Plinth

It wasn’t ever thus – in fact, class was once so sartorially stratified that its distinctions were legal as well as social. Operating in various permutations between the 13th and 17th centuries, so-called sumptuary laws restricted extravagance and luxury, particularly in clothing and household goods, to maintain social order and prevent the lower classes from imitating the elite. Specific colours and materials could only be worn by people of a certain rank – otherwise, so the thinking went, how could you tell a lord from a serf? What if (god forbid) looking rich were all it took to be treated that way?

Inevitably, that rigidity came from the sneaking fear that there was no meaningful difference between classes after all – indistinguishable, unless you enforce some arbitrary means of justifying your position at the top of the hierarchy. And while there’s a similar question in the air today, this time it’s being posed from the bottom up; its intonation more tantalising than terrified: what if looking rich is all it takes to be treated that way, after all? Rather than the feudal system, this time that radical sentiment has given us Boom Boom – an aesthetic that’s as flashy as it is sleazy, dripping with cash (or at least, trying to look that way).

The whole point of Boom Boom is its opulence: furs and glitz, jewels and feathers, perfectly calibrated to scream WEALTH – a far cry from its recent forebear, ‘quiet luxury’, wherein the aim was to look like an old-money millionaire, clad in only the best without needing to shout about it. But on catwalks and screens alike, understated cashmere has given way to showy sable; Mikey Madison’s eye-poppingly luxe fur coat, worn for her titular (and Oscar winning) role in Anora, arguably epitomises Boom Boom: a hedonistic OTTness, inflected with counterintuitive nihilism.

Certainly, this new flush of glamour hasn’t come with a commensurate bump in everyone’s bank accounts – just the permission to act as though it did.

Live it up while you can, says Boom Boom – either because you don’t know long your oligarch fiancé will keep the money coming, a la Anora, or because the planet is on fire politically as well as literally. In our diamantes and stilettos, we are anticipating the end of the world – and for many, dressing up the class ladder is the closest we’re going to get to its cushioning privilege when the tough really gets going. If we don’t have the money to make our last moments sweet, at least we can go out in style; and in the final screaming scrum, we’ll probably all look much the same anyway.

But wait! While we hard-up fashionistas are impersonating the ruling classes who led us into this mess, they’re cosplaying as us downtrodden oiks! See: Old Etonians in Camberwell, wearing Patagonia and trying to get away with saying ‘Mate’ out loud. Or, Sir Grayson Perry, RA, and his new alter-ego, East End outsider artist Shirley Smith.

In his exhibition Delusions of Grandeur, at the Wallace Collection until October 26th, Perry presents work ostensibly by Smith, whose fictitious identity is definitively enmeshed with her output. Her dark backstory – abuse survivor, once-resident in a psychiatric institution – has led some critics to label his role-play distasteful; but whatever your view on the ethics of Perry’s persona, the allure of playing down the power structure can clearly be as appealing as posturing upwards.

Boom Boom might be new, but across cultures and throughout history, masquerades and carnivals have pivoted on this kind of topsy-turvy status swapping. The idea – for medieval European elites, at least – was that an outlet for the oppressed masses was crucial to stop them overturning the structures that kept them that way. Let the pauper play a king once a year, and he’ll get it out of his system. And while monarchies hold less sway today than they once did, the gulf between rich and poor has rarely been wider, with the richest 1% amassing more wealth than the rest of the world put together between 2020 and 2022.

Is it surprising or inevitable, then, that people standing on either side of the yawning divide should try to dress their way across it?

In the UK, it is increasingly common to have friends of all genders, races, and sexual orientations – but class remains the Rubicon that no amount of good will or open mindedness can reliably transcend. This is partly practical – upper-class people go to different schools, eat in different restaurants, visit different places on holiday, than their working-class counterparts, and so they’re unlikely to encounter each other. But the divide is also emotional: the have-nots resent the haves, who fear the have-nots, creating a vicious circle of mistrust that’s only exacerbated by each group’s lack of human experience of the other, something that hasn’t changed much since the times of sumptuary laws.

Enter, art. Right now, in the UK alone, there are two other exhibitions dealing explicitly with class: After the End of History, touring, and Lives Less Ordinary, London. Luckily, what’s bad for class relations is fascinating for fashion and visual culture – the further away those on the other end of the wealth scale drift, the more mysteriously alluring it becomes to wear them like a costume. Figures like Perry, who might be a Sir now but was born into a working-class Essex family in 1960, can draw together two ends of a spectrum rarely in conversation – for the rest of us, carnivalesque dress up, exploratory and exultant, indignant and incandescent, will have to do.

By Emily Watkins.