It takes years of careful education (or centuries of careful breeding) to produce a mind capable of recognizing elegance — the idea that less = more. Lacking that education in esthetics, taste is likewise absent; to the vulgar, more = more. This fact of human behavior explains not only those dictatorial palaces decorated à la mode Saddam, but the decal-covered "race cars" and brick-veneer mini-mansions that Americans buy as well. Every owner of one of those Celotex crapboxes one sees in suburbia would decorate just like Mugabe if they had his money; like Tevye, they would prefer to live in a house with "one long staircase just going up, one even longer going down, and one more leading nowhere just for show".
Those with true class know better. The richest people I know (and I know a few) live in circumstances that the average person might consider plain, or even shabby. Few drive new cars; few wear trendy clothes. Instead, they buy expensive, super-reliable cars, and drive them for years; they buy (or have made) the best clothes money can buy, then wear them until threadbare. Those with true class show their superiority through humility. The superior man lives humbly, and is a servant to all.
Only losers need to brag.
I always thought “The Sopranos” did a fantastic job of showing the nouveau-riche/criminal “aesthetic” you talk about. The houses, the furnishings, the clothes, the jewelry, all support the theme of “money doesn’t buy taste” without beating the viewer over the head with it. In one early episode the educated and law-abiding Dr. Melfi shyly admits to her family that she likes Murano glass. I liked how that brief scene highlighted the very complicated social and ideological meanings behind how one decorates her house.