Last week, stories about what the candidates wore had them in opposing corners – with vastly different budgets. £4.50 Truss earrings from Claire’s Accessories contrasted with Sunak’s big-budget style choices, including a £450 pair of Prada loafers and a £3,500 bespoke suit. If politicians’ outfits are always dissected – think Theresa May’s quirky leopard kitten heels or Barack Obama’s rolled-up sleeves – the debate surrounding what Sunak and Truss are wearing comes against the backdrop of the cost of living crisis. It focuses on the price and status these items are trying to signal. It begs the question: how do style status symbols work in 2022? Liz Truss last week. Nadine Dorries highlighted her choice of earrings. Photo: Reuters Even during a cost-of-living crisis, expensive fashion status symbols retain their power and remain popular with consumers. Financial results for the fashion brands were released for the first half of 2022 last week. Revenue rose 48% at Moncler, where a short jacket with a bear logo on the sleeve costs £1,235. At the LVMH group, which owns Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, revenue in the second quarter of 2022 rose 19%, with luxury handbags credited. A classic monogrammed Louis Vuitton Speedy costs £1,030. Meanwhile, Sunak’s favorite Prada saw first-half sales rise 22%. The popular Cleo shoulder bag – featuring the Prada triangle logo – is £1,800. “Clothing has been deeply embedded in status for millennia because clothing is a social language,” says Emma McClendon, fashion historian and author of Power Mode: the Force of Fashion. “It’s how we make our bodies socially legible.” Symbols change over time. “The way you show strength and power may be different in 2022 than in 2016 or 2012,” he explains. The status symbols of each moment are defined by what the ruling elite look like. In the digital age, i.e. the super-rich of Silicon Valley, figures more likely to wear hoodies and trainers than the suits of the traditional establishment. Mark Zuckerberg, who was not a style in the conventional sense, masterminded this change. McClendon argues that his casual clothes were “a really conscious thumbing of his nose at the proper sense of success on Wall Street. Because, ultimately, that’s how any given era or any given person tries to define success and power.” Some public figures pick up working-class tropes to align themselves with something that seems more authentic Daniel Rogers Sunak has entered the definition of Silicon Valley. For photos of him working on the budget at the height of the pandemic in 2020, he was pictured wearing a sweatshirt from Californian brand Everlane, a choice meant to frame him as the poster child of modern success and prosperity. The debate surrounding status symbols also takes over the classroom and who is “allowed” to wear these coveted items. This also changes over time. Twenty years ago, Danniella Westbrook was on the cover of the Sun in a head-to-toe Burberry check, causing outrage – and the fashion house reduced the amount of check she used for fear of alienating her upper class customer base. Daniel Rodgers, a fashion writer who wrote about the impact of Westbrook’s outfit, says the look would be less embarrassing now. “It’s increasingly difficult to distinguish whether someone is middle class, working class or upper class because of the way the Internet and social media have blurred all those markers,” Rodgers said. Kim Kardashian at Paris Fashion Week in early July. Photo: Pierre Suu/Getty Images However, she sees women in the public eye who still cause outrage for stepping outside their perceived boundaries. “Kim Kardashian is an example,” he says. “Before Kanye, when he started dressing in luxury houses like Givenchy, people were like, ‘why does this girl basically from Page Three have access to this?’ It really displaces a lot of people [ideas of] class. It’s something that’s so built into us, so for someone to cross those lines, for a lot of people, it’s offensive, [because it’s] not respecting the kind of natural order in the world.” The signifiers are further complicated as status can now derive from the ‘coolness’ and authenticity often associated with working class culture. “There are pop stars or public figures who try to take working-class tropes and align themselves with something that seems more authentic,” says Rodgers. Rachel Worth, author of Fashion and Class for 2020, says this is nothing new. He points to the French revolution when “it became dangerous to wear high quality fabrics like silk. While the appearance was casual and the working class became politically correct.’ Worth, whose upcoming book focuses on sustainability, also argues that the situation now can come from showing you are conscious of your carbon footprint. “These things go in cycles,” he says. “In the 19th century, second-hand was superior, even for working people. It’s like we’re back at it.” “It’s fashionable to be a knowledgeable consumer,” agrees Caroline Stevenson, head of cultural and historical studies at the London College of Fashion, “knowing where your clothes come from, curating your wardrobe carefully and showing an appreciation for the more refined things. in life.” In the public eye, this is either – as with the Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex – demonstrated by wearing clothes or – as with Carrie Johnson – by renting an outfit. Last year she wore a rented dress to marry the prime minister. In this context, Sunak and Truss’ consumption of new items, whether fast fashion or high-end, could be seen as bad form, in the same way that Kylie Jenner’s boast of using her private jet to travel 17 minutes between two California airports caused her signal. as a “climate criminal” in a viral tweet. McClendon says what the two candidates are wearing communicates a different status. If Sunak’s are “classic symbols of wealth – the bespoke suit, the designer earrings”, Truss’ earrings are “a sort of reverse [symbol] … There is a sense of position, of power within a democratic system, representing the people.” Charlie Porter, the author of What Artists Wear, believes that Truss’s choice to wear fast fashion jingles with her cheap excitement policies. “[She] he’s campaigning to cut taxes for short-term gain,” he says. “The promise is more disposable income in the face of rising fuel and grocery bills. Disposable income usually means shopping. Markets make people feel good in the short term, often at the expense of what might be good for them in the long term.” Sunak’s luxury goods, meanwhile, “can be used to skewer the rich while still being objects of desire and aspiration.” He added: “I think we’re in a very complicated time with wealth because there’s both the prolonged pandemic, inflation, economic woes, but also sustainability. That makes aspiration very complicated.” Style status symbols are alive and well in 2022, but as always, it’s far from simple.
