Loud Luxury: Why ‘Saltburn chic’ is coming to a wardrobe near you soon

Forget everything you thought you knew about fashion. For several seasons, talk of “quiet luxury” has been so central in the sartorial zeitgeist that, for a moment, we forgot there was any other way to dress. Our wardrobes were washed out with muted tones and caramel-coloured cashmere. Drowned by loose tailoring and pleated maxi skirts.

Well, if last weekend’s London Fashion Week is anything to go by, it’s finally time to usher in something a little louder. Introducing “Saltburn Chic”, a new aesthetic spearheaded by Emerald Fennel’s film sensation that follows middle-class Oliver Quick as he inveigles his way into the lives of the aristocratic Catton family.

A mash-up of The Talented Mr Ripley and Brideshead Revisited, Saltburn is set in late 2006 and boasts a nostalgic look combining all the best mid-Noughties fashion tropes – think Ugg boots, off-the-shoulder tie-dye, and American Apparel bodycon dresses – and giving them an elevated twist, the elevation being a great whopping inheritance.

Making himself a little too comfortable in the stately home environment, Oliver establishes a frisson with young Venetia, a chain-smoking, tinsel-wearing, hair backbrushing manic pixie dream girl whose haute-boho aristo style seems to have been blended with TikTok’s viral mob wife trend in shows across the British catwalks.

Perhaps this is also due in part to Griselda, Netflix’s enormously popular new series about Colombian businesswoman Griselda Blanco (played by Sofía Vergara), who created one of the most profitable cartels in history and dressed almost exclusively in statement prints. All of it has created a confluence of ostentation, knitted together with a lingering sense of sexual tension and danger.

At Edward Crutchley’s London show, Venetia was practically walking down the runway herself, with several models staggering down with dishevelled hair, dangling cigarettes from their hands like handbags. Inspired by the famously fruity Greek god, Dionysus, the collection conveyed Saltburn’s hyper-sexualised mood throughout: latex trousers slashed all the way up the sides, exposed torsos underneath lavish woven coats, and perpetual pops of bright red lipstick.

There was a seductive swagger to Harris Reed’s show, too, with models gliding up and down the catwalk in Victoriana-inspired silhouettes that nipped in waists and outsized hips, coquettishly rubbing their hands around their bodies, all while a string quartet played The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black”.

Meanwhile, many of Saltburn’s classic mid-Noughties moments cropped up at Masha Popova, the Ukrainian-born London-based womenswear designer whose autumn-winter 2024 collection was peppered with boho-chic looks, including low-slung skirts covered in pink and gold, and zany striped off-shoulder tops, all perfectly crafted and plucked straight out of Venetia’s wardrobe.

Ugg boots made an appearance, too. But these weren’t the simple stomping boots as you remember them. Oh no. At Tolu Coker the showstopping Uggs came in three deconstructed heeled styles, all covered in shearling. We also saw bodycon dresses at Mark Fast, who’d reimagined the classic nostalgic style and dialled up the sensual mood with his signature slashes across the torso and sides, exposing as much flesh as possible.

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And given that so much of Saltburn centres around the University of Oxford, let’s not forget about the fine collegiate shirting we saw across the board. At Fashion East, Johanna Parv reimagined the stiff white shirt by cutting out the shoulders, while Olly Shinder popped the collards right up, even adding black tape around the arms – a nod to bondage, perhaps.

The mob wife came into her own at Huishan Zhang, where references included 1940s romantic rivals Ingrid Bergman and Anna Magnani. This translated into a classic Hollywood glamour look, with two standout faux fur coats modelled with sheer knee-high socks and slicked-back hair, the look was somehow both sophisticated and childlike. A similarly chic faux fur number made its way down the runway in gilet form at Roksanda.

There were other outsized coats elsewhere, too, like at 16Arlington, which came in textured black, floor-length variations and also in white peppered with black specks, with a fur effect so deep they appeared more like hair. Another backlash to quiet luxury came by way of all the capacious bags carried by the models at 16Arlington. Again, there were textures galore, with bags covered in ostrich feathers to enlarge them even further. But the depth and wingspan of these accessories were a far cry from the more modest kind that Succession’s Tom Wambsgans might approve of.

The final hint that loud luxury is in? All the disco references we spotted: a standout floor-length gown covered in shining silver fragments at Chet Lo. Glimerring bronze discs dangling off of skirts and sheer blouses at Huishan Zhang that you heard before you saw. And an entire dress made from silver tinsel fabric at 16Arlington.

Just in case you needed convincing, though, all you need to do is look at who was sitting in the front row among the fashion set at Saturday’s Molly Goddard show. Well, it was none other than Lady Catton herself, Rosamund Pike.

Time to put on “Murder on the Dance Floor” and start playing dress up.

Olivia Petter was transported to shows in a Lexus RZ450E Takumi