The Martini is Back: How the Cocktail is Reflective of the Quiet Luxury Trend
Make it stand out
Ten years ago, I did not always experience ease when ordering a dirty martini. One of the first times I attempted to order one at a bar in Fort Greene, Brooklyn I was told by my server that they had olives but no olive juice - so would I be okay with a glass of vodka and a skewer of olives? I mistakenly thought I would be - because the snack within the drink was the whole novelty anyway, and this was before I understood the superiority of a gin martini to its vodka-based bastard (though one could also argue the “dirty” martini of my choice is also an adulteration of the original). My timing in turning twenty-one and moving to New York City had been most inconvenient, as I had missed the classic cocktail’s then most recent comeback, likely related to the popularity of Mad Men which premiered in 2007.
The difficulty I found in ordering my drink was not always a menu issue or a bar lacking ingredients. Cocktail drinkers are generally assumed to be a more high maintenance bunch and I received the wrath of bartenders due to the stereotype. What kind of person drinks martinis anyway? The ad men depicted by Hamm and Slattery, sophisticated and charming with business always at the forefront? Their powerful predecessors of the eighties and nineties who pioneered the three-martini lunch? Snarky writers and artists whose confidence only seems to emerge under liquid encouragement? James Bond? 1920s gangsters bootlegging in pinch front fedoras? Nihilistic rich housewives in slinky night gowns and fabulous robes?
The unifying traits of all these archetypes being wealth or the appearance of it, power and the quest for it, and masculinity or the woeful lack of it, is all wrapped in a chilling sophistication. I can’t hold claim to any of these distinctions now and certainly couldn’t in my early twenties. But still, I’ve coveted the dirty martini in all its briny glory. While working at a restaurant in Cobble Hill six years ago, whose patronage had slowed so much that we sometimes closed early on weekends, my coworkers and I compensated ourselves with drinks, turning up music loudly and dancing while we cleaned. On my train rides home, I sipped dirty martinis to go in paper coffee cups. It was then I learned of my perfect recipe: wet (equal or more vermouth to gin), dirty, and with a twist.
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“Really, more olive juice than alcohol is fine,” I not-so-jokingly once told a server in a Colorado bar that was serving $5 happy hour martinis. When my friend, whose family we were visiting, echoed my order he told us, lecherously, “I think you mean filthy martinis.” Instead of repulsion we chose to be amused because he was cute and gave us what we wanted — not just drinks, but attention, which felt like a sort of power.
“What kind of person drinks martinis anyway? The ad men depicted by Hamm and Slattery, sophisticated and charming with business always at the forefront?”
My friends’ logo for their college punk band was a broken martini glass that I figured symbolised the smashing of the rich elite. The history of the martini as a distinction of wealth is long documented. Its origin is unknown and greatly debated. One story, tracing its roots to the California Gold Rush as a celebratory drink for one miner who became rich by the lucky swing of a pick. As one of the oldest American cocktails, what may have once stood for the emergence of newfound money and its class members, is now also entwined with the image of old money. Maybe this is why the martini’s most recent comeback that we are currently experiencing has coincided with trends that focus on affluence and opulence. Quiet luxury may be touted as a counter to hyper consumerism, which urges us to spend wantonly on trendy clothing with a short life cycle, by teaching people to buy more expensive high-quality pieces that will last for years.
While this shopping technique is, technically, true, its popularity has been powered by people’s aspirations to look rich—even or especially, stealthily so—instead of gauche. Offshoot trends of quiet luxury such as yacht girl summer and old money aesthetic (think the Kennedys and Ralph Lauren) further reveal this goal.
I’m not immune to the guise of sophistication felt when ordering a martini and then holding its stem. “Oh a martini,” a friend might say, impressed. And when the bartender asks how I like it, I tell them, full of conviction, dirty with gin and not to skip the vermouth as dry martinis have become more popular in recent years. At a work event, a man repeatedly tells me to stay complicated after ordering at the bar despite my assertions that this is a really popular drink. A martini is perfect because it is both a sociable cocktail and a solitary one. But I’ve been long interested in reclaiming the dirty martini as one for the people, mixing it for my friends when they come over and urging them to take sips from my glass at bars. In college I argued that it was actually more economical than beers as it got you drunker faster.
It’s no coincidence that interest in luxury and decadence comes on the heel of global isolation as COVID-19 emerged in 2020. We were all drinking more. While searching for toilet paper amidst winding lines at grocery stores that March, I also stocked up on olives, gin, and vermouth. Yet I’m haunted by the parallels between the eras of Wall Street execs and Mad Men-esque business men, whose tax-deducted three-martini lunches occurred with the backdrop of the AIDS and crack epidemic that ravaged queer and communities of colour in the eighties of nineties, and the upheaval that occurred in the sixties as Black people in the United States sought liberation and basic equal rights.
Maybe for some, especially the already rich, social unrest is solely an inconvenience to be ignored with splendour and drinks like the crisp martini, which washes away the distastefulness of their implicitness. But for the rest of us, indulging in our martinis or other pockets of joy and small fancies are our way to cope with these issues.
Words: Madison Jamar