Sophia Richie, daughter of the legendary Lionel, married longtime boyfriend and music executive Elliot Grainge at the beautiful Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, wearing a stunning Chanel halter gown featuring lace embroidery and a long train. PHOTO COURTESY OF TWITTER

On social media, particularly in the world of fashion influencers, a conversation has been volleyed on the topic of quiet fashion.

Quiet fashion is yet another word for a thing that is probably as old as this country. The recent discussion started after the first photos were released of Sophia Richie’s wedding last month in the South of France. Richie, daughter of the legendary Lionel Richie, married longtime boyfriend and music executive Elliot Grainge at the beautiful Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, wearing a stunning Chanel halter gown featuring lace embroidery and a long train. When pictures began to circulate on social media, a comparison was made of Sophia’s ceremony and Kourtney Kardashian’s wedding last summer to rocker Travis Barker. Kardashian wore a short lacy lingerie dress designed by Dolce and Gabbana and inspired by the Guns N Roses’ video “November Rain.” Kardashian confessed that the wedding paid homage to the famous video.

Why Gen Zers felt compelled to compare entirely different weddings is pending. The conversation, however, sparked social media influencers to weigh in on the concept of quiet luxury.

Quiet luxury is a new way to describe a form of classicism: generational wealth versus newly acquired financial success, new money versus old money. Richie would be representative of generational wealth, Kardashian would somehow represent new money. In this country, among those with generational wealth, privilege and status, to be accepted into so-called proper society, one would have to have not just the means to belong, but the pedigree.

Pedigree comes primarily from familial ties. At one time it was not unusual to hear someone comment with awe and respectability at a black-tie function, “Ahhhh. You are a part of the Du Pont, Rockefeller, or Pulitzer family from such and such a place.” To have such a name today denotes old generational money.

Yet there was a time when these billion-dollar fortune families were not accepted in certain parts of society. They were considered new money, interlopers to be rejected because of their flashiness and gaudiness in displaying their newfound wealth.

The acceptable members of certain societies were chiefly comprised of established European families of considerable wealth who could trace their roots and coins back there. Many immigrant families who made their fortunes during what Mark Twain coined “the gilded age,” but did not have the pedigree no matter how many millions were invested into their massive estate homes, were never welcomed, and when they were, it was because they negotiated their way in with their money.

Bringing this discussion into the 21st century, and more pointedly the summer of 2023, quiet luxury is the perception of wealth without obvious display. The opposite of quiet wealth would be the intent to create the perception of wealth through pretentiousness.

Examples of this in the luxury, haute couture world of fashion would be monogrammed attire and accessories. The designer label craze accelerated in the late 1970s and early 1980s with designer blue jeans. Levi Strauss and Wrangler had been purveyors of denim pants for a century when it became fashionable to wear jeans with a designer name. Sassoon, Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein and Jordache became multimillion-dollar fashion labels not because theirs were superior to every other denim manufacturer. These designers became household names because their jeans represented the attainability of wealth. Designer jeans gave those without the family pedigree or fortune the opportunity to belong.

Luxury designer brands and couture fashion houses have always catered to the monied, so-called cultured and well-bred. But the rise of designer jeans at ready-to-wear prices proved to be a financial bonanza for the industry, and a gateway for those outside the perimeters of “high society” – i.e., the middle- and lower-income class – to acquire a slice of the so-called “good life.”

Today, some 40 years after Brooke Shields’ and Jordache Jeans’ infamous “nothing comes between me and my jeans” TV commercial, major fashion houses thrive from ready-to-wear luxury goods and accessories, and the more prominent the monogram or label, the better.

Why? It is the perception of wealth on display, that if one can afford a luxury good, they are somebody to be envied or respected. Wearing a gang of monogrammed designer clothing and accessories somehow translates to the temporary and transactional center of self-worth, which ultimately is a different and more serious discussion.

Quiet luxury proposes that one can inconspicuously have an entire wardrobe of luxury designer apparel, which means there are no readily tell-tale signs of branding; no alphabet logos on display such as LV, CC, FF, YSL, MK, GG (which respectively are Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Fendi, Yves Saint Laurent, Michael Kors, and Gucci).

Quiet luxury argues that if you must loudly and prominently display who you’re wearing, then you are just a pretender or outsider to the world of luxury and wealth.

Could this be the reason couture houses such as Vuitton and Chanel are increasing the prices of some of their most iconic designer accessories? A Chanel flap which used to run between $3,000 – $5,000 retail is now selling for upward of $10,000. Vuitton’s Neverfull, an iconic monogramed tote that was marketed at its inception as a beach bag but became a symbol for the modern workingclass woman, has now been waitlisted and has seen an almost 50% increase in retail value. Are these fashion houses seeking to return to the days of a more exclusive type of clientele?

Perhaps, but this will not stop the masses from wanting to buy into the perception of wealth. That is why designer dupe markets such as Temu and DH Gate will always be profitable and continue to proliferate. The saga of the haves and have nots will always be an albatross around the neck of America’s consumer and the luxury designer market.