patina of wealth
patina of success

No patina of success lay upon the camp, only the shabbiness of an effort that was somehow not good enough.

He still held himself with the easy confidence she remembered, his dark head carried at an unconsciously arrogant angle, and he still had that polish to him, the patina of success.

But by mid-2001, the overall broadband marketplace was in a free fall, and Enron effectively shut down E.B.S. Now, former programmers and technicians lament the government's portrayal of the broadband effort as little more than a lie given the patina of success just to lift the stock price.