Johnny Lumley writes his insights and opinions on work wear as a fashion statement, the effect it has on consumerism for those who bid to purchase these garments for their intended purposes.
There seems to be an emerging trend within fashion in which brands will create clothes that are made to look intentionally stressed and destroyed, hardly even serving their function as clothing anymore but are still being priced as high fashion typically is. It is as though the privileged class who are ultimately the primary customer base for these brands are attempting to cosplay as though they are in abject poverty. This becomes all the more dystopian when you consider that those who are at or below the poverty line wear clothes that they do, no matter how distressed or worn in out of necessity, while those in a pair of Balenciaga ‘fully destroyed’ sneakers may have paid upwards of 1,850 euro for shoes that do not function as shoes.
This leaves us with the question: why do people who are financially privileged seem obsessed with styling themselves as though they are less privileged than they actually are? The answer to this question may be found in the trajectory of the clothes worn by the historically underprivileged in the modern era, that being the working class. Workwear’s history is traced back to the 19th century in which labourers in both the factory and the field required clothes that were both practical and durable and with the advent of industrialization and mass production emerged brands with a consistent style and branding. Lasting companies of this being Dickies, Carhartt and Levis to name a few, the primary materials used being denim and canvas which created the necessary clothes for these manual labourers.
Cut to the modern day in which these clothes and styles which were once associated with the working class have embedded themselves in everyday fashion. Aside from the ongoing prevalence of jeans, there has been a meteoric rise in the popularity of brands such as Dickies and Carhartt, who, while still being a supplier of workwear, are predominately sellers of more casual clothing while still leveraging and celebrating their working class aesthetics and history.
The difference for high end fashion brands being that they do not have this shared history with the working class and underprivileged. Their logos have long since been indicators of social status and wealth. High end fashion, when constructing pieces commodifying the aesthetics of poverty, is a deconstruction of social norms in what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘objectified cultural capital,’ meaning physical objects that convey social status and require a certain degree of cultural understanding in order to properly value. The high end fashion brands are intentionally violating what is considered the norm of fashion and thus gain value for their supposed creativity and scarcity. However, this value is inherently paradoxical to what inspired it in the first place - the distressed clothes worn by those in poverty are worn out of necessity, much like the workwear for manual labourers. Thus these high end pieces are worn ultimately as a sign of status, a choice.
The unfortunate predicament that we find ourselves in is that certain behaviours or actions are perceived to be classy or avant-garde if you are rich, but looked down upon if you are poor - and this attitude leaks into fashion. So long as these brands can continue to make money on these styles of clothing, not much will change until the inevitable next trend emerges.