Why would we want to cosplay as a billionaire when we know that to be so is to live without trust, without shame, to be monstrous? What sick trick are we playing on ourselves? It makes me wonder about our relationship to politicians, too – rather than making him unelectable, why does the cash and privilege of a billionaire like Sunak (who once visited a construction site wearing a pair of £490 Prada suede loafers) instead seem to inspire so many people to doff their caps and run to Selfridges? These people are ruining our lives, and our response is to buy their shoes? Why should the rest of us buy them – what good are the clothes without the power? If we’ve learned anything from our good friends in Succession, it is the true horrors of being wealthy, the boredom, the panic, the interminable snacks. They speak of money, not taste of fear, not joy. But, instead, they’re bloodless, grandly bland, dreary. Perhaps I would mind this “quiet luxury” less if the clothes were fabulous. While the charity does important work, its existence is a stark acknowledgment that we will always be judged by a set of classist rules seemingly carved, by diamond, in stone. I was reminded of Smart Works, the charity supported by Meghan Markle, which provides interview outfits to women referred from women’s refuges, homeless shelters and the Prison Service, clothes styled, in part, to disguise their wearers’ lack of power. Looking back at the most entertaining court cases of recent years, it became clear Paltrow was the anti-Vardy, swishing through court in neutral knitwear and chunky boots, rather than huge handbags, tailoring and tight dresses. While Gwyneth Paltrow’s gloriously diverting ski trial (my favourite ski trial to date) went a long way towards helping me forgive her for past crimes (such as pandemic profiteering by hawking a list of long-Covid products including a “hiking necklace” costing almost $9,000, or declaring that water has feelings), the success of her old money fashion somehow chilled me. ![]() ![]() The stealthiness of the fashion, its blank quality, works as a sort of invisibility cape, armour or magic spell, allowing the very rich to march cleanly through walls of tax, war or morals, or slide unnoticed under doors into the rooms where decisions are made. Shortly before being seen in them, she’d received her yearly dividend of £11.5m from an Indian company still operating in Russia. ![]() The most chilling expressions of stealth wealth for me tend to go hand in hand with simple facts about the fortunes that purchased them, like the £570 suede slippers worn on the school run by Akshata Murty (one of the wealthiest women in Britain and Rishi Sunak’s wife). Gwyneth Paltrow’s gloriously diverting ski trial (my favourite ski trial to date) helped me forgive her for past crimes For years now, the fashion press has monitored and marketed these clothes to the rest of us, frauds every last one, with the unspoken promise that if we spend the equivalent of the price of a car on our new jumper, we too might gain access to a world that doesn’t want us. Woven through these merino wools and pale suedes are the codes and strappings of a life where the wrong type of collar, for example, betrays you as a gatecrasher, a fraud.
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