Vogue has spoken:chic is dead. Not being it, but the word. Chic has, Lauren O’Neill argues, lost its essence, co-opted to cover whatever glazed-doughnut-skinned influencers on TikTok decide it should, from monogrammed lip balm to iced matchas. “Chic has come to be mistaken for certain monied strains of taste, rather than the sort of uniqueje ne sais quoithat I think the word at its purest actually means.”
Baudelaire – the 19th century’s Nicky Haslam, given how many things he disapproved of: photography, Belgium, Victor Hugo – would have agreed. He called chic an “awful and bizarre word”. Are he and Vogue right?
I’m not that troubled by chic. Certainly not as an aspiration – I’m currently wearing the stained puffer jacket I share with my most eccentric hen, who lays eggs in the sleeve – but also as a word. I find it far less objectionable than “luxurious”, which has been similarly overused into vapid meaninglessness but takes longer and feels creepy to say – to me, it feels like one of those awful massages that is just feathery stroking. “Chic” is just a bit dull (unless used in conjunction with “le freak”, of course).
Still, I’m gratefully chastened when someone tries to hold us to higher creative standards. I tried to check how many times I had used “chic” in print and was appalled at the vast list of results, before realising most of them were actually the word “chickens”. I did, however, use it twice in something I wrote just yesterday without even realising.
To further linguistic plurality and make life more interesting, maybe we need to rehabilitate some alternatives. My suggestion: let’s start describing stuff like baffled elderly fathers opining on outfits. I’d love to see the return of “snazzy”, “trendy”, “swish”, and other dad-jectives; let’s have influencers calling their baby-blue crocodile Hermès handbags “jazzy”.
I fear, however, we’re too far gone – chic is so ingrained, so ubiquitous and so damn useful, it will outlive us. I fully anticipate the last mutated giant post-apocalyptic cockroaches will be complimenting each other on the way their shells glitter in the burning wasteland – so chic!
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist