Workwear to Wealth: The Trend of Poverty Chic

What you wear tells a story — of your interests, your wealth, the fashion movements you align with. At least, that’s the illusion. A sun-faded hoodie might whisper of late-night gigs and years spent breaking it in, or it could be a $1,000 designer piece made to look that way. Mud-streaked jeans might suggest a hard day’s work, or they might be fresh off of a luxury runway. In fashion, reality is optional — the economy speaks louder than intent.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the rise of ‘poverty chic’, where distress, decay, and working-class aesthetics are carefully curated by those who will never experience the struggles they imitate. From Kylie Jenner’s factory-stained denim to Balenciaga’s shredded couture, wealth has a habit of dressing itself in the aesthetics of hardship while keeping a safe distance from the reality of it. But why? Why do the rich want to look poor? And when does fashion stop being self-expression and start becoming something else entirely?

Throughout history, the wealthy have repeatedly repurposed the clothing of the working class, transforming necessity into fashion. In the 1880s, shopgirls — working-class women employed in retail — began dressing stylishly, often imitating high fashion. With the invention of the sewing machine, the rise of mass-produced patterns, and increased disposable income, she gained the ability to replicate expensive designs, sometimes blending in with or even outshining the elite clientele she served. In response, employers in cities like New York, London, and Paris required their female employees to wear plain black dresses, turning what had become a marker of upward mobility into a restrictive uniform. Decades later, Coco Chanel capitalised on this aesthetic shift, refining the plain black dress into a symbol of effortless elegance. She referred to the look as la pauvreté de luxe, or “luxurious poverty” — a style meant to evoke a lack of concern for fashion, but only for those who could afford to be unconcerned.

Time and again, fashion has taken rebellion and hardship and rebranded them as luxury. The punk and grunge movements, originally rooted in working-class defiance against mainstream materialism, were quickly absorbed by high fashion, stripping them of their raw authenticity. In the 1990s and early 2000s, ‘heroin chic’ emerged, glorifying thin, gaunt figures and unhealthy lifestyles, turning addiction and suffering into an aesthetic. Today, luxury brands continue to imitate poverty, marketing distress as desirability. Kylie Jenner’s collaboration with Acne Studios featured the ‘Dirty Denim’ collection, Balenciaga has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of this trend, from their Destroyed Collection to their infamous Mud Show, and Hermès released a £5,750 orange hard hat — an everyday piece of protective gear for construction workers turned into a status symbol. Dior designer John Galliano’s homeless-chic collection took this further, using luxurious fabrics like newspaper-print silk to create a high-fashion imitation of destitution — a look that was later worn by Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, reinforcing its appeal to the elite. The dress itself was later sold for €15,000, turning a symbol of poverty into an object of exclusivity. These designs, worn by the wealthy as statements of style, transform the visual markers of struggle into high-priced commodities, further blurring the line between fashion and exploitation.

Kanye West has repeatedly turned struggle into spectacle, using distress as both a design choice and a marketing tool. His Yeezy brand popularized tattered, distressed clothing, even displaying pieces in dumpsters to mimic the experience of rummaging for clothes. In 2016, his Yeezy x album release party featured a promotional image of Rwanda’s Kibeho refugee camp — a site of massacre — without acknowledging its tragic history, reducing real suffering to an aesthetic.

This trend is not just confined to high fashion, it has also influenced youth culture, where working-class aesthetics are romanticized and repackaged. Movements like ‘Naarm Core’ in Australia and the Berlin ‘Poverty Play Aesthetic’ see teenagers and young adults embracing late 1990s and early 2000s fashion associated with economic struggle. Vintage windbreakers, oversized thrifted clothing, and deliberately unkempt styles serve as a visual rebellion against polished affluence, but also risk aestheticizing real hardship. For some, this is a rejection of traditional wealth displays; for others, it is simply an aesthetic choice divorced from its origins. This phenomenon can also be observed in St Andrews, where some students — despite their privileged access to one of the world’s most prestigious institutions — adopt thrifted, distressed, or working-class-inspired fashion, making struggle an aesthetic rather than a lived reality.

French theorist Guy Debord argued in Society of the Spectacle that objects take on meaning beyond their physical reality, shaped by culture and commerce. Nowhere is this more evident than in fashion, where distress, wear, and struggle are often repackaged as luxury. Of course, not everyone who wears secondhand or distressed clothing does so for the aesthetic — some, like Adam Sandler, simply value comfort over trends. At the 2025 Academy Awards, Sandler shocked attendees by wearing dark blue Adidas basketball shorts and an oversized Aviator Nation hoodie, prompting humorous comments from host Conan O’Brien. His nonchalance highlights a key distinction: some wear casual, worn clothing because it feels right, while others wear it as an expensive costume. When the wealthy turn poverty into a fashion statement, stripped of its struggle and sold at a premium price, it raises a larger question — is this appreciation, rebellion, or just another way for luxury to reinvent itself at the expense of those who can’t afford to play dress-up?

Illustration by Holly Ward