Quiet Luxury Is Exhausting

This blog isn't "about fashion" — it's about how style connects to life, self-perception, social roles, and the absurdity around us. Simple observations, no judgment.

There's a feeling that for the last two years, the internet has been trying to turn us into "silent heiresses of European real estate."

Everyone is suddenly in beige quiet luxury style, in oat-milk-coloured cashmere, with the face of someone who has absolutely no emotions — or is that an AI-generated image from our indispensable friend today?

Why everyone on Instagram suddenly looks the same?

Sometimes I open the internet and see the same woman 37 times in a row. She stands sideways with a small cup of coffee, gazing with that thoughtful, conscious, accomplished look — at a lake, at the sea, at the mountains, and so on. She's impeccably styled, fresh off the rack. Looks gorgeous, but I'm sure uncomfortable and completely impractical for everyday chaos.

She looks like she just stepped out of a Tuscan villa, though for most of us, outside the window there's deliveries, deadlines, offices, shops, and all the chaos of a big city.

And the most interesting thing — everyone started looking the same at precisely the moment when fashion was supposedly talking about individuality. But the problem with "expensive style" isn't even that it's boring. The problem is that it's very tense.

The hidden cost of looking effortless

Because looking "expensive" today is almost a job. You can't just put on a sweater. No. It has to be the right sweater: relaxed but put-together, minimalist but considered, as if you made no effort at all — though you spent the last forty minutes trying.

This aesthetic demands that a person have: perfect skin, a perfect apartment, a perfect glass of water on the nightstand, and the nervous system of someone who doesn't know what stress is. Do people like that even exist?

What's especially funny is that "quiet luxury" turned out to be very loud. It's literally screaming: "Look how effortlessly I'm trying not to look like everyone else."

And at some point, the whole aesthetic starts to resemble an expensive hotel interior. Beautiful. Calm. And completely impossible to tell who actually lives here — or whether anyone does at all.

What real personal style actually looks like

It seems to me that people are now getting tired not of fashion, but of the feeling that their image always has to prove something.

That you are — put-together, successful, mindful, drinking water, not eating meat or gluten, and know how to store greens in glass containers.

Though sometimes a person doesn't need a "luxury aesthetic." Just a normal cardigan and a week of silence. And perhaps real style right now doesn't look "expensive" — it looks alive.

When a person has: habits, quirks, a favourite old jacket, things that don't quite match, and the face of someone who at least occasionally eats a croissant in the car, scattering crumbs all over their outfit — but getting the most genuine, real pleasure from it. Because individuality is almost always more interesting than flawlessness.

And flawlessness, honestly, gets tiring very quickly.

This is what I work on with my clients — not a look, but a way of being dressed that actually belongs to them. If you've been feeling stuck between trends and exhaustion, come for a discovery call. No agenda. Just a conversation.

— Irène | Personal Image Consultant, Milan