The old money aesthetic is a social-media style that imitates the look of inherited wealth: understated, well-made clothing without conspicuous logos, styled for settings like yachts, country clubs and polo matches. As of July 2023, The Conversation reported that old money content on TikTok had over three billion views, with posts tagged #oldmoneyaesthetic.
Origin
“Old money” describes the style of people who have inherited and kept their wealth over at least two generations. Wikipedia notes that, because their standing is secure from birth, such consumers have less need to signal status and tend to favour quiet brands. The look draws on older sources. Wikipedia traces understated “quiet luxury” dress to the capitalist classes of Europe and America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Preppy style grew out of the Ivy League and Northeastern US prep schools in the early to mid-20th century (Wikipedia).
The named aesthetic circulates mainly on TikTok. Writing in July 2023, historian Averyl Gaylor said the style drew on “quiet luxury”, also called “stealth wealth”, where garish or excessively branded fashion is a social faux pas. She also said it had been popularised in fiction by the Roy siblings of HBO’s Succession.
How It’s Used
The hashtag tags outfit videos, styling guides and “vibe” montages. Gaylor’s essay lists the markers: fabrics made from natural fibres, clothing that is well constructed and functional, and the kind of outfit worn “on a yacht, in a country club or while attending the polo”. She notes that even Vogue called the aesthetic “hard to pin down”.
Old Money vs Quiet Luxury vs Preppy
| Old money aesthetic | #QuietLuxury | Preppy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | The style of inherited wealth (two-plus generations), as imitated online | An aesthetic of understated elegance, quality materials and timeless styling with no visible logos | An American subculture tied to Northeastern college-preparatory schools and their alumni |
| Roots (per sources) | Inherited-wealth families whose status needs no signalling | 18th- and 19th-century capitalist classes; 1990s minimalism (Donna Karan, Miuccia Prada) | Ivy style from the early 1900s; revived by The Official Preppy Handbook (1980) |
| Signals | Natural fibres, well-made functional clothes, yachts, clubs, polo | Muted colours, craftsmanship, no overt branding | Sports-derived wear (polo, sailing, tennis), J. Press, Brooks Brothers |
| Key 2020s moments | Sofia Richie wedding, April 2023 | Succession; Gwyneth Paltrow’s March 2023 Utah trial | — |
Sources: Wikipedia: Quiet luxury, Wikipedia: Preppy, The Conversation.
The boundary. Quiet luxury describes how goods are made and branded. Old money, as Wikipedia defines it, is narrower: it describes who inherited the wealth. Preppy is a specific American school-and-campus subculture whose dress and manners, per Wikipedia, reflect “an upper class and old money upbringing”. Wikipedia also separates stealth wealth (hiding money) from quiet luxury (signalling it discreetly).
Sofia Richie’s Wedding (April 2023)
Sofia Richie married music executive Elliot Grainge on April 22, 2023, at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France, wearing three custom Chanel outfits over the weekend. Yahoo’s Katie Mather wrote on May 1, 2023 that the main takeaway from thousands of TikToks, Instagram posts and Reddit threads was that Richie had supposedly nailed the “quiet luxury” and “old money” trends. Mather added that Richie “is not actually old money, in the traditional sense of the phrase”, and that her estimated $4 million wedding was not at all “quiet”. The Conversation likewise named Richie as the aesthetic’s best current embodiment.
Class Critique
In “New ‘clean girl’ and ‘old money’ aesthetics on TikTok make the same old link between hygiene and class” (The Conversation, July 5, 2023), La Trobe University history PhD candidate Averyl Gaylor argued that “perceived cleanliness (or otherwise) has long been understood as being reflective of class”. She traced the link through 19th-century English public health and “imperial hygiene” in colonial Australia. Her conclusion was that both TikTok aesthetics are “informed by a much larger history in which the performance of hygiene was entangled with ideas of class and race”.