Reprinted from: OK Wonderful
Original title: 2023 Top Praise Script: Your clothes look expensive!
OLD MONEY AESTHETIC
In recent years, major fashion brands have gradually moved closer to the "Laoqian aesthetic" in design language, which is characterized by low saturation color. The style is not special in appearance, and its subtlety often needs to be known after personal touch, and more attention is paid to creating timeless fashion.
For the spring/summer 2023 series released by Bottega Veneta, the new designer Matthieu Blazy completely abandoned the popular design created by his predecessor Daniel Lee, chose to return to the spirit core of the brand at the beginning of its founding, directly pointed to the essence of luxury, and used modern technology to help traditional handicrafts to create tannin, cotton, flannel and other fabrics in leather, The seemingly plain flannel shirt actually needs 12 layers of paint repeatedly printed on the leather to achieve the desired color effect.
Bottega Veneta Spring/Summer 2023
His creative attitude of striving for perfection and meticulous treatment of details wherever he goes create a low-key luxury that is as light as a bell. He pointedly points out the aesthetic rules of the current hot topic "old money style", that is, the classic emphasis on quality and style and the pursuit of excellence for comfort. In the past two years, the discussion on "old money aesthetics" has been in full swing. The theme tag of # old money # on overseas social media alone has more than 1 billion hits.
The word "old money" first appeared in western society. It inherits the family's reputation and wealth through the ages. With deep financial resources and mysterious low-key, it is synonymous with the upper class society.
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Burberry Spring/Summer 2023 ▶
Wearing like an old money has become the latest aesthetic fashion. Ralph Lauren, an American luxury brand with aristocratic fashion as its core style, took advantage of the opportunity to revive. The Spring and Summer 2023 show, with the theme of "California Dream", abandoned the bustling and gorgeous New York City and moved the show to the former residence of railway and real estate tycoon Henry Huntington at the beginning of the last century. The symbolic image created by the show conveys the elegance and fashion unique to the ancestors of Lao Qian.
Ralph Lauren Spring/Summer 2023
In the industrialized society of the 19th century, social class belonging is one of the most prominent aspects of individual identity. The differences in dress and behavior between social classes reflect the characteristics of interpersonal relationships in the industrialized social classes. The past life of Laoqian's aesthetic appreciation came from this period. The word "old money" first appeared in the western society. It inherited the family's reputation and wealth from many generations, and was rich in financial resources, mysterious and low-key. It was synonymous with the upper class society. Laoqian's aesthetics mainly refers to the fashion aesthetics and lifestyle of the upper leisure class on the East Coast of the United States. As we all know, there is more than one way to effectively show personal money status, but spending on clothing is more advantageous than most other consumption methods, because clothing is obvious. However, compared with the superficial vanity and luxury, Lao Qian pays more attention to aesthetic taste and lifestyle because of the original capital accumulation of his family for several generations.
Bottega Veneta 2023 Spring/Summer Show Layout
Princess Diana, who was born in a noble family and married into the royal family, is a typical old money aesthetic in her daily clothes, and is also regarded as a textbook level dress model by today's fashion experts. Whether it is cashmere knitting with slim shape and simple style or dark duffel suit coat with calm determination, the color and style may not be special, but it is always comfortable to wear. Every time I saw it, I was deeply impressed by the kind of unbridled and cold, clean and pure temperament, which is still bright and attractive today.
Most of the fashion views of newly rich people who have made great efforts to achieve wealth explosion and class rise tend to be blindly publicized. The way of life of lavishing money is eager to prove the change of identity. As representatives of the new money of Hollywood upstarts, the Kardashian family is famous. They are always very high profile, wearing exaggerated and dramatic styles, and are keen to display the logo on their clothes to show their wealth. Today, "Kardashian" has become a symbol, and its dress style has become a new fashion that young people flock to.
The most well-known theory of fashion and dress behavior is the theory of fashion change proposed by Zimmer, which believes that fashion is a process in which the social bottom imitates the social elite. The core idea of Simmel's fashion change model is that fashion is first accepted by the upper class, and then by the middle and lower classes. The group with lower status acquires status by imitating the dress of the group with higher status, and thus starts a process of social diffusion. By adjusting their own style, aesthetic taste and lifestyle, they try to approach and integrate into the upper class society.
Lao Qian's aesthetic preference is low-key and conservative, and he does not deliberately pursue trends, or even deliberately avoid fashionable items. He is better at integrating taste and texture into his dressing style.
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◀ Burberry Spring/Summer 2023
The evolution history of stars' clothing is also a lateral metaphor for the change from new money to old money. Victoria Adams, wife of David Beckham, the first generation of football king, officially debuted as a member of the Spice Girls Choir in 1996, setting off a trend of "Spice Girls" in the UK and the world. At that time, Victoria often appeared in the audience's eyes with sexy images such as hot pants, metallic colors, space suits, etc. As a star, she understood that beautiful, fashionable and controversial clothes were essential equipment.
In her later years, she turned fame into productivity in an all-round way, built "Victoria" into a famous brand worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and interpreted a postmodern fairy tale in the fashion circle by virtue of her excellent market insight. They seized the opportunity of the times to quickly enter the Vanity Fair and rank among the newly rich. Since then, Victoria's dressing style has also changed significantly. Most of them are business suits in the same color system. The exquisite and simple style is elegant and generous, which is very different from the previous image. After all, her social status has been established, and she no longer needs to wear clothes to show her personality and attract attention.
Fashion is never just about the clothing itself, but more about the stack of lifestyle behind it. Fashion seems to be used by people to obtain an impressive identity characteristic different from other classes. It may highlight a certain consistency, connecting people with similar "individual" identities to each other and forming a specific group.
The so-called "old money style" emphasizes the class attribute through clothing, and stresses the class exclusiveness in good order. The return of "Laoqian aesthetic", which was once highly praised by elitism and represented the class separation, "became popular again for the first time" among Generation Z, and there must be more complicated reasons behind this phenomenon. The choice of "Lao Qian"'s dress style becomes a subtle hint, such as conveying a signal of gaining social status or eager to join the upper class. But the present is not limited to this.
When we talk about the style of old money, it is more based on a certain nostalgia. Nostalgic fashion is not an emerging phenomenon. In recent years, second-hand fashion has shown a prosperous scene worldwide, including the nostalgia of young generations for the lost golden nineties of fashion. At present, we are in a turbulent era, with global unilateralism intensifying, and each of us is living in a state of panic about the future of the times and "lying flat" with a deep sense of uncertainty about our future development. The so-called Laoqian aesthetics must also belong to a category of nostalgic styles. Young people are eager to return to peace and yearn for the effortless but detailed dressing style, which also indicates that we must yearn for the fashion philosophy of advocating quality and pursuing classics, and also indicates that the public is increasingly tired of fast fashion and the pursuit of sustainable fashion.
At the beginning of Laoqian's style returning to the public view, just like the minority cultural groups that grew up in the 1980s to fight against elitism, when the style followers gradually become more and more, creating demand, it will reverse stimulate the fashion system and become the target of all major mainstream media. Therefore, Laoqian's aesthetics has become a symbol of consumption. More and more people begin to appreciate this simple sense of dignity.
Kate Moss once launched minimalism in the mid-1990s. Even today, more than 20 years later, the large silhouette has become a fashion symbol. Kate Moss has always adhered to her own style, just as fashion style is first a spiritual attitude, and then is the decoration of rare clothes. This is also the spiritual core of Laoqian's style.
Nowadays, the design language of major old fashion houses tends to be conservative. Many brands put aside many ideas in order to seek stability, and the design language is more life oriented. Inside and outside of the show, there are many more simple and advanced pragmatism pieces instead of many unpredictable and outstanding shapes. In the post epidemic era, the weak economic situation has become the primary problem faced by the capital giants in the fashion industry. The young consumer group is no longer the main consumer group. Fashion brands have begun to adjust the strategic orientation that used to focus on youth in the design language, and have switched back to the "no fashion characteristics" clothing beloved by the upper class, in order to retain the most core customers.
The comeback of "Laoqian Aesthetics" has also created an interesting paradox: "What seems not to be rich actually represents extreme wealth." This is precisely the most difficult to imitate. As an ordinary person, not being bound by consumerism, the essence of returning to the spiritual core is more precious than the display of external wealth.
