Veblen exposes consumption as a public language of status rather than a neutral response to need. His iconic concepts of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure describe practices whose value lies in making exemption from productive labour socially visible. The theoretical contribution is an evolutionary and institutional account of taste, prestige and class emulation, showing how habits inherited from predatory hierarchies persist within modern economies. Methodologically, Veblen combines satire, comparative anthropology and institutional analysis, interpreting dress, domesticity, sport and etiquette as evidence of pecuniary culture. The conceptual operation is status decoding: apparently personal preferences become legible as socially organised signals. The wider bridge reaches sociology of consumption, cultural theory, fashion studies and architectural criticism. Luxury is not simply excess expenditure but an ecology of recognition in which waste, novelty and distance from necessity acquire symbolic force. Veblen thereby reveals how institutions inhabit desire before individuals experience it as choice.