This article is taken from the June 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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Quiet luxury — aren’t you just sick of it? Behold, the stealth-wealth tropes that 11-year-old TikTokers side-eye as #oldmoneyaesthetic, while otherwise being barely literate. It was the beginning of the end of HBO’s Succession wot did it.

Behold, we chavs’ final opportunity to train-spot the logo-less, yet far from unreadable Loro Piana baseball caps (£440-£2,400) sported by its patriarch and young pretender, Brunello Cucinelli polo shirts (from £440), and Max Mara everything else. If the garb donned by the cashmere cognoscenti can whisper rather than shout, it’s because we scumbags lean in to scrutinise it.

As if to rub our noses in this, Succession went meta on us with Tom Wambsgans’s Burberry bag disquisition: 2023’s take on Miranda Priestly’s blue jumper oration in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Cousin Greg brings a character satirised as “Bridget Randomfuck” to Logan’s birthday bash. Bridge is brandishing a £2,500 tote in crassly trademark check.

Quoth The Wambs: “She’s brought a ludicrously capacious bag. What’s even in there? Flat shoes for the subway? Her lunch pail? I mean, Greg, it’s monstrous. It’s gargantuan. You could take it camping. You could slide it across the floor after a bank job.” Shouty fashiony fashion is for the plebs, not least where it meets utility: civilian “it” bags equal patrician shit bags.

And, yet, Tom himself is only one sweaty step above this. Witness the pilot episode in which he gifts his future father-in-law a $25,000 Patek Philippe watch, immediately re-gifted to a staff member’s child. Compare Roman’s skewering of him for sporting a branded Moncler gilet: “Nice vest, Wambsgans. It’s so puffy. What’s it stuffed with, your hopes and dreams?”

The show’s costume supremo, Michelle Matland, was a student at Bennington College, the small, artsy institution that produced Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis, and it shows.

Gah, no, enough! I will not inflict these excruciatingly tasteful excesses on you a moment longer. After all, it’s not so much exorbitantly-priced Brioni cardigans that are done and dusted, as so many Glenda Slaggs wanging on about them. Either way, this stuff feels eye-bleeding dull. Niche normcore bitches, it’s s’over.

What antidotes might we find to the tyranny of taupe, not least when rendered in the flammable fibres we peasants can afford? What we need is something less try-hard, more anarchic, grungily groovy, fun. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the rock chick.

And, in a moment that can only be described as pure column magic, the inspo for this lewk is another televisual extravaganza: Amazon Prime’s Daisy Jones & The Six. You know, the serialisation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel about a Fleetwood Mac-style combo that was spring’s top cringe binge.

Amazon threw itself at this ten-part project so ardently it turned a motley gaggle of actors into a chart-topping band, their album, Aurora, a colossal real-world hit. The show stars Riley Keough, Elvis’s hot-panted granddaughter, and the streaming service also conspired on a vast, not inexpensive Daisy Jones “capsule collection” with the American boho brand Free People, including a “disco bra” (£70), fishnet frock (£228), and vegan shacket (£118).

I’m not suggesting you snap up these repro threads, despite my hovering over the hot pink Jayde Flare Jeans (£80), Rock Star Embellished Velvet Cape (£250), and Hemant & Nandita Kaftan (a punchy £498).

After all, you’ve probably amassed a fair bit of this stuff already, whether it’s bootcut trews (hello, we covered these in July ’21), or a little light velvet gothery (last December’s column). A Hayley Menzies jacquard duster (see August 2022) would work wonderfully while the chill’s still with us (from £400). Indeed, her whole “British luxury for refined rebels” ethos is entirely on point.

While summer naturally veers a tad boho, rock chic was trickier before boots became a seasonal staple back in the mid-Twenty Teens. The Goldilocks, just-right boot will be what is referred to as “Western” without being full Roy Rogers. For my money, these should be Ash’s, or vintage YSL.

Your rock should be groomed, glam rock — one doesn’t want to look actively unwashed. But feel free to dice with sex in the form of lace, transparency, bralessness, plunge necklines and bare skin; ornamentation being silver rather than the recently too ubiquitous gold.

“But is it happening?” I hear you fashion cats demand. Truth is, it’s never not happening, not least given the ongoing Indie Sleaze/post-Dame Viv punk/fringing obsessions. Shiv Roy wouldn’t go near it, and that’s why it’s winning