The power of plain: How minimalist fashion became the ultimate status symbol

What is it about?

Why do some of the most expensive clothes in the world look so plain? This article explores how simple, understated fashion works as a tool of social exclusion. The author argues that the apparent simplicity of so-called quiet luxury or stealth dressing is a form of 'inverse-exhibitionism': a coded signal that acts as a secret password, separating those with 'the right' taste and background from everyone else. The article traces this idea from 18th-century Europe through to today, examining how this aesthetic carries built-in biases around class, gender, and race. The Belgian designer Martin Margiela serves as the case study, showing how he perfected stealth luxury at Hermès and simultaneously exposed it as a construction at his own label. The article concludes by considering how digital platforms are now spreading this minimalist aesthetic globally, creating a new kind of worldwide class division between the 'minimalist rich' and the 'decorative rest'.

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Photo by mockupbee on Unsplash

Photo by mockupbee on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Fashion is often dismissed as trivial, yet the clothes we wear often carry important social meaning. This article reveals the hidden mechanisms of exclusion within one of the most influential aesthetic trends of our time. Quiet luxury is a perpetually returning phenomenon, and this work provides the critical framework to understand what is really going on beneath the surface. The implications extend beyond fashion, inviting readers to consider how taste and consumer choices are never neutral, but reinforce broader structures of inequality. For researchers in fashion studies, sociology, and cultural studies, this work offers a rich theoretical toolkit. For general readers, it offers a fresh and unsettling way of looking at something they encounter every day.