The Art of Grit

(10 minutes)

There is a certain ease you notice in people who dress well—not loud, not curated, not feverishly self-conscious. Just… ease. An unforced balance of care and not-care. A natural understanding of when to tuck, when to drape, when to polish, when to let the crease relax. It’s the kind of ease that seems effortless from afar, but up close reveals something deeper than taste or trend: habitus.

Pierre Bourdieu described habitus as the ingrained tendencies, dispositions, and sensibilities shaped by our upbringing. It’s the “feel for the game”—that intuitive compass for what feels right, appropriate, harmonious. And when it comes to clothing, habitus is the quiet force that guides the truly well-dressed. Not in a performative way, not in the “I read a list on the internet” way, but in an embodied way.

Today, this idea is increasingly obscured, even hijacked, by the visibility—and volatility—of social media trends. When something as nuanced as the sartorial world gets compressed into aesthetics like “quiet luxury,” “old money,” or “capsule wardrobe,” a whole universe of craft, history, and intent collapses into flattened buzzwords. And in that flattening, people lose the very sense of ease they’re trying so hard to project.

This article is my attempt to return to the source.

To talk about why habitus matters.

To clarify how dressing well is less about posturing and more about internalized principles.

To gently push back against the trend-ification of something that was never meant to be trendy in the first place.

And to invite anyone who loves the sartorial world to step into a deeper, more grounded relationship with it.

The Ease of Care and Not-Care

One of the most misunderstood traits of the well-dressed is that delicate balance: caring about the right things, and not caring about the noise.

People with sartorial habitus don’t obsess over whether their sweater fits into the “quiet luxury” box, or whether their loafers look like what an influencer thinks old money wears. They don’t panic over trends designed to expire.

Instead, they care about:

• Fit: Because the body is the engine of clothing.
• Function: Because clothes are tools before they are symbols.
• Fabric: Because material truth always outlasts manufactured aesthetics.
• Context and season: Because appropriateness is the most underrated marker of elegance.
• Longevity: Because well-made things are companions, not content.

And they don’t care about:

• Whether their outfit photographs well.
• Whether their choices fit into an online aesthetic tribe.
• Whether a stranger would interpret their look as “luxury.”
• Whether their style is “on trend.”

This is not nonchalance as performance—this is nonchalance as inheritance.

This is habitus.

When Social Media Mistakes the Shadow for the Substance

Social media has given us incredible access to information: tailoring guides, historical deep dives, fabric breakdowns, factory tours, and the voices of craftspeople who would have been invisible decades ago. But it has also done something else—it has created the illusion of mastery without the lived depth needed to hold it.

“Quiet luxury” becomes shorthand for beige sweaters and minimalist silhouettes.

“Old money style” turns into a costume of loafers-with-no-socks and cable-knits.

“Heritage aesthetics” become moodboards instead of an understanding of why things were made the way they were.

And here’s the real issue: these trends flatten habitus into aesthetics, and when that happens, people mistake the look for the logic.

You can buy the cable-knit sweater but not the sensibility.

You can adopt the loafer but not the literacy.

You can mimic the palette but not the principles.

And so people end up frustrated. They follow the “rules,” copy the outfits, buy the pieces—and still something feels off. Still something feels artificial. Still something feels like work.

Why?

Because habitus is not purchased, and style is not uploaded.

It is practiced, lived, absorbed, refined—long before anyone sees the result.

The Sartorial World Has Always Been About Intention

When you strip away the noise, the heart of dressing well is stunningly simple:

• Clothes must respect the person wearing them.
• Clothes must respect the context they are worn in.
• Clothes must respect the craft that produced them.

Everything else—color, silhouette, aesthetics, trends—comes after.

Often far after.

The old tailors knew this.

The cloth merchants knew this.

Even the aristocrats, before they were turned into online archetypes, knew this.

But digital culture reversed the order.

Now aesthetics come first.

A vibe comes first.

A hashtag comes first.

And the substance—the fit, the fabric, the function—becomes an afterthought.

Yet these elements are the foundation of everything we admire in the sartorial canon. Every historical precedent we quote, every menswear icon we reference, every archival garment we study—they all obeyed these principles without fanfare.

Not because they were trying to look a certain way.

But because they were raised with a habitus that taught them to value the right things.

The Misleading Simplicity of “Old Money” and “Quiet Luxury”

Let’s be honest: these terms have done more to confuse aspiring dressers than educate them.

Old money isn’t a style category—it’s a socioeconomic condition with its own internal logic, not a palette of navy and oatmeal.

Quiet luxury isn’t a trend—it’s the accidental byproduct of people who never needed their clothing to speak for them.

When these things are abstracted into aesthetics, the meaning evaporates. And the result is a kind of aspirational costume-play where people chase the outer shell of something with none of the interior structure.

But the interior structure matters.

The interior structure is what teaches someone:

• why flannel is for cold weather
• why linen wrinkles as a feature, not a flaw
• why button stance changes a suit’s posture
• why certain colors harmonize with certain environments
• why a garment’s drape communicates more than its label

And ultimately, why the ease of care—not-care cannot be mimicked.

It must be cultivated.

Habitus as an Antidote to Trend Fatigue

People often tell me they feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of style advice online. Each platform has its own rules, its own gospel, its own aesthetic tribes. And somewhere between all the noise, the joy of dressing evaporates.

This is where habitus becomes freeing.

When your internal compass is set, you stop outsourcing your judgment.

You stop needing trends to tell you what to do.

You stop anxiously calibrating whether you’re “in” or “out.”

You stop flipping through images trying to reverse-engineer someone else’s ease.

Instead, you develop your own.

Habitus lets you see clothing not as content, but as a tool for living.

It returns you to the fundamentals:

• Does this fit me well?
• Is this fabric right for my climate and lifestyle?
• Does this function well for what I need today?
• Is this appropriate for the moment?

When you make decisions from here, the rest arranges itself.

Returning to the Roots: A Sartorial Way Forward

If there’s one thing I hope readers walk away with, it’s this: dressing well is not a trend, nor is it a performance—it is a literacy.

A literacy built on:

• understanding your body
• learning your environment
• respecting the craft
• choosing quality over novelty
• and developing the habitus that lets you care about the right things

The goal is not to look “quiet luxury.”

The goal is not to look “old money.”

The goal is not to join a tribe.

The goal is to embody a grounded, thoughtful relationship to what you wear.

Clothing should amplify your life—not distract you from it.

A Final Reflection

When I think about the people who have shaped my own sartorial worldview—tailors, mentors, craftsmen, stylish older relatives—none of them were trying to look a certain way. They weren’t dressing to prove anything. They weren’t chasing aesthetics. They were simply living with a habitus that made dressing well second nature.

They understood something that feels more important than ever:

Elegance is not the appearance of effortlessness.

Elegance is the byproduct of intention.

And intention—true intention—can never be manufactured overnight.

It is cultivated slowly, intelligently, and quietly…

just like style itself.