- This video is brought to you by Squarespace,
an all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Hello, hello, my name is Mina. Welcome to my channel and if you are a returning
viewer, you're probably wondering what this getup is. Honestly, I do try to dress a little bit like
the topic at hand, but today we're gonna be talking about quiet luxury and stealth wealth. And I was just looking at my closet this morning
and I was like, I don't think I can pull off this aesthetic category. So yeah, this is just what we're gonna work
with today. I did incorporate some tailored pants. Obviously, I styled it in a way that no one
in "Succession" would ever style their clothes as. - So I hear you've made an enormous faux pas. - Yeah, also, if you're wondering why I'm
wearing a white bra underneath a black top, it's because I don't own a black bra, because
I don't really wear bras and I just have this one vintage La Perla white bra top that I
really like. Anyways, I wanted to do a video on self-wealth
and quiet luxury, because in a couple of podcast episodes I've referred to it, I've had little
baby conversations about it, but I haven't constructed a full video. And so, because a lot of people have been
talking about it online, because everyone is hypothesizing that minimalism is in now
and maximalism is on its way out, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to really do a
deep dive and also take you all on it with me. Thank you Squarespace for sponsoring this
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or domain. So let's start in the early 2000s. In the early 2000s mainstream fashion trends
of the time were all about bling, logos, bold colors, and maximal styling. Christina Binkley, who covers fashion for
the Wall Street Journal, told Vox, "People were dripping in gold. There was bling on clothing, jewelry, accessories,
fashion had been really loud and it was a huge party. But then that shifted literally overnight." - [Reporter] Lehman Brothers is going bankrupt. - The signs were everywhere, but now it's
official, we are in a recession. - Challenging times ahead. - [Finance Expert] The traditional definition
of a recession is two quarters of economic contraction or lack of growth. - The recession hit in 2008, things pivoted. And even though members of the ultra-wealthy
class, their lifestyles didn't really change with the recession, they still opted to dress
in less lavish ways, because being loud and proud about how much money you had was particularly
gauche, when literally the rest of the world was suffering. Ron Frasch, who was president and chief merchandising
officer of Saks Fifth Avenue in the late 2000s, noticed that the wealthiest shoppers still
bought luxury goods during the recession, but there was pushback against items that
had noticeable logos. And also in the face of economic uncertainty,
simplicity and neutrality became safer bets for designers. For example, Phoebe Philo, the creative director
of Celine from 2008 to 2018, rose to fame for her understated, but still expensive designs. Colors also reflected this new minimalism. In 2008, the colors black, gray, navy and
white dominated fashion shows more than ever. For those impacted by the recession, fast
fashion and thrifting became major ways to look stylish while being on a budget. People wanted to dress cheaply, but they also
didn't wanna look cheap. So this is when the concept of high-low dressing
became really trendy. And I was really young during the recession. I wasn't super-young, I was 10. I think I was 10 years old during the recession
and I was too young to recognize what was actually happening in the economy. But I will say that I really liked reading
fashion magazines that my mom collected. And I remember that in these fashion magazines
around 2008, there were just so many articles and advice columns about how to mix and match
designer pieces with pieces from H&M or Zara. In her book "Dress Code: Unlocking fashion
from the new look to millennial pink" Elle Fashion features director Veronique Hyland
writes, "High-low became first a personal style directive and then more of an order
for strivers. Millennial women who entered the workforce
during recession were advised to mimic a proper professional appearance by mixing fast fashion
items, often runway knockoffs with investment pieces at a time when investments of all kinds
felt precarious." Usually the investment pieces that these magazine
articles would suggest you to buy were bags or accessories like sunglasses or jewelry,
because these items get the most wear and the most rotation in your day-to-day outfits. And 2008 wasn't actually the first time high-low
dressing was introduced. in a 1974 essay called Recession Dressing. The fashion writer Kennedy Frazier wrote,
"The old interest in the cautious principle of spending more on fewer clothes of better
quality is back." In the years following the recession, startup
companies embraced a minimal logo design. So Glossier and Warby Parker come to mind. The reason these companies in the 2010s leaned
so much towards sans serif fonts and white space is because it was markedly different
from the clunky logos of big corporations. Leo Wang, CEO of Buffy, a comforter startup
said, "That first generation of direct to consumer successes started in that post-recession
moment. They're about value, honesty, transparency
of economics, and getting a good deal. All of that felt front of mind for customers. Corporate America had swindled them." So nowadays I definitely feel the whole minimal
graphic design has kind of teetered out, because Gen Z prefers curvier, fun, bubblier type
of graphic design in their products. And part of that is definitely because graphic
design trends come and go. But also what I've noticed is that a lot of
major companies like Coca-Cola or Pepsi or these big corporations that have been big
for a long time, that used to have this very clunky graphic design and clunky logos, they
have all simplified their designs to match these millennial startup companies and therefore
that entire design aesthetic has kind of just become washed and untrustworthy. As of now, the current economic situation
in the U.S. is a little dire. As I've said, we've kind of been in this impending
recession era for a while now, but also companies are scaling back, people are getting laid
off in mass, housing prices are becoming more and more unaffordable and the writers are
on strike, so things are just not looking very good. At the same time, the pendulum seems to be
swinging back towards minimalism. For example, during the award show season
earlier this year, fans noticed a lack of jewelry on the red carpet. More specifically, a lot of celebs were missing
necklaces while wearing low neckline dresses that seemed to scream for a necklace. Trend forecaster Delaney Bryant suggested
that this was all intentional predicting that it was actually a sign of economic downturn. Hence the term recession core coming up as
a trend. Other TikTok trend predictions anticipate
a move towards bigger bags, fewer accessories, outfit repeating and androgyny. Alongside messy hair and makeup that exude
utilitarian practicality. The trend of de-influencing aka sharing over-hyped
products you don't think are worth the money also speaks to a recession core mindset. - You don't need this product from Amazon. This is so unnecessary. - Trend forecasters are expecting the resin
jewelry and checkerboard prints of the past few years to phase out, while versatile and
minimalist brands like The Row and Khaite are expected to attract more and more fans. And as I said over the last few years, but
especially in the last couple of months, we've seen these terms like quiet luxury and stealth
wealth and old money get tossed around. These are all supposed designations for how
rich people's dress, quiet, luxury and stealth wealth especially get kind of used interchangeably. Though Laura Jackson and Joy Montgomery define
quiet luxury as more of an aesthetic category. They write for vogue, "Quiet luxury is a low-key
approach to luxury. It's less austere than minimalism, but more
polished than Normcore. It's Sienna Miller in "Anatomy of a Scandal"
meets off-duty Olsen twins. It's a battered Hermes Kelly bag or a Max
Mara investment coat thrown over an ancient pair of vintage jeans." Eva Wiseman defined stealth wealth for The
Guardian by focusing on specific materials and small details on clothes. She writes, "Stealth wealth is the name given
to the clothes worn by the extremely rich. Very fine wolves and navy or gray oversized
coats, tiny handbags, whites so bright, they're almost blue. A thousand shades of camel, a whole caravan
of them, a pallet that whispers taste with a little lisp. Logos are replaced with secret codes, a clever
little stitch at the hem, or a hoodie made of cashmere." So it seems like quiet luxury is a casual
effortless style that's expensive. It is more like an aesthetic category, while
stealth wealth is a more purposeful initiative to portray wealth through secret clothing
codes. Again, I don't wanna get too caught up in
those definitions, because they're pretty much used interchangeably again, and there
is a lot of overlap between the two. Old money on the other hand, which I've done
a whole video on, is a distilled version of preppy fashion. It's a Pinterest aesthetic that takes influence
from country club outfits, riviera vacation wardrobes, and upper east side private school
uniforms. "The Talented Mr. Ripley" vintage Ralph Lauren
ads and old Hollywood icons like Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn seem ever-present on the
mood boards. Old money as an aesthetic rarely applies to
the actual old money establishment. It's a romanticized idea of how they dress
heavily leaning on vintage style, including elements of old school tennis outfits, chic
head scarves and white suits. I feel like the old money aesthetic peaked
on social media around 2021 to 2022. And actually since 2021, I would argue that
there's been less attention paid towards aesthetics in general, but that's another video. Quiet luxury and stealth wealth on the other
hand, supposedly represent the taste of the current actual rich and have grown in popularity
as phenomena. Mostly due to Gwyneth Paltrow's Court core
style and the TV show at "Succession". I've made a whole video on Gwyneth Paltrow
already. So let's just talk about "Succession". "Succession" brought the concept of stealth
wealth into the public discourse through its costume design, every character is meticulously
dressed to reveal their economic status. For instance, the image and power obsessed
Roy family wear the most offensively expensive and offensively boring clothing you can imagine. The heir to the family empire, Kendall Roy
famously wears a baseball cap. The cap is plain black, made of a cashmere
blend material and produced by the Italian knitwear brand Loro Piana. It also sells for the low cost of $625. Despite the price tag, there's nothing that
really sets this hat apart, at least aesthetically, and it's a little boring, I'm not gonna lie. The character Bridget is ridiculed by the
character Tom Wambsgams who married into the Roy family for carrying a ludicrously capacious
bag. Through this fashion faux pa, Bridget immediately
marked herself as an interloper in this exclusive world. - What's even in there, huh? Flat shoes for the subway, her lunch pale. I mean, Greg, it's monstrous, it's gargantuan. You could take it camping, you could slide
it across the floor after a bank job. - Also, I have no idea if I pronounced that
character's name right, because I actually haven't watched "Succession". I'm just keeping up-to-date with all this
cultural discourse about it, because I like to keep tabs on those types of things. But yeah, I haven't watched it. I'm planning to at some point, just probably
not before the series ends. The ultra-rich of course really need to carry
anything, hence the dig at the size of this bag. However, that's not the only issue. The bag is covered in a distinctive print
that obviously signals Burberry. Even without an actual logo, it falls under
logo mania. Despite the fact that this bag is actually
very expensive, like it retails online for over 2,500 pounds, it reads cheap to the Roy
family, because it's flashy and attention-grabbing. - Everyone's laughing up their sleeves about
your date. - This is just the most viral example of the
show's costuming, but actually the entire show has been receiving high praise, especially
this final season. In an interview with Refinery29, the costume
designer Michelle Matlin explained her process. "In early stages, a lot of time was spent
researching not just in magazines and online, but physically visiting restaurants, corporate
offices and the like. We spent months finding out who these people
are so that we could be as authentic and real as possible and tell the story we were trying
to tell." - I know you. - So you know what's funny? For most of history, the general consensus
was that the ultra-wealthy were obsessed with wearing their status loudly and proudly. But then everything changed when the Industrial
Revolution allowed a rising bourgeoisie class to make even more exorbitant amounts of money
than the old nobility. Enter economist Thorstein Veblen, who coined
the term conspicuous consumption to illustrate what was happening in 1899. Veblen believed that the nouveau riche displayed
extravagant spending to raise themselves to the same status as the old money establishment. A process defined as pecuniary emulation. Therefore, the only way that these established
old money families could differentiate themselves from these newcomers was by showing better
taste in the types of things that they would consume. So rather than buying anything and everything,
they had to cultivate greater levels of cultural and intellectual capital. Also worth noting, logo mania and ostentatious
dressing have been hallmarks of black urban street culture for a very long time. Even during the antebellum period in the South,
there are traveler accounts that note how Black Americans living there were dressed
way more colorfully and way more flamboyantly than White Americans living there. And of course, Dapper Dan, the father of loco
mania, introduced heavily monogram designs in the 1980s, which became a mainstay of luxury
street-wear. So given that there are definitely racist
implications on why bold dressing and maximalism is coded as being in poor taste. The irony behind quiet luxury though is that
the rich people who engage in it apparently do so, because they feel confident enough
in their own wealth, they don't feel like they have to prove anything to anyone. But the people who are on TikTok actively
trying to look for tips on how to emulate the quiet luxury style are doing so, because
they want to impress people. On TikTok, you can find hundreds of videos
on explainers of why the 1% dress a certain way and styling tutorials to bag a husband
above your station or to manifest a more moneyed lifestyle. In a way, stealth wealth has morphed into
becoming a trend in and of itself. As Amanda Mull reports for The Atlantic, "All
of a sudden more accessible stores such as H&M and Zara are selling non-descript generously
cut trousers and oversized button-downs and double-breasted blazers and grandpa loafers. The fashion website, Hypebeast cites by its
count 1.4 billion views for stealth wealth meaning on TikTok as evidence of the kids
really are dying to save up and swathe themselves in cashmere or more likely to buy budget-friendly
knit blends." A lot of people who are pulled to this style
like to defend it in any way that they can to justify why they want to dress the way. They'll say that quiet luxury is more practical
for everyday wear. It's more comfortable because the fabrics
are nicer, you're investing in staple pieces and therefore you're being more eco-cautious
and you're not trifling with petty social signals like logos. But none of those things are necessarily true. Many rich people, even like the old moneyed
rich people dress horribly. They have truly awful style, okay? Not everyone is Gwyneth Paltrow. They also don't exist as a monolith, right? Some of them actually do wear a lot of logos
and many of them do wear impractical and wasteful things. When I was doing my interview with Ryan and
we were talking about the whole quiet luxury, I asked her what she thought was actually
quiet luxury. And what we've kind of realized in that episode
is that it's more of a sensibility than the presentation. I feel like there's certain social codes that
a lot of old money people participate in, like the way that they talk and certain behaviors
that extend way beyond dress. And it's all like a reflection of going to
these specific private schools, preparatory schools and growing up in these kind of communities. Those are things that cannot be replicated
by a Bruno Cucinelli sweater. Ultimately, the idea of a rich person uniform
is a mythology that was created by people who are aspiring to be rich. And I can understand why people do this. It makes the rich seem more easy to crack
and makes people who want to be a part of this group and this lifestyle feel that if
they just crack the secret code, if they can just buy one beautifully knit cashmere sweater,
then maybe they can sneak into the upper echelons of society and maybe just maybe they can elevate
themselves and belong. It all goes back to the American dream baby. Like the American dream is the reason for
all this kind of dysfunction. - [Announcer] This is the American dream. - The essence of the American dream. - I know the answer to this. - If you're not American, the American dream
is this idea that's been transmitted into our brains since we were babies, that America
is a meritocracy. And if you just work hard, if you just, what
is that phrase? Raise your bootstraps, hike your bootstraps,
something with your bootstraps. If you just grab them and you just put your
all into your work, you could be the next Jeff Bezos. It has nothing to do with generational wealth
and it has nothing to do with the fact that all a lot of these rich people have connections
that get them to where they are. As Jake Silbert writes for Highsnobierty,
"These profoundly wealthy people are lionized as gods in popular culture." Elon Musk's unfunny memes are worshiped by
his cultish fans and Steve Jobs Normcore uniform is perpetually imitated by wannabe geniuses
seeking to become the next tech auteur. But sometimes we need to ask ourselves, we
need to really sit there and ask ourselves, do we want to aspire to be these people? Do we want to belong with the people who are
doing the most when it comes to environmental destruction? Do we want to be in the with people who are
jet-setting to private islands? Whereas the rest of us stayed masked in quarantine,
the people who hoarded their money instead of using it to better society in any kind
of measurable way? Wiseman critiques, "Buying into stealth wealth
feels like buying a band T-shirt except the band are the worst people in the world and
the T-shirt costs the same as a month's rent. And the music is them laughing as they shout
'Each shit from a car.' With the greatest respect, no thank you." So we've talked about 2008 and we've talked
about the impending recession. And I feel like if we look up both of these
moments in a vacuum, it's easy to come to the conclusion that recessions lead to minimalism,
but that's not always the case. For instance, when we had a baby recession
during quarantine, people were all about DIY maximalism in 2020 as a form of escapism and
as crafting grew in popularity. Also during the Great Depression, middle and
lower class women also engaged in craftiness as exemplified by feedsack dresses. If you don't know what a feedsack dress is,
these are dresses that are literally made of the fabric sacks that were used to package
shipped commodities like flour and animal feed. Rural women started making garments out of
the leftover sack to be thrifty throughout the early 20th century, but by the Depression,
the practice had spread throughout the rest of the nation, because buying bolts of fabric
was so expensive in comparison. So as it became more popular to sew dresses
out of fabric sacks, businesses realized the way their sacks looked could be a huge selling
point for their goods. Companies like Gingham Girl Flour packaged
their goods in dress quality fabric and used at sacks as a selling point. Trade organizations also sponsored feed sack
shows and manufacturers even went so far as to hire designers to make sure that the prints
and patterns on these feed sacks were fashionable and desirable to modern day women. So if you look at some photos of feedsack
dresses, some of them are actually quite maximal with stylish prints. And when it came to rich people, we have to
understand that movies were a huge industry in the 1930s, and a lot of people went to
the movies as a form of escapism from the dire economic times. And so, a lot of these movies at the time
had to do with rags to riches or they were just like pure fun and escapism like Ginger
Roger and Fred Astaire's collaborations. And of course, the dresses that were featured
in these films tended to be very elaborate, very lavish feeding into the romanticized
fantasy that a lot of working class women had. And because fashion trends have always had
this kind of close relationship with movies, but especially in the early 20th century,
some of the fashion trends of the 1930s were pretty maximalist. However, I have to add that in real life,
the rich were still throwing lavish parties and balls as a way to lighten the mood, rocking
expensive fur coats and whatnot. And working class people were stunned to see
these real life maximus displays of wealth, which led to a lot of class conflict, especially
in the form of violent worker strikes and a push for unionization. But anyways, the point is an economic recession
does not necessarily mean that people will pair down their wardrobes. One thing that is consistent though is that
rich people will always dress in a way that is coded as rich, even if we can't necessarily
tell immediately from the onset. So for example, while we like to think that
rich people throughout history have always dressed in a garish way with long, colorful
velvet robes and flashy jewels, this wasn't consistently the case. During the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century,
a period of economic prosperity in the Netherlands, hence the the term Golden Age. The new wealthy merchant class followed a
Protestant sensibility for wearing simple, muted colors, but in actuality, their clothes
were still very expensive. We can take a look at Nicholas Maes' portrait
of Cornelius Munter in 1679. Charlotte Higgins wrote for The Guardian that
despite its simplistic cut, the jacket Cornelius is wearing is actually very luxurious. She writes, "It is a marvelous garment, a
real fashion statement, a Japanese padded jacket in according to a curator, Betsey Wieseman,
a shantung silk. These jackets were incredibly hard to get
hold of. In fact, you could only acquire one if you
had connections with the powerful Dutch East India company. It was the it jacket and getting one is not
just about being rich, it is also about cozying up to the right people." Wieseman also points out that it was a deeply
utilitarian item, all that snug padding being just the thing for frosty Dutch mornings. So very comfortable, like a lot of these high-end
cashmere knits of today, very modest in the way that it's not a flashy item, but still
very expensive to those in the know. So as I said, the reason why these Dutch merchants
were dressed more simply compared to let's say their French counterparts is because of
their Protestant beliefs. And even though now I would argue that a lot
of wealthy people are not necessarily outwardly religious in that way, the way that they dress
still reflects the kind of values that they have. So we can look at tech bros actually. - And so, how are you monetizing these, what
did you call 'em hobbies? - No, no, no, no, no, no, no. - And I know that tech bros are more so like
a new moneyed class. There are definitely some tech bros that come
from wealth, but the industry as a whole is related to new money. They're still rich people and still the way
that they dress conveys their beliefs. The tech bros uniform is usually a type of
commoner outfit of jeans and hoodies, but with subtle nods to their wealth with expensive
watches and company insignias on their T-shirts. This newly muddied class is strategically
displaying their mounting riches while still making sure to project the values they wish
to be associated with, nerdy intelligence, privileged to not care about fashion and all-consuming
hard work. - Oh, shit. - Oh, Richard. - I mean, Steve Jobs allegedly wore a black
turtleneck every day to reduce decision fatigue. And decision fatigue is the paralysis you
experience when you're inundated with too many choices. So aka me whenever I see a menu that's more
than two pages long. So quiet luxury, even though it has this reputation
for not flexing your wealth, it actually is flexing your wealth. It's just doing it in a different way. It's doing it through codes and meanings,
but it's still doing it. And I think the reason it's popular now is
for a number of reasons, not just because of the economic recession, but also because
the pendulum always likes to swing back and forth between maximalism and minimalism and
we did just have this period of maximalism, so people are getting tired of it and now
they're skewing towards minimalism. But nothing's really changed. Back in the 2010s, people were still trying
to emulate the rich. They were trying to emulate the Kardashians
with the logo mania and ostentatious flexing of wealth. It wasn't seen as gaudy at the time, because
the whole idea of influencing and that entire industry was new. But I think generally whenever something has
been in the mainstream for too long, people get tired of it and they want something different. Okay, with that said, thank you all so much
for listening to me ramble on this subject. Please let me know your thoughts on quiet
luxury and stealth wealth and even the old money aesthetic. I feel like she's kind of died, she's no longer
with us, but I always have a soft spot for her, because I do love little tennis outfits
and private school dress codes. But yeah, I'd love to know your opinions and
if you want the longer version of this video, I'll be publishing a podcast-accompanied episode
on Wednesday. And yeah, I'll see you next time and I hope
you have a lovely rest of your day, bye.
