in on our grocery hauls? And, to take that a step further, is it an indicator of further economic downturn that the most palatable way to show off your wads of cash is by feeding your friends, filling the middle of your table with tall candles and a bunch of greenery, and posting it to TikTok?
The rise of dinner parties likely isn't a true recession indicator in the same way that a decrease in real GDP or high unemployment would be, but cultural cues aren't to be ignored. After all, in 2025, the difference between the wealthy and the poor could be the ability to buy eggs. So what better way to show off your money than to flaunt your food?