Trivieri, who grew up in Toronto in an Italian family, remembers seeing women, especially older ladies, using this style when she was a kid. “It was just part of Italian culture,” she says. Now, living in New York City, she’s become the poster creator for the “mob wife” trend boom. Her video, which was first published on January 6, has since amassed over one million views and has been shared over 12,000 times. Trivieri says that she decided to coin the “aesthetic” after seeing photos of celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber dressed in fur coats in the last few months, which she took as a sign that, after years of “clean girl” and “quiet luxury,” people were ready to jump back into glamour mode, a shift that’s also exhibited through the return of the “Indie Sleaze” trend from the 2010s. “Everything in fashion comes full circle,” she says. “A lot of us are ready to go out.” While TV and film references are cited on most “mob wife era” TikTok videos, Trivieri says the style makes her think of an ad campaign drafted by the Italian brand Attico and Sant Ambreous in 2022, which featured elder Italian women wearing cow-print and fur coats and oversized sunglasses. “People think of the show Mob Wives, but for me it makes me think of old Italian ladies, which is nice because we don’t really highlight older ladies in fashion so much,” she says.
