What does it mean to dress rich?

At New York Fashion Week, it was clear that the sartorial signifiers of wealth and status were changing.
Ten a.m. in the middle of New York Fashion Week, and assorted ladies in cocktail attire and pumps with chunky heels paraded politely through a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel. Overhead the crystal chandeliers twinkled; underfoot the carpet was soft. It was Carolina Herrera time, and they were the Herrera crowd, ready to applaud designer Wes Gordon's brocade garden party ball gowns: the bell-shaped gowns in social stripes of cream icy; Empress Sissi embroidered in gold from all this.
Dresses spun in silk crepe of China and double-faced duchess satin – fabrics that were once de rigueur among fundraisers when the Plaza was primarily a local haunt rather than a tourist destination, but had become, Mr Gordon said backstage , almost an "endangered species".
He was right.
The last show of the fashion season — the niche from the marquee, because that's also the last word - once went to establishment names such as Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford, which closed the week in the great surroundings of Park Avenue Armory or Lincoln Center. This time around it went to Luar, among the city's most famous up-and-coming names, and held in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Raul Lopez, the Dominican-American designer, called his collection "Calle Pero Elegante". Translation: "street, but elegant".
That meant camel coat dresses with linebacker shoulders. Leather motorcycle jackets with protruding feathers and fox fur (the real one) that rolled up into a Madeleine-style hood. That meant silver sequins and gangster stripes; down jackets and bustles and white shirts; elements of the imagined big time blended and tuned to the tune of "B.K. Anthem."
The point, Mr. Lopez said after his show, is that fashion is a form of generational wealth that everyone can access.
"For some white families," he said, "it means a pearl necklace. For people in the neighborhood, it's fur. It's a sneaker. It's a chain. " He seeks to create the uniform of a new high society. The realization is not quite there. But it happens.
Clockwise from top left, Fall 2023 looks from Luar, Michael Kors, Khaite and Tory Burch . Credit... Clockwise from top left, Fernanda Calfat/Getty Images; Michael Kors; Khaite; Dan and Corina Lecca

Fashion Feb 17, 2023 0 43 Add to Reading List

At New York Fashion Week, it was clear that the sartorial signifiers of wealth and status were changing.

Ten a.m. in the middle of New York Fashion Week, and assorted ladies in cocktail attire and pumps with chunky heels paraded politely through a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel. Overhead the crystal chandeliers twinkled; underfoot the carpet was soft. It was Carolina Herrera time, and they were the Herrera crowd, ready to applaud designer Wes Gordon's brocade garden party ball gowns: the bell-shaped gowns in social stripes of cream icy; Empress Sissi embroidered in gold from all this.

Dresses spun in silk crepe of China and double-faced duchess satin – fabrics that were once de rigueur among fundraisers when the Plaza was primarily a local haunt rather than a tourist destination, but had become, Mr Gordon said backstage , almost an "endangered species".

He was right.

The last show of the fashion season — the niche from the marquee, because that's also the last word - once went to establishment names such as Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford, which closed the week in the great surroundings of Park Avenue Armory or Lincoln Center. This time around it went to Luar, among the city's most famous up-and-coming names, and held in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Raul Lopez, the Dominican-American designer, called his collection "Calle Pero Elegante". Translation: "street, but elegant".

That meant camel coat dresses with linebacker shoulders. Leather motorcycle jackets with protruding feathers and fox fur (the real one) that rolled up into a Madeleine-style hood. That meant silver sequins and gangster stripes; down jackets and bustles and white shirts; elements of the imagined big time blended and tuned to the tune of "B.K. Anthem."

The point, Mr. Lopez said after his show, is that fashion is a form of generational wealth that everyone can access.

"For some white families," he said, "it means a pearl necklace. For people in the neighborhood, it's fur. It's a sneaker. It's a chain. " He seeks to create the uniform of a new high society. The realization is not quite there. But it happens.

Clockwise from top left, Fall 2023 looks from Luar, Michael Kors, Khaite and Tory Burch . Credit... Clockwise from top left, Fernanda Calfat/Getty Images; Michael Kors; Khaite; Dan and Corina Lecca