I don't know if disdain is the right word. More a belief shared by many, that these brands don't represent especially good quality and that the people who pay large sums of money for the kudos of owning them are morons.

Good intersection with the luxury thread here on The Wardrobe. I think the question can be, is it hype or is it quality? It's easy to get caught up in the hype - and I suppose it's easy to go the other direction and disdain all luxury brands because one assumes them to be all hype. Good comment from RFS, I think it's a mistake to discard all luxury makers without taking their full spectrum of products into account.

Beeston is right though, I'm sure there's an element of elitism here. Luxury brands are not as "elite" anymore whatever their actual products are, because everyone knows about them and everyone wants them. Some people would rather buy an obscure brand because it allows them to have some snobbishness about the lemmings who still want a So-And-So watch or whatever. And from what I've seen, it's not exactly hard to imagine that kind of attitude at AAC or SF

There is also that hipster disdain of the popular, if only in awareness, which is a form of countersignaling.  People at the top of a game need to differentiate themselves from those slightly beneath them, so we get obsession with exclusivity.  Obviously the expense of luxury brands is good enough in a high-low distinction, but with more tiers, the mere knowledge of something needs exclusivity such that there is a shibboleth.

iGents are cheapskates. Are you sure you know what an iGent is?

He is correct though, there is also a certain sour grapes aspect to it.

Sour Grapes is one way to put it. iGents like bang for their buck; they want cachet without elevating the price and thus, for them Luxury is more about being an undiscovered, artisanal gem than being about global recognition. I think that's one area where theyre not too far off. the problem, is that iGents, after discovering such a gem, then proceed to question sourcing and price and knock the maker down to coolie wages which is the cheapskate disease many of them suffer from.