Earlier today, I found myself in conversation with my sister, an exchange that triggered a reflection I did not anticipate. She was complaining, as younger sisters often do, half in disbelief and half in resigned anger, about her husband’s indulgence: a $45 haircut. To contextualise this, it is fifteen times the going rate for a haircut in that city. Naturally, my Zimbabwean instincts kicked in. To me, a haircut should cost no more than two dollars. Anything beyond that immediately rings alarm bells.

But as she spoke, I found myself unable to judge. I could not help but reflect on my own history with expensive haircuts. Whether it was in the UK, the US, South Africa, or Zimbabwe, I had willingly paid premiums for what was, at its core, the same basic service. Not out of ignorance. Not out of necessity. But because I, too, had been buying into something less tangible: the experience.

Growing up in Zimbabwe, haircuts were transactional. You sat on a weathered wooden stool in a dimly lit shop, the barber’s clippers buzzing like an angry bee. The goal was efficiency: in, out, and back to life. The cost? A dollar, maybe two. When I moved abroad, I carried this mindset with me. My first encounter with a “premium” barbershop in Sandton felt surreal. The plush leather chairs, the scent of sandalwood, the barber’s meticulous ritual of steaming towels and straight razors, it was foreign, almost comical. Yet, I paid R400, not because I needed a cut, but because I wanted to understand the allure. In Zimbabwe, time is money; elsewhere, money buys time. The haircut is to me a cultural dissonance, a collision between my frugal upbringing and a world where indulgence is packaged as self-care.

My current barber is a perfect example. If you walked in without context, you would think you were entering a lounge or a spa rather than a barber shop. Five different types of electronic clippers gleam from the counter, though any seasoned barber will tell you that one is sufficient. A pair of barbers scissors,  the kind you can easily buy from any beauty shop is placed ceremoniously next to the clippers, adding to the sense that you are about to undergo a surgical procedure rather than a simple haircut.

Before anything even touches your head, you are ushered to a plush sofa in the waiting area. Free Wi-Fi is advertised for good measure a service few, if any, use, but whose mere presence contributes to the illusion of abundance. When your turn comes, you are led to an oversized leather barber’s chair, complete with a dedicated ring light. The barber studies your head with the studied grace of an artist considering his canvas, swivelling the chair from side to side as though seeking the perfect angle of attack on the forest growing atop your scalp.

Before the first snip, you are presented with barber neck strips in a variety of colours. It is as if the colour you choose somehow influences the outcome of your haircut. Deep down, you know it is all theatre, but you play along, because theatre is what you have come for. The barber then uses a confusing number of clippers and scissors, sprays your hair with rose water from delicate misting bottles, and massages your scalp with oils whose origins you dare not question.

For the metrosexual clientele, there is a separate specialist offering pedicures and manicures. I often joke that such operations would fail dismally in the ghetto, the sheer time investment per customer is unsustainable. An average session runs for about an hour. But again, that is the point. It is a curated illusion. A haircut costing two dollars by function is sold for twenty, forty, or more, not by hiding its simplicity, but by wrapping it in meaning. And I, like countless others, have been willing to pay not for the haircut itself, but for the story we are told about what it means to be served in such a way.

After the hair is trimmed with what feels like an unnecessary number of tools, the finishing touch comes from a straight razor, skilfully shaping the hairline and beard. Save for Zimbabwe, every country I have had my hair cut in uses the straight razor for this purpose. It adds a ritualistic conclusion to the session, crowned by the application of aftershave poured from fancy glass bottles and ornate dispensers. It might very well be the same aftershave you can buy at the local grocery store for a few dollars, but presentation is everything.

This entire charade plays out across countless industries. We imagine, perhaps naively, that price is tied to intrinsic value. But value is seldom inherent. It is constructed, perceived, and, at times, deliberately manufactured.

I have watched TikTok exposés of Chinese manufacturers revealing how luxury brands apply eye-watering markups on their products. Some viewers feel enlightened, others enraged. But for those who understand how value works, the exposés do little to move the needle. The individual buying a $27,000 Brioni suit is often far more financially savvy than the person labouring over a $50 suit. Value, at that level, is not purely functional, it is perceived and imputed.

Let me be clear: you can absolutely find products with excellent craftsmanship at a fraction of luxury prices. But for those with substantial financial resources, the treasure hunt for value isn’t a game they’re interested in playing. Their wealth affords them the luxury of certainty, paying more to eliminate doubt and decision fatigue. They pay to step into a world where their worth is assumed, not negotiated.


I have long learnt that human beings do not simply buy products. We buy assurances, we buy identity, we buy the comfort of belonging to a certain tribe, even if it is one stitched together by invisible threads.

This phenomenon is nowhere more evident than in air travel. Whether you are in business class or economy, the destination remains the same. You depart together, you arrive together. Yet one group has paid exponentially more to sleep flat, to drink champagne, to step into a lounge where the mere absence of a crowd feels like a gift. Oliver Mtukudzi, wise as he was, captured the absurdity in his song Mbombera, but even he seemed to acknowledge that logic often surrenders to longing.

It is easy, perhaps even tempting, to scoff at such spending as wasteful or vain. But life, if we are honest, is about meaning, about significance, about experiences that lift the spirit above the mundane, this in my view is the architecture of human aspiration. At the heart of it lies a yearning: to matter, to be seen, to move through the world not as a mere body but as a presence.

In the ghetto, my barber’s model would collapse under the weight of its own grandeur. There, efficiency reigns supreme quick cuts, quick pay, next customer. Time is a scarce resource, not something to be lavished on the curvature of a hairline. But in the curated spaces of the middle and upper classes, time itself becomes the commodity. The hour spent in a chair, the gentle rotation under a ring light, the meaningless choices presented as ceremonies, all of it says: you are worth the delay.

Is this worth the markup? That depends entirely on your perspective and financial situation. For some, the additional cost represents an unnecessary extravagance; for others, it’s a worthwhile investment in their own satisfaction. Neither approach is inherently correct, they simply reflect different priorities and economic realities.

What I’ve come to appreciate is the honesty in this transaction. Both provider and consumer understand the game being played. The luxury barber knows he’s not just cutting hair; the client knows they’re not just paying for a haircut. There’s a mutual acknowledgment that what’s being exchanged goes beyond the functional service to include ambiance, attention, and artistry.

When I look back, I realise I have often been willing to pay not for things, but for moments that whisper this reassurance. That is why people endure the indignities of long queues to buy luxury handbags, why they pay to sit at restaurants serving miniature portions with microscopic sprigs of garnish, why they drink water with names they cannot pronounce. We are buying the feeling of being significant.

And so, as my sister raged about the absurdity of a $45 haircut, I found myself smiling. It is absurd, yes. It is extravagant. But it is also deeply, profoundly human.

We are not rational creatures, no matter how we flatter ourselves. We are meaning-makers. We will spend fortunes to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, to convince ourselves that our lives so often stitched together with the mundane are touched by something finer, something deserving of the narratives we spin around ourselves.

This insight has changed how I evaluate my own spending decisions. Instead of questioning whether a premium service is “worth it” in objective terms, I ask myself what experience I’m seeking and whether the premium option delivers it. Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no but recognising the true nature of the transaction has made me a more deliberate consumer.