You're so wrong about current camera trends... Just look at the consumer point and shoot market - there have never been more slow 28-600mm zoom/menu driven/tiny sensor point and shoots available from so many companies. A fixed lens $1200 compact without mode dials or movie buttons is an oddity in the market, and surely aimed squarely toward advanced photographers. Even the marketing on the website blatantly mentions it being a professional camera. [...] Maybe your view would be more widely shared on some sort of sociology forum, by the non-photographers.
Leica markets the M line as being aimed at professionals, too. How large do you think the percentage of actual professionals among M users is? I'd be surprised if it was 20%. Do you think Leica doesn't know that? This is how marketing works for many high-end amateur products.
However I'll go into a bit more detail just so that you can understand that I'm not attacking you, nor the X100, just describing a general concept how "retro" marketing works; and then you can decide whether you want to be angry with me, or call me deluded, or what not. (I don't really care if my view is widely shared or not; and I use the cameras I like and that get the job done, without much concern for images and perceptions; and I don't need to hang around in sociology forums, I get enough of that in my day job, and I don't engage in this kind of discussion on RFF all that often either.)
Your description of the camera market actually underlines my point, rather than disproving it. A lot of the marketing for high-end products works by distinction. A high-end product needs to be clearly distinguishable from a mass product. This has been marketing 101 for at least a decade. Remember Apple's slogan "Think Different"? From a marketing point of view, what that slogan aims to communicate to the customer is that "you know it's worth spending the extra $$$ on an Apple, because you know and everyone'll see that it's not a Dell."
Distinction is so powerful and well-established as a marketing concept because most people want to feel individual. By your example, professional Formula I racing drivers put designs on their helmets, and no, that doesn't make them fashion oriented. However, a much larger number of non-professional drivers put racing stripes on their cars, too. And those
are fashion-oriented. They do it because they like it, and because it makes them feel a little bit like a Formula I driver, and because it makes their particular VW Golf car look different from all other VW Golfs. Photographers are no different. The question what strap goes with a chrome M3 is like the question what stripe goes with a chrome Corvette.
So, in a camera market that's, as you rightly say, full of plasticky $200 compacts with small sensors and dozens of buttons, a metal $1200 large-sensor camera with dials makes a powerful marketing statement precisely because it is so different. You, and me, and the RFF crowd know about aperture and shutter speed dials; for us, the statement is "here, we know that you understand these things, and we give you what you've been waiting for". However, you don't really have to understand apertures and shutter speeds to be susceptible to this kind of marketing. For what I think is the majority of the potential buyer base the statement is different and much more general, and it's conveyed precisely by what the original poster called "retro styling". The essence of marketing products as "retro" is that it communicates quality, value and authenticity. Whether the product marketed such actually is
better is besides the point; it often will be (after all you usually do all this marketing effort for high-end products), and in the case of the X100 I'm pretty sure it is. However, as you know, that's not the point of marketing.
In a world where people are overwhelmed with junk, where they are skeptic about the future, and where the trust in products is largely gone, it's a common trend that quality, simplicity, authenticity, essence and value are typically associated with the past. From a marketing point of view, this means that by associating a product with the past, you can communicate these values, along with communicating distinction. So, in the case of the (according to the OP) "retro-styled" X100, I think the message that Fuji wants to send to the general public is "you know that all the low-end cameras on the market are plasticky junk. Here's something different for you, if you can afford it. Built like they used to build them. Just look at it - you, and everybody else, will see immediately just how different it is." This has a strong undercurrent of distinguishing oneself and of making a fashion statement (but as a message, nevertheless it is perfectly legitimate).
