How can firms motivate top performers when financial incentives are costly or constrained? Using data on German fighter pilots during WWII, this column shows how a tiered, expanding system of status-based awards can induce repeated bursts of effort from high-ability workers. However, to sustain this effort, organisations must manage the ‘fashion cycle’ of awards: as the awards become less exclusive, they lose their signalling value and new, more exclusive honours must be invented. A central