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Everything wrong with TikTok’s “Old Money” trend

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The “old money” aesthetic is going viral on TikTok, and while there are people who seem to understand how to create the look, others are missing the mark.

There’s a misconception that people with a lot of dough lunge for designer brands to flaunt their wealth, when in reality, while the wealthy do use plenty of status markers in their style, they usually don’t do it in a flashy way. Instead, they opt for if-you-know-you-know brands that most people aren’t even aware of. (Take Kendall Roy’s $2000 baseball cap, for example.)

Another tenant of “old money” dressing is, surprisingly, long term usability. Hauling around your mom’s old Birkin and coat a la Margot Tenenbaum is much more old money than getting a $7000 Shein haul of Chanel knock offs every month.

And many of the TikToks under hashtag old money, that’s been used over four billion times, do miss the mark by using cheaply made items from fast fashion companies that aren’t made to last past the first wash.

But the truth is that “old money” has a long, exclusionary history that we don’t need to keep holding up as an ideal. So maybe instead, let’s just keep the re-wearability aspect and let the rest of the aesthetic go.