Earlier this month, Hailey Bieber drove to dinner in Beverly Hills in her Tesla cybertruck carrying a work jacket that retails for $1,700. This isn’t the primary time Bieber has added clothes historically made for laborers to her wardrobe—she’s beforehand been noticed in a $1,200 We11done chore coat. It’s no surprise celebrities, together with Bieber, Jaden Smith, Kaia Gerber, and Brooklyn Beckham have all purchased into the pattern: workwear manufacturers are leaping on the likelihood to money in on the hype with luxurious collaborations, too. Junya Watanabe has a longstanding partnership with Carhartt; In June 2023, Marni x Carhartt WIP produced a line of funky items, from the $770 floral jacket to the $354 two-toned trousers; Prada, Miu Miu, and Louis Vuitton all confirmed chore jackets in latest exhibits.

However there’s a sure incongruity in proudly owning luxurious items that undertake decrease class aesthetics, particularly when the wearer comes from such a privileged background. It raises the query: what ought to the higher class’s relationship to utilitarian clothes appear to be?

“As high-end labels try to be each unavailable and all over the place directly, the very idea of desirability remains to be constructed on the haves and the have-nots,” my British Vogue colleague Daniel Rodgers wrote in Dazed. “That dissonance, between what trend sells and who it sells it to, has been the ire of social media, which regularly warns towards the perils of fetishizing working-class aesthetics.”

Anyone who went to a liberal arts school, or had an unemployed roommate with an extreme Doordash behavior is aware of that there’s a tendency for rich individuals to cosplay as poor, or so as to add pointless caveats as a way of justifying their life. There’s clearly nothing mistaken with coming from monetary safety—particularly given {that a} core worth of parenting is making an attempt to offer the very best life attainable for youngsters. That is additionally to not counsel that wealthy individuals haven’t skilled struggling. However wealth cushions any bodily and emotional hardships that might in any other case be coupled with monetary misery.

Class appropriation lies in a lot murkier territory than cultural appropriation. Maybe it’s because those that so rapidly (and rightly) decry cultural appropriation are sometimes those donning the Carhartt barn jackets and Dickies cargos with out slicing their enamel on development websites or spending grueling summer time days detasseling corn. Like with any trend pattern, the elevated reputation of utilitarian clothes over the previous few years has additionally inspired celebrities to provide it a attempt. However when the exorbitantly rich attempt workwear the look’s cool, laidback intentions appear to look extra like a dressing up.

In fact, it’s by no means so black-and-white to counsel that simply because somebody is wealthy, they need to mechanically ban themselves from carrying these clothes, particularly as a result of they’re so utilitarian. Some even argue that the unique which means of utilitarian clothes is up to now gone that we’ve developed previous literal interpretations of those clothes.