All Dressed Up and Nothing to Inherit

Before I even arrived in St Andrews, the internet informed me that I should dress as though my family owned a third of it. My extensive and highly academic research, conducted through TikTok, Instagram and a Google search for ‘St Andrews style,’ had prepared me for the uniform: a well-fitting Barbour jacket. A lasting pair of loafers. Warm quarter-zips. Tweed. Clothing designed to suggest you had just wandered in from a country house, despite actually having wandered in from DRA. The clothes intrigued me. Why we want to wear them intrigued me more.

The ‘old money’ aesthetic fits St Andrews like a glove. Between black-tie balls, golf, and academic gowns, there are plenty of opportunities to showcase a carefully curated wardrobe. The town supplies the scenery, too. I mean, put almost anyone in a red gown, place them in an ancient quadrangle, hand them something sparkling, and within ten minutes they are bound to behave as though their ancestors personally endowed the University.

Yet the students adopting the ‘old money’ look are often fiercely ambitious. We maintain our LinkedIn profiles more carefully than our bedrooms. We approach internship applications with greater commitment than tutorial attendance. We run societies, fight for committee positions, and endlessly worry about grades. Then we dress like people supposedly spared the necessity of doing any of it. There is something wonderfully absurd about spending the afternoon polishing your CV and the evening dressing as though your family has never required one.

‘Old money’ promises more than wealth. Its particular appeal is familiarity: clothes that look inherited rather than purchased, knowing how to dress for black tie without Googling it, feeling comfortable in traditionally elite spaces and never seeming impressed by any of them. The aesthetic denotes belonging without having to establish your credentials or place. The irony, of course, is that performing effortlessness requires considerable effort. There are endless tutorials teaching people how to look as though nobody ever needed to teach them. Nothing says natural ease quite like a fourteen-part TikTok series explaining how to achieve it.

The more uncomfortable part emerges when class becomes ‘tasteful.’ Country houses, private clubs, certain sports, and particular manners lose their social history and become simply ‘classy,’ ‘timeless,’ or ‘elegant.’ Inherited advantage becomes repackaged as refinement. That shift matters because it makes a hierarchy seem deserved. If the people at the top are simply more tasteful, polished, and comfortable, their position starts to appear natural, and the resources that produce such ease disappear behind the pleasing impression it creates.

Of course, wearing a Barbour jacket does not amount to endorsing aristocracy. I think they look rather nice, and their usefulness in Scottish weather hardly requires a political defence. I also own loafers, collared shirts, and tweed. Still, we can enjoy the clothes while questioning why inherited status is such an attractive story to attach to them.

Perhaps the appeal is understandable. For students repeatedly applying, achieving, networking, and proving themselves, the fantasy of an assured place in the world offers some relief. There is nothing shameful about ambition, or about having to make your own way. Yet we seem drawn to disguising precisely that effort. 

So, keep the quarter-zips and Barbour. The question is why we want them to suggest we have nothing to prove. Yet, for a generation defined by striving, that may be the ultimate luxury.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons