WHAT DOES THE CLASS SYSTEM MEAN IN 2024?
Is it relevant? And how is it impacting our relationships, culture, fashion and career prospects?
Social and economic divisions, and the increasing rise of inequality we’re facing, inspired this issue. George Orwell famously declared that, ‘England is the most class-ridden country under the sun.’ And judging by the split reactions to Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, a film that satirises the upper classes (Fennell herself is the daughter of a high-society jeweller), the country is as stratified as ever. What’s changed are the signifiers.
For example, in the world of fashion, workingclass culture is often glamorised to the point of fetish, while working-class people struggle to break through. As an editor friend put it: ‘In fashion, it’s all a bit smoke and mirrors. You have literal offspring of aristos pretending they’re from a council estate, and working-class people pretending to be Mitfords.’ While her jest might sound a bit flippant, we saw this phenomenon play out in the Beckham documentary, where Victoria laughably claimed to come from humble roots before her husband David intervened, playfully pushing her to admit that her father used to drive her to school… in a Rolls-Royce.
Meanwhile, as we watched a wave of young designers opt out of London Fashion Week this past runway-show season due to skyrocketing costs, we wondered if designers such as John Galliano (the son of a plumber) and Alexander McQueen (the son of a cab driver), could ever have survived in fashion today. For creatives who don’t have the safety net of family support to fall back on, it’s a hard road. It has never been a more expensive time to work in a creative field.
So, with this in mind, we invited a selection of prominent voices – including Sali Hughes, Otegha Uwagba, Ellen E Jones, Tori West and Hattie Collins – to write about their own experiences with social class (‘Bridge the gap’, page 96), and how it impacts our artistic industries.
For our cover star Lashana Lynch, female lead of the new biopic Bob Marley: One Love, her socioeconomic background fuelled
