Elizabeth Goodspeed on our current obsession with food in advertising and fashion

Brands have always wanted us to buy what they’re selling. In recent years, it seems like they want us to eat it, too. If you’re someone who purchases clothing, accessories or beauty products, you’ll come across this kind of eye candy frequently: a Rhode face cleanser floating in a bowl of cheerios, a Jacquemus bag perched on a pile of plump powdered doughnuts or a Chanel watch encircling a dirty martini. Sometimes there’s no product being advertised at all; the viewer simply sees a logo carved into an eggplant, made of shortbread, or piped on a cake. It seems like these days, brands aren’t styling their merchandise so much as plating it. But when did the shelfie start to refer to a refrigerator shelf?

Food has long been a conceptually rich feature of art. In 17th and 18th-century Dutch still life paintings — some of the earliest examples of the genre — food was a narrative device. A still life showing a bountiful banquet table could suggest wealth as well as the generosity and hospitality of the household, or if the food was bruised and rotting, serve as a memento mori for the fleeting nature of life. Food takes on similarly multifaceted meanings in 20th-century photography; Edward Weston’s chiaroscuro peppers transcend commonplace origin to become a sensual objet d’art, while Irving Penn’s work for Vogue used elegant and stylised arrangements to echo the opulence of classical still life (later in his career, he brought this same artistic spirit to frozen vegetables and wormy apples). In all cases, the pipe was never just a pipe.

Food in advertising and fashion isn’t new (we probably have Elsa Schiaparelli’s 1937 lobster dress and much couture since to thank for the latter), but it’s certainly crossed heavily into the mainstream since the pandemic. Since 2020 we’ve seen food-laden apparel like a tinned fish purse, a pasta puffer, and a hundred different garments with produce on them from Lisa Says Gah. Instagram popular brands are selling sunscreen and shaving cream designed to look like whipped cream, and socks are being packaged inside takeout poke containers. Even gourmand perfumes are in again! This collective mainstreaming signals a shift where food transcends thematic curiosity to become a central component of design and marketing strategies for many brands.

In Dutch paintings and Penn’s still lifes, food is the protagonist. But in contemporary advertising for beauty and fashion, food is the supporting actor. The inclusion of an ice cream cone in a photo of a purse is illustrative, not instructive — no one wants you to eat the purse or wear the cone. The food creates context and narrative for the product being sold. A purse, when juxtaposed with ice cream, adopts the dessert’s joyful sweetness, effectively altering its own meaning through semiotic association. In plainer terms: an object resting on a head of lettuce communicates something very different from that same object diving into a glass of champagne.

The speedy churn of modern content production increasingly seems to bestow temporary celebrity status to certain foods. We only need recall the infamous art direction trope of three oranges in a mesh bag, which became a hallmark of stylish, minimalist photography back in 2018. Or take the bacon craze of the early 2010s, which was less about the food itself and more about a broader revival of what was considered “traditional American masculinity and craft,” like beards, carving things in wood, and axe-throwing. It’s probably not a coincidence that the last big wave of food-themed clothing hit in the 2010s as well, with Zooey Deschanel and her Indie Twee ilk donning cupcake-printed fit and flare dresses from Modcloth. At present, we’ve made heroes of butter — so much butter — dirty coffee cups, and, obviously, the infamous heirloom tomato of “tomato girl summer” and Loewe fame.

As edible motifs become common in fashion and advertising, they reflect a deeper societal embrace of food outside the kitchen. We’ve elevated the culinary arts to cultural signifier: tableware designers are featured in Vogue, chefs are modelling for the Gap, and fine dining-focused media like The Bear and The Menu have us shouting, “Yes, Chef!” until we’re hoarse. Meanwhile, gonzo brand collaborations between Kate Spade and Heinz or furniture designer Dusen Dusen and trendy olive oil Graza just further belabour the significance of food as a modern marketing gimmick. As writer Paris Martineau said on Twitter (ugh – X), everything is food now. Our growing obsession is almost like a modern-day lipstick index, which posits that during economic downturns, sales of smaller indulgences tend to increase. And what could be a smaller indulgence than a fancy little treat? Even when it’s too expensive to travel or buy new clothes, we all have to eat. Food is a universal indulgence. No matter your income, any food can feel like a guilty pleasure (just ask a Midwesterner about Snickers Salad).

What we eat says a lot about our identity. Caviar is posh. Rum raisin ice cream is for old people. Mormons love dirty sodas. Just as fashion can reflect personal and cultural statements, so too can our food choices broadcast specific social signals and preferences. But the meanings attached to these foods aren’t static; they evolve alongside shifts in societal values and priorities. White bread, for example, once symbolised affluence due to its refined processing. Only the wealthy could afford to waste so much of the wheat plant. Today, its reputation has reversed; the same refined processing that extends shelf life and reduces cost now associates it with lower economic status. As societal values move away from convenience and towards health and sustainability, the symbols of luxury and status in our diets shift accordingly.

While tomatoes weren’t always the height of class, having the leisure time and expendable income to buy non-GMO produce at the Union Square Farmers Market is undoubtedly a form of quiet luxury in 2024. As Walden Green pointed out in Dirt: “the Loewe tomato is much closer to one of those luxuriously imperfect heirloom sunbursts than it is to a standard supermarket globe.” Eggs hit $7 last year and climate change is slowly killing whatever’s left of agriculture; fresh wholesome food is now a luxury many can’t afford. In an article about “seafood kitsch”, writer Bettina Makalintal further suggests that sporting a $275 seafood tower dress flaunts both your ability to indulge in expensive (and not particularly timeless) designer clothing and also signals a palate accustomed to oysters. This highlights not only the wearer’s taste but a lifestyle with ample time off, given that the style and composition of these garments often feels more designed for a sunny patio than a cubicle.

It’s not for nothing that this increase in edible matter coincides with a heightened focus on thinness unseen since the Y2K-era (congrats to Ozempic shareholders everywhere). This focus on dramatic weight loss, often enabled by expensive methods such as off-label GLP-1 agonist usage, personal trainers, and surgical procedures not covered by insurance, tends to be most popular within affluent circles. Conversely, while obesity can affect anyone (despite what advertisers want you to think, weight is largely genetic), in the US it’s more prevalent in low-income households. When it comes to societal perceptions of luxury and health, it seems you can benefit from an association with food, so long as you embody a form of beauty that ironically distances itself from the act of eating. Moreover, the limited sizing options provided by luxury brands already exclude a significant portion of the population, reinforcing exclusivity based on body size; you can buy a shirt that has spaghetti on it, but they only sell sizes 0 through 8. After all this time, we’re back to desiring food instead of eating it.

Of course, even after the Loewe tomato spoils, another food will simply take its place. Today’s Tomato Girl is yesterday’s Coconut Girl, after all. As these food microtrends multiply, they become even more fleeting. In the meantime, we may as well look to the Dutch masters and hang an oil painting of Taco Bell in our kitchen. Eat your heart out, Andy Warhol.