Quiet luxury has to be the most overused—and grating—phrase of the year. I’d argue it’s also a dupe (or copycat) way of talking about minimalist dressing, which has swept through fashion on a tidal wave of ’90s nostalgia and—with an eye to the imminent return of Phoebe Philo—revived interest in so-called Old Céline.
As evidenced by endless quote-unquote expert accounts across social media, many people are eager to read the collections, but the apparent plainness of the less-is-more approach to design (bordering at times on boring) isn’t as easy to parse as loud logos or experimental fashion. Succession became an entryway into this edited beige world, even though it’s not particularly representative of the trend; if you ask me, the costumes spoke more to dressing for success than about capital-F fashion.
It is true, however, that minimal dressing (knitwear aside) is to a great degree associated with tailoring and, by extension, to a kind of neatness and control, at times a kind of sartorial puritanism. An all-white pantsuit might not be the most practical of garments, but it sure is chic. As with the idea of limousine shoes, it can assume a certain prosperity. The aesthetic is linked very closely to lifestyle and interiors, which makes sense because the idea of quiet luxury has a lot to do with touch and living in your clothes.
Materials usually come first when it comes to designing this kind of clothing. It’s the umpteen-ply cashmere, the wool hand-washed in a stream, and the fabric made on an antique Italian or Japanese loom that is the starting—and selling—point of garments that often have rather simple silhouettes. It’s those special materials that put these clothes in a can’t-touch-this category. An aesthetic can be copied; the hand of a luxury fabric, not so much. Not that that’s stopped anyone from trying.
While there’s been a lot of hullabaloos about the quiet-luxury trend, there’s not that much actual whispering on the runways. Medieval knights charged down the runway at the men’s shows. At the women’s resort collections, mermaids surfaced at Louis Vuitton, while Chanel showed Barbie-fied looks in LA and Christian Dior conjured Frida Kahlo in Mexico City.
It’s been proven again and again in fashion that the eye has to travel. That’s one of the reasons we have trends. Quiet luxury, with its discipline and unwaveringly pared-back vision, is a strange fit for the web—or maybe it’s just interesting because it’s kind of difficult to pin down.
We don’t talk enough about ’90s minimalism as a reaction to the over-the-top-ness and artifice of ’80s fashion, but the contrast between done and undone goes a long way in emphasizing how new and fresh an unadorned Calvin Klein slip dress or a clean-lined Helmut Lang suit was. At the same time Martin Margiela was offering simple yet super-luxe separates at Hermès. The deflation of balloon skirts was roughly concurrent with a recessionary period, making this tendency for the toned down not only look right but also feel in step with the times.
This time around, the trend feels like a reaction to digital culture, particularly the spotlight that is the Instagram moment, which prizes shock value, theater, and the right kind of access. And let’s not forget TikTok. The posting of just-off-the runway looks (generally on celebrities) turns new ideas into a kind of fast fashion, the upshot being that these clothes have more of a meme life than they do a material one.
Minimalism 3.0 brings us if not back to reality then closer to it, in the sense that the emphasis is on clothes that are beautifully made from quality fabrics and feature unfussy, simple silhouettes. The idea is that these are forever clothes, and as such they play into the sustainability narrative. It’s also important to note that the quiet-luxury aesthetic is an antidote to the hyper-young Y2K look, a grown-up alternative that can go to the office (where no one seems to know how to dress anymore in the wake of the pandemic’s workplace shake-ups). Minimalism 3.0 speaks of having arrived at a lifestyle and implies a certain level of success, if measured against quite traditional standards. In an alienated and messy world, where you can’t always trust what you see, it’s easy to understand how touch, structure, and simplicity would become sartorial grails.
