Chav chic: the new look in vogue

How did trackie pants and crop tops suddenly become the go-to look for the global elite? Harriet Walker hugs a (cashmere) hoodie
From left: Olivia Palermo, Vogue’s Sarah Harris, Hailey Baldwin
From left: Olivia Palermo, Vogue’s Sarah Harris, Hailey Baldwin
REX SHUTTERSTOCK

You’ve no doubt noticed them, slouching around town in their hoodies and tracksuits. You wonder whether any of them have jobs to go to. You assume not, because they always look like they’re off to the gym.

Disaffected youths? Not a bit of it. These are the global elite: millionaires in sportswear, the One Per Cent in chav’s clothing. Those at the top of the tree have appropriated the uniform of the disenfranchised in the ultimate act of fashionable transgression and social camouflage.

It’s the American It girls Kendall Jenner, Hailey Baldwin and Gigi Hadid going for lunch in their leggings, crop tops and bombers. It’s glossy magazine editors and Vogue fashion writers at the shows in trackie bottoms and gleaming white trainers, reporting from