Nothing to Wear: A Realistic Approach to Clothes
The disastrous marriage between influencers and fast fashion.
This is part two of the essay Nothing to Wear, inspired by VOX’s Buy Less Stuff.
An unexpected consequence of the “aesthetic era” was how influenced I ended up being, I don’t know why I say unexpected as if it wasn’t the whole purpose. But suddenly I was comparing my style and wardrobe with other girls’ styles and wardrobes, how everyone looked put together and on ‘brand’. You know, the way a cartoon character has one outfit, that person has such an identifiable style it borders on the caricature (without ever being one). It left me wondering what I should change to fit into one of these aesthetics. To be as identifiable as a character - and I reached it without following any of the predetermined styles at my disposal, slay.
One of the many issues with this attitude towards fashion is that we end up buying clothes to fit in, to find “the perfect style”, a style that will never suit us the same way it does other people. A piece here and there because I saw yet another outfit I really liked, stuck in a vicious cycle and its dire consequences: ecological disaster, human exploitation and modern slavery.1 It gets dark really quick once you start thinking about the consequences of your actions, and even darker when you realise the number of creators (and of followers) on the World Wide Web.
I started by deinfluencing, not by listening to the “buy this, not that” of so-called de-influencers, but by replacing influencers and other accounts that would tickle my wallet, with thrift and slow fashion accounts (very carefully, I don’t want to be influenced to buy too many second-hand clothes). It was a bittersweet change as I followed some influencers because they styled their clothes ingeniously and it actually matched my style, but the constant push to buy from fast fashion made me sick. Sure their style was nice, but why do they always need new things instead of re-styling? In this day and age, wearing an outfit twice is no longer a fashion sin, is it? Another bone I had to pick was their brand partnerships, the money received to promote poorly made - often plastic - clothes and the lack of care for their followers (aka the very reason they have said deals). A rotten system built on dishonesty and taking advantage of people.
I deleted all the shopping apps but kept Depop. Of course, fast and ultra-fast fashion brands swarm on second-hand apps as they do in second-hand shops, a proliferating plague. An issue the high-end second-hand retailer Vestiare Collective tackled by banning over 60 brands from their platform in an effort to end fast fashion, promoting a “think first, buy second” mantra.
The next step was to realise having one style does not fit me, I like change and I don’t need a capsule wardrobe for each season nor do I need all the go-to pieces for a Dark Academia look. Yes, that’s the aesthetic I thought would fit me, and allow me a segue here. I don’t really like the clothes, they don’t fit me and apart from that pair of Dr Martens found second-hand, it does not match my personality. I liked the community, the idealisation of higher education and learning outside of academia, the importance of the Arts, and a touch of darkness (especially in the literature).2 Aesthetics are rarely coherent beyond “a loose sense of style” and have no sense of community, or rarely, as for DA which share common values and interests on top of the style thus making it closer to a subculture.
Instead, I made peace with my multi-faceted personality and embraced a chaotic style. After that, it was much harder to be convinced I needed some bright red item in my closet, or whatever ‘-core’ was popular at the time. Lists and even a Venn diagram were involved in the process, it felt stupid at the time but it helped my impulsivity to shop (talking as if this wasn’t last month). I have clothes I feel bland when wearing because I have nothing to style them with in an authentic and personal way. I am getting emotional over that petrol blue shirt; I love you and I see you.
Approaching shopping as an event instead of a dopamine boost is another change to my habits. Taking fashion the same way I take book shopping: I would rather take the train to a different town to find an independent store than buy another book on Amazon. I also don’t buy a massive TBR pile of books but only what I can read within a month, all it does is make me feel bad about my reading capacity. I went off track with that metaphor but what I mean is having a full wardrobe is cute but it leaves me in decision paralysis when I need to get ready and I feel bad at the look of clothes I wear nowhere near enough.
This may all sound vain and rooted in privilege (I can afford food and heating, Lidl haul anyone?), but since I started the research for this essay I have not bought any clothes. Unfollowing influencers suppressed the itch to buy new things and the ads for yet another H&M collection have become kind of gross. It’s almost as if it worked, well well well.
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Sources for the article:
The Aftermath of Fast Fashion: How Discarded Clothes Impact Public Health and the Environment
The Influencer Revolution: Increased Accessibility & Super Fast Fashion
What is Social Media’s Impact on Fast Fashion? An Investigation
How Influencers Accelerate the Growth of Fast Fashion and Greenwashing
Fashion Is Still Trying To Greenwash Away Its Problems
Vestiaire Collective cuts out H&M, Zara and more in expanded fast fashion ban, full list of brands banned here
Why We Buy Things We Don't Need
How I stopped buying my way out of everything
https://www.fashionrevolution.org/
https://www.sustainablebaddie.com/
Videos for both parts of the series (Mina Le and Jordan Theresa):
the aftermath of tiktok fashion (the shein effect)
tiktok is kind of bad for fashion
let's talk about the rise of ‘-core’ and ‘girl’ aesthetics
Although, like most aesthetics, it is rooted in whiteness, it promotes access to academia and culture that no longer “belongs” to the rich elite (perfectly illustrated in DA cult-ish book The Secret History by Dona Tartt).