Earlier this month, Hailey Bieber drove to dinner in Beverly Hills in her Tesla cybertruck sporting a piece jacket that retails for $1,700. This isn’t the primary time Bieber has added clothes historically made for laborers to her wardrobe—she’s beforehand been noticed in a $1,200 We11done chore coat. It’s no marvel celebrities, together with Bieber, Jaden Smith, Kaia Gerber, and Brooklyn Beckham have all purchased into the development: workwear manufacturers are leaping on the likelihood to money in on the hype with luxurious collaborations, too. Junya Watanabe has a longstanding partnership with Carhartt; In June 2023, Marni x Carhartt WIP produced a line of funky items, from the $770 floral jacket to the $354 two-toned trousers; Prada, Miu Miu, and Louis Vuitton all confirmed chore jackets in current exhibits.
However there’s a sure incongruity in proudly owning luxurious items that undertake decrease class aesthetics, particularly when the wearer comes from such a privileged background. It raises the query: what ought to the higher class’s relationship to utilitarian clothes appear like?
“As high-end labels attempt to be each unavailable and all over the place without delay, the very idea of desirability remains to be constructed on the haves and the have-nots,” my British Vogue colleague Daniel Rodgers wrote in Dazed. “That dissonance, between what style sells and who it sells it to, has been the ire of social media, which frequently warns towards the perils of fetishizing working-class aesthetics.”
Anyone who went to a liberal arts school, or had an unemployed roommate with an extreme Doordash behavior is aware of that there’s a tendency for rich folks to cosplay as poor, or so as to add pointless caveats as a method of justifying their existence. There’s clearly nothing mistaken with coming from monetary safety—particularly given {that a} core worth of parenting is making an attempt to offer the very best life doable for youngsters. That is additionally to not recommend that wealthy folks haven’t skilled struggling. However wealth cushions any bodily and emotional hardships that might in any other case be coupled with monetary misery.
Class appropriation lies in a lot murkier territory than cultural appropriation. Maybe it is because those that so rapidly (and rightly) decry cultural appropriation are sometimes those donning the Carhartt barn jackets and Dickies cargos with out reducing their enamel on building websites or spending grueling summer time days detasseling corn. Like with any style development, the elevated recognition of utilitarian clothes over the previous few years has additionally inspired celebrities to offer it a strive. However when the exorbitantly rich strive workwear the look’s cool, laidback intentions appear to seem extra like a fancy dress.
After all, it’s by no means so black-and-white to recommend that simply because somebody is wealthy, they need to robotically ban themselves from sporting these clothes, particularly as a result of they’re so utilitarian. Some even argue that the unique that means of utilitarian clothes is up to now gone that we’ve advanced previous literal interpretations of those clothes.
