What Is Chic? Race, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Elegance.

Chic is often presented as an effortless quality: an air of elegance achieved without excess, a sense of taste that appears natural rather than learned. We talk about it as if it were personal – an individual sensibility, a natural eye for beauty. Above all, we treat it as neutral.

Yet this appearance of neutrality is precisely what gives chic its cultural power.

Far from being a simple matter of style, chic functions as a quiet system of judgement, one that evaluates bodies, tastes, and ways of living, and in doing so reproduces existing hierarchies of race and class.

To understand this, it helps to separate chic from style. Style is expressive. It is plural, culturally specific, and often experimental; a way people communicate identity, history, and belonging. Chic, by contrast, is not descriptive but evaluative. It does not just describe how someone dresses; it determines how closely one aligns with a dominant aesthetic ideal. To be called chic is to be recognised as refined, elegant and culturally credible within a particular aesthetic framework.

That framework, however, is not timeless or universal. It is historically produced and socially reinforced. In contemporary fashion and visual culture, chic no longer refers solely to clothing or personal style. It has expanded into a broader aesthetic framework that governs lifestyle, consumption, and self-presentation. To be considered chic today often implies participation in a particular visual language: minimalist interiors, understated luxury, and carefully curated “effortlessness.” These markers circulate widely across various social media platforms where they are repeatedly presented as timeless, tasteful, and universally aspirational. While these aesthetics appear accessible, participation in this visual language presupposes particular class positions: effortlessness requires labour, minimalist homes presuppose space, understated luxury presupposes wealth. Therefore, the performance of simplicity frequently rests on access to time, resources, and cultural capital, and what looks natural is often highly structured.

However, chic is not only classed; it is also profoundly racialised. Despite its claim to universality, the dominant image of chic is remarkably consistent. Across magazines, brand campaigns, and digital culture, chic is overwhelmingly embodied by white, thin, able-bodied women whose appearance

aligns with Eurocentric beauty standards. This repetition is not incidental. It reveals chic as a racialised aesthetic, one that quietly positions whiteness as refined, neutral, and culturally superior.

Other aesthetics are frequently defined in contrast. Styles associated with racialised communities – whether through colour, ornamentation, texture, or silhouette – are often labelled excessive, loud, or lacking sophistication. Where chic is praised for its restraint, difference or non-Eurocentric aesthetics are framed as “too much.” The result is a cultural binary which reinforces a hierarchy in which whiteness is aligned with taste and discipline, while difference is associated with disorder or vulgarity.

Exclusion from chic, therefore, is not about elegance. It is about ‘compatibiltyʼ.

Many women of colour encounter a limit that cannot be crossed through imitation alone. Their bodies, facial features, or culturally specific forms of dress are often read as incompatible with the codes of refinement before personal style is even considered. In this sense, chic becomes a closed category – one governed less by appearance than by who is permitted to represent it.

To be recognised within the framework of chic is to be recognised by dominant cultural institutions – fashion media, luxury markets, lifestyle branding – as coherent, desirable, and worthy of admiration. Those outside its framework are not merely overlooked; they are misread. Their aesthetics are marginalised or dismissed, not because they lack sophistication, but because they do not align with the dominant visual grammar.

The consequences of this exclusion extend beyond fashion. Aesthetics play a crucial role in shaping cultural legitimacy. When a particular look or lifestyle is repeatedly elevated as the ideal, it establishes an implicit standard against which all others are measured. Those who approximate it are granted visibility, credibilty and social capital. Those who do not are treated as culturally peripheral.

In this way, chic operates as a gatekeeping mechanism – one that determines who is seen as tasteful, modern, and worthy of admiration under the guise of aesthetic preference.

Because chic is framed as effortless and apolitical, it rarely invites scrutiny. Yet its effects are profoundly political. By privileging certain bodies, races and social positions, it reproduces hierarchy while disguising it as taste. What appears to be a neutral aesthetic ideal is, in reality, a system of cultural valuation that rewards proximity to whiteness and wealth.

To critically engage with chic therefore is not to reject beauty or elegance, it is to interrogate who gets to define them. Only by recognising the racialised and classist foundations of chic can fashion and visual culture begin to imagine more inclusive forms of representation ones capable of acknowledging sophistication, creativity, and elegance beyond the narrow boundaries of Eurocentric taste.