Apparently, the current crop of Washington elite shop at Costco for all their fancy dinner parties, which is certainly the most sensible thing we’ve heard about the douchebags who populate our nation’s capital in a long time.

It’s some sort of weird fad according to the NYT, irritating local caterers to no end:

Susan Lacz, chief executive of Ridgewells, the largest catering company in the Washington area, said she knows the trend all too well. “My gosh, it drives me crazy,” she said. “Some of the people I hear are going to Costco, I think, ‘Oh, you must be kidding me.'”

The ultimate awkwardness, she said, is when clients want to buy their food from Costco but disguise it: “They’ll say: ‘Why don’t you bring the fancy glassware, and we’ll get the rest from Costco. And could you put it on one of your fancy plates? Oh, and how about some of your fancy ice cream on top?'”

Ms. Lacz said she was “not going to name names,” but that one of her best clients, a high-end retail store, told her, “We’re going to go to Costco and buy a bunch of stuff, and we want you guys to serve it.”

To which she replied: “No, you’re not.”

There’s actually a name for this phenomenon:

“Reverse chic is a very powerful phenomenon in status-oriented circles,” said David Kamp, the author of “The United States of Arugula” (Broadway, 2006), a book about the American fine-food revolution. “I think Costco is the same thing. It gets discovered.”

Isn’t that precious?

Tightening the Beltway, the Elite Shop Costco [NYT]
(Photo:basykes)

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