For the past five years, we’ve been collectively drowning in a sea of beige. You know the look—pristine cream sofas no child has ever touched, supposedly “effortless” neutral linen wardrobes that somehow never wrinkle, and kitchens so white and minimal they look like operating rooms where perhaps one artisanal sourdough loaf is baked per month. The “Rich Mom” aesthetic has dominated everything from Instagram to Target collections, promising that with enough greige cashmere and $40 hand soap, you too can look like you summer in Nantucket and name your children after prep schools.
Well, I’m here to declare it officially over. Dead. Finished. And in its place? Something far more interesting, colorful, and frankly, a whole lot more fun.
I first noticed the shift at a dinner party in Brooklyn last fall. I walked in expecting the usual scene—neutral walls, carefully arranged vintage vessels with single stems, women in various shades of oatmeal cashmere. Instead, I stepped into a riot of color. The host, Eliza—a woman who just three years ago had a home featured in a magazine spread titled “The New Neutrals”—had painted her living room a glossy peacock blue. Her couch was upholstered in a wild botanical print. The dining table was draped in a vintage suzani textile in about seventeen different colors, set with mismatched vintage plates and goblets in jewel tones.
“What happened here?” I asked, accepting a cocktail in what appeared to be a hand-blown glass from the 1970s in a radioactive shade of orange. “Did you get divorced? Are you okay?”
She laughed. “I woke up one morning and realized I couldn’t look at another beige pillow without screaming. I wanted to live in a home that feels alive.”
Eliza wasn’t alone in her chromatic rebellion. Over the next few months, I noticed it everywhere. Fashion editors who once preached the gospel of capsule wardrobes in eight shades of oatmeal were suddenly showing up to meetings in electric blue suits and fuchsia platforms. The pristine, austere “Rich Mom” aesthetic—that bloodless, perfectly controlled approach to both fashion and home decor—was giving way to something more vibrant, eclectic, and deliberately chaotic.
Welcome to the era of what I’m calling “Chaos Glamour”—the aesthetic equivalent of letting your hair down after years of tasteful, restrictive ponytails.
Let’s be clear about what we’re rejecting: The “Rich Mom” aesthetic was never really about being a mother. It was about a particular type of wealthy, usually white, usually thin woman who projected an image of effortless control. Her home looked like no children had ever entered it. Her wardrobe consisted of expensive basics in a carefully curated palette of non-colors. Her entire existence seemed designed to telegraph “I have money but I’m not flashy about it” while simultaneously being extremely flashy about it through $300 plain white t-shirts and $90 candles that smelled like “calm.”
It was minimalism as status symbol—the ultimate luxury of owning very little but ensuring that every item cost more than the average person’s mortgage payment. The “clean” part of this aesthetic wasn’t just about visual simplicity; it carried uncomfortable undertones about purity, control, and a certain sanitized approach to life that feels increasingly out of touch.
In contrast, Chaos Glamour embraces abundance, imperfection, and personality. It’s maximalist but not messy, colorful but not cluttered, eclectic but still intentional. It rejects the sterile perfection of the Rich Mom look in favor of something more human, more individual, and vastly more interesting.
I tracked down Leila Rodriguez, the interior designer behind some of the most eye-catching “post-beige” spaces popping up on my Instagram feed, to get her take on the shift.
“People are exhausted from trying to maintain these perfect, untouchable spaces,” she told me over coffee in her studio, which features emerald green walls and a collection of vintage ceramic leopards. “There was something almost punitive about that neutral minimalist aesthetic—like you couldn’t be trusted with color or pattern because you might use it wrong.”
The catalyst for the change, according to Rodriguez, was a perfect storm of pandemic reevaluation, economic uncertainty, and simple aesthetic fatigue.
“When you’re stuck at home for two years, you start to question why you designed a space that looks good but doesn’t feel good,” she explained. “And with financial insecurity looming for so many, there’s something tone-deaf about spaces that scream ‘I replaced all my furniture because beige is now taupe.'”
But it’s not just interior design seeing this shift. Fashion has been experiencing its own rebellion against the clean, neutral luxury look that dominated the past several years.
Emma Chen, buyer for an upscale department store that shall remain nameless to protect her corporate overlords, confirmed my observations. “We’ve seen a dramatic shift in purchasing patterns over the last three seasons,” she told me. “The demand for colorful, textured pieces has skyrocketed. People are suddenly uninterested in building these perfect, minimal wardrobes. They want joy. They want conversation pieces.”
The numbers back her up. Sales of colorful, patterned items are up 43% from this time last year, while searches for terms like “maximalist fashion” and “dopamine dressing” have increased by over 130%. Even luxury brands that built their identities around whisper-quiet beige are introducing collections in startling brights and patterns.
So what exactly defines this new Chaos Glamour aesthetic? Here are the key elements I’ve identified:
First, color—lots of it. Not just accents, but entire rooms painted in saturated jewel tones or unexpected combinations. Wardrobes featuring multiple bright shades worn together rather than carefully isolated as “pop of color” against neutrals.
Second, pattern mixing that would have given Rich Mom hives. Florals with geometrics, stripes with animal prints, vintage textiles layered upon each other with gleeful abandonment.
Third, a reverence for the genuinely old rather than the artificially distressed. Chaos Glamour loves actual vintage—not the carefully curated kind, but the weird estate sale find with a mysterious stain and a story. It’s about pieces that have lived lives before they came to you.
Fourth, imperfection as a virtue. Where Rich Mom aesthetic valued pristine surfaces and untouched perfection, Chaos Glamour embraces the chipped plate, the wrinkled linen, the slightly crooked gallery wall. It doesn’t fear evidence of actual human existence.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, personality. The Rich Mom look was, by design, somewhat anonymous—you could walk into a dozen different “neutral luxury” homes and barely tell them apart. Chaos Glamour insists on spaces and wardrobes that couldn’t belong to anyone else.
“It’s not about looking like you hired someone,” Rodriguez emphasized. “It’s about looking like you actually live there, with all your weird interests and family history and personal quirks on display.”
I witnessed this firsthand at a fashion week dinner hosted in the home of Mei Liu, a creative director known for her previously minimal aesthetic. Her apartment had transformed from the serene neutral space I remembered into a kaleidoscopic wonder, with walls painted in a rich burgundy, furniture in varying jewel tones, and shelves filled with collections of everything from vintage perfume bottles to ceramic animals.
“I just got tired of feeling like I was living in a showroom,” Liu told me as she served cocktails in mismatched vintage glassware. “I started asking myself why I felt the need to hide all the things that actually bring me joy in favor of this artificial simplicity.”
That word—joy—came up repeatedly as I talked to people about this aesthetic shift. The Rich Mom look, for all its aspirational elegance, was joyless in many ways. It was about restraint rather than exuberance, control rather than expression.
“It’s exhausting to live in constant fear of spills or wrinkles or anything out of place,” said Tyler Kim, a fashion editor who recently replaced his entire neutral wardrobe with a riot of color and pattern. “I realized I was dressing to disappear, to be acceptably elegant without drawing too much attention or expressing too much of myself.”
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Chaos Glamour is how it relates to wealth signaling. The Rich Mom aesthetic was, despite its apparent restraint, actually quite obvious about broadcasting status through “quiet luxury” goods that weren’t quiet at all to those who knew the codes. In contrast, Chaos Glamour makes wealth status harder to read.
“You can achieve this look at any price point,” Rodriguez pointed out. “Some of the most successful Chaos Glamour spaces I’ve designed have been for clients on modest budgets who are willing to hunt for vintage finds, re-use what they have in new ways, and take risks with color and pattern.”
That’s not to say there isn’t an expensive version—luxury brands are already attempting to capitalize on the shift with $5,000 patchwork coats and handblown colored glass at eye-watering prices. But the democratizing aspect of Chaos Glamour is its emphasis on uniqueness and personal curation rather than specific status brands.
Not everyone is thrilled with this aesthetic rebellion. I spoke with Sophia Warren, a design influencer who built her following of 3 million promoting what she calls “curated minimalism” (read: very expensive beige things).
“This ‘anything goes’ approach feels regressive,” she told me, visibly displeased in her perfectly neutral outfit. “There’s an elegance to restraint that gets lost in all this… chaos.” She practically whispered the last word, as if saying it might conjure a floral chintz demon into her carefully neutral living room.
But the tide seems to be turning against Sophia’s restrained vision. Even mainstream retailers are shifting their offerings, with companies like West Elm and CB2 introducing collections heavy on jewel tones, patterns, and eclectic influences after years of pushing variations on greige.
“The market data is unmistakable,” Emma Chen explained. “Consumers are seeking joy, expression, and individuality. They’re rejecting the idea that good taste means removing everything interesting about yourself from your environment.”
So is this just another trend that will eventually fade, sending us all back to the safety of beige in a few years? Rodriguez doesn’t think so.
“The Rich Mom aesthetic was fundamentally unsustainable,” she argued. “Not just environmentally—though constantly replacing things because the approved shade of white changed is obviously wasteful—but emotionally. Humans need stimulation, personality, comfort. We weren’t designed to live in art galleries.”
This sentiment was echoed by everyone I spoke with—this shift feels less like a pendulum swing and more like an exhale after holding your breath too long. There’s a palpable sense of relief in being allowed to embrace color, pattern, and personality again.
For my part, I’ve been watching my own home and wardrobe evolve over the past year. The careful neutral foundation pieces I invested in are now backdrops for increasingly bold choices—electric blue velvet pillows, a vintage Turkish rug in about twelve different colors, walls repainted from “decorator white” to a deep, moody teal.
My closet has undergone a similar transformation. The collection of beige cashmere and perfectly tailored white shirts now shares space with a red wool coat, mustard yellow trousers, and blouses in patterns I would have considered wildly inappropriate for a woman over 30 just two years ago.
The most surprising effect has been on my mood. There’s something liberating about rejecting the sterile perfectionism of the neutral luxury aesthetic. Spill red wine on a white couch and it’s a disaster; spill it on a jewel-toned vintage suzani and it’s just adding to the patina.
“Perfection is boring and impossible,” Liu told me as we admired her collection of intentionally mismatched dining chairs. “I’d rather be interesting and real.”
That, perhaps, is the heart of this shift—from spaces and wardrobes designed primarily for approval to ones designed for actual living. From homes that could be in magazines to homes that feel unmistakably yours, with all your quirks and interests on display.
The Rich Mom clean aesthetic offered the seductive promise of control in an increasingly chaotic world—if you could just eliminate enough color and texture and personality from your environment, perhaps you could keep disorder at bay. Chaos Glamour offers a different philosophy: if you can’t beat chaos, embrace it. Make it beautiful, make it intentional, but stop pretending life is as smooth and neutral as an alabaster vase.
So go ahead—paint a wall burgundy. Buy the weird ceramic leopard. Wear the floral pants with the striped top. The Rich Mom is dead, and honestly? She was kind of boring anyway.
