As a Pollock Halls resident, I couldn’t escape the races. It’s a day where you drink, watch horses, yet dress about forty years older — hardly radiating youth.
The races reflect the growing trend among students to emphasise maturity through fashion. If you walked through George Square and took a shot every time you saw someone in a trench coat, you wouldn’t even make it to McEwan hall. So what’s with all the beige?
Gen-Z’s attraction to older aesthetics has arisen from a need for stability. Who cares about war, climate change and the graduate job crisis when you have a big house in the Cotswolds with 100k in a savings account. About 60 per cent of young people feel overwhelmed by the news and as our futures become more uncertain the attraction to the aloof ‘old-money’ aesthetics grows.
Writer Zach Weiss told GQ “the old money look is like a character you can play”—the character is one of security. When everybody that works seems exhausted and still lacks a disposable income, an unlimited money pit is what everybody needs right now.
This contrasts the 2010 rise in business casual. While millennials wanted to look like they just came from the office, Gen-Z want to look like they haven’t lifted a finger all day. Though there’s some other similarities, the 2010 rise of business casual also occurred at a turbulent time, coinciding with the aftermath of the 2008 recession. In 2011 8.1 per cent were unemployed in the UK and as of January 2026 the rate is 5.1 per cent, similar to October 2020. The once popular business casual without any business chic is coming back into style as unemployment rises; we’ve just traded chevron for tweed.
But in summer 2024, God said “Let there be Brat” and the indie sleaze party girl returned, dressed in animal print, black leather and the Isabel Marant wedge sneaker .
Indie sleaze is business casual’s hedonistic and messy cousin; its return can be read as a response to the polished ‘old-money’ aesthetic. Ivo Vlaev, a professor of behavioural science at Warwick University said that this isn’t just a return to the past but “it’s a complex blend of coping, compensation, identity expression and socioeconomic constraint. The behaviours may look familiar, but the psychology behind them has evolved.”
Young people aren’t just emulating maturity, we’re emulating our ideal, financially secure life. However, we’re not powered by bottomless brunches and walks in the countryside, we’re not 30-somethings on our way to our office job, and we’re not viewing future houses with our significant other. We’re broke students, scouring Indeed by day, drinking by night.
Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash