Michael Shnayerson Wealthy Quotations

If the '80s were about Christian Lacroix ball gowns, the '90s give us wealthy women who either go to work or pretend to, and want office suits or slip dresses they can wear to dinner parties - ergo, the minimalism of Prada, Jil Sander, and others. But this is minimalism that comes at maximal prices.

In the Eisenhower era, when earnings over $400,000 were subject to 91 percent taxes and the world was a smaller place, you could count the truly wealthy on one hand: Getty, Dupont, Mellon, Rockefeller, though even those fortunes were being dispersed to children as the old robber barons died off.