Quiet Luxury is an exercise in how to be boring and rich
On the historical ties of status to the mass-market consumption of incredibly beige items
If fashion were a class graded on a bell curve, I would say I generally score one standard deviation above the mean. I care about fashion, specifically from a cultural sense and in the sense of how the bodies of women are presented to the world. But I don't care for what fashion-image creators (like Vogue, big brands or personalities) identify as markers of taste or status. Unfortunately, everyone who says they don't care about trends is at a disadvantage because trendy gets mass-marketed and sold. You are forced to stay on top of the stream of garbage (Y2K) just so that you can find a decent replacement for a pair of trousers from 6yrs ago.
Lately, everyone appears to be obsessed with Quiet Luxury.
As per my superficially researched opinion, Quiet Luxury is the cultural phenomenon of creating extremely neutral, minimalist and simple items that imply luxury through their material composition or brand name alone. I have not done enough research (aka I do not have a TikTok) to know what the specific origins of this trend are but essentially, the aspiring rich are trying to fall back to looking like "old money" rather than trying to find innovative things to do with their wealth.
This phenomenon is also explored in significant detail by HBO’s Succession series. The show’s costume designers are aware of how satirizing the ultra-wealthy sets the tone for fashion discourse of how they dress. One of the most indicative moments of how costume shapes social identification was in Season 4 when, Tom Wambsgans shames Greg's date's "ludicrously capacious bag". The Burberry bag in question costs more than people's rent ($2980) and is well within the definition of a luxurious item. But Burberry’s claim to luxury also derives from Thomas Burberry's redesign of the trench coat as a staple of the British army's uniform in World War I. Many markers of aristocracy were destroyed forever by this war, which forced many of the elite to be fighting alongside the working class, and yet Burberry maintains its prestige through its totemic check print. Wambsgans teaches us that anything that stands out is trying too hard, a trait he is intimately familiar with as he was not born into the family of wealth he serves.
The aesthetic of Quiet Luxury is so nondescript that it's supposed to signify that you simply do not care to be perceived because of your affluence. It's spending $500 for a sweater that H&M has already mass-produced for $12, but expecting that "those who know will know" what status you intend to signify. The entire status game hinges on the assumption that apparently the rich compare and measure each other’s performance of wealth with nuance and discernment. But nuance and discernment has never been a marker of affluence. Even if I accept that there are people buying a $1450 white shirt (because people love consuming), how am I to understand that their white shirt means something more than the regular H&M one that I thrifted?
Proponents of Quiet Luxury argue that the genre offers many options. For the truly unoriginal, there’s the standard black dressing. For those who do not believe in the concept of laundry, a stunning cornucopia of whites, ecru and cream. For those who regret having the ability to ever have full-color vision, a buffet of grays. For those obsessed with coffee or the general abuse of a sepia filter, Quiet Luxury offers a palette of beiges and browns that is more inclusive than most racial demographic analyses. All while leaning on and deriving from the overwhelming presence of White affluence and wealth.
Deviants may be permitted a singular subdued minimalist print or a particular dark green item to "finish off a look". These monochromes and minimalist fashion creates a very narrow palette of expression, as if access to that palette alone is a signifier of privilege. Quiet Luxury's obsession with minimalism and homogeneity feels like a secret nod to when "real fashion" could be controlled by the privilege.
Look, I understand that fashion is not about creativity for most people. And I also fundamentally agree that it doesn't have to be. Jeans were created for miners in the 1800, and to protect the exploited miners from the terrain of the underground. What is functional is beautiful enough, and I genuinely accept that. But what I cannot abide is the pretense of luxury that basic functional items are endowed to have. Why should the bare minimum of an outfit be deemed luxury in a time when bare minimum healthcare or housing are also deemed as privileges?
You don't have to scratch too far into the surface of fashion history to see how the decolorization in Western culture is prevalent. David Batchelor in Chromophobia argues that the reason color is so widely feared in Western thought is because colonizing forces depend heavily on creating a binary. Monochromatic color schemes, or the separation of colors into two broad categories supports the model of “us vs. them”.
Yet, the ability to introduce and experience color was a fundamental driver of colonialism as well. From the extinction of Birds of Paradise in New Guinea1, whose feathers were so vibrant that they were hunted to make hats, to the brutally exploited indigo farmers in the South Asian subcontinent, colonialism has been hungry for color as a personal and privileged use. The "old money" look that Quiet Luxury is pushing on us now is vastly disconnected from the historical roots of Old Money, which was responsible for monopolizing the use of color.
Again, I am brought back to how affluence looks nothing like what we think it does. Even in Succession, there is a range of how affluence. On the one hand, the Roy siblings are wearing understated and expensive clothes. On the other hand, the CEO of the Swedish media streaming giant GoJo (modeled loosely on certain “chaos loving” tech CEO) walks across airport tarmacs barefoot. Just last year, Balenciaga sold beat-up converse shoes for $1850, and despite what the image indicates below, most of them sold out.
Image: Balenciaga, May 2022
Affluence is anything but subtle and quiet, because if anything, there is always an element of excess.
In search of a closing argument, I try to consider that maybe Quiet Luxury is perhaps advocating for a form of environmentalism? After all, by making many "classic timeless pieces" (also known as Stuff Everyone Has and Can Wear With Anything, such as a pair of dark wash denim or a black sweater), they are encouraging a slower consumption from the firehose of fast fashion. It's worth spending $1000 on a black sweater because it will last you more years and more wears (allegedly).
But I also find that assumption inherently false. Quiet Luxury items are not something you can throw in your regular wash, you are required to pay for dry cleaning and expensive maintenance processes for an already expensive item. I suspect that the demographic that Quiet Luxury is targeting now will immediately switch to whatever trend has been handed to them by the next hottest celebrity / nepo baby / most expensive name to emerge on the hotbed of the internet.
Rose, D. B., van Dooren, T., Chrulew, M., & de Vos, R. (2017). Extinction studies: Stories of time, death, and generations (pp. 89–117). Columbia University Press.