ied. In later years, both Alva and Consuelo Vanderbilt took up the cause of women's rights. 
Purchase and display of expensive, beautiful objects was another example
of conspicuous consumption.
at Marble House
be accepted into society, upper-class families needed to have
summer homes, typically based on European models; fine furnishings
from Europe; gowns designed in Paris; and elaborate coaches.
Upper-class families preferred authentic
goods from Europe to mass-market reproductions. Imported furniture,
gilded interiors, and specially made gowns legitimated wealth
and class status. 
were an important part of the legitimation process. In their desire
to emulate European nobility, upper-class families selected European
servants to run their households. English butlers, Irish maids, English and Irish nannies, and French governesses worked at the estates.
on the Cliff Walk
Veblen argued that employment of domestic help was evidence of
wealth and class status. Domestic workers vicariously
consumed goods through their employers and received "badges" of
merit for work performed, such as the liveries they wore for their
were the consumers of upper-class households. Their job was to
display the wealth their husbands made.
Whereas men displayed
their wealth through material possessions—homes, horses, carriages,
and so on—women displayed their wealth through fashion. A large wardrobe of fashionable clothing was necessary,
as society women changed their gowns several times a day. 
this behavior, an author in Munsey's remarked:
"Society in Newport is always
on dress parade, and while it concerns itself little with what
the 'other half' is doing, the other half takes a great interest
in it, watching its every movement, following its every step.
This vast other half fills hotels and boarding houses, and while
it plunges into the surf or sprawls on the sands, or wheels along
the beautiful roads, it has one eye always on society. And some
of the magnates, though they pretend to have a great indifference
to its watchful gaze, cannot quite conceal the pleasure that such
attention gives them, and add a little more pomp and ostentation
to their mode of life for the benefit of hoi polloi [the