I do a lot of shopping. On any given day, you can find me plundering through a thrift store, oftentimes rationalizing my frequent purchases. “If I didn’t buy this shirt it would be in the landfill” I like to tell myself, and while that may be true, it’s only mere deflection for something that’s become increasingly more concerning these days–overconsumption. Though I hate to admit it my weekly thrift trips are an obvious indicator of the overconsumption that’s become embedded in our society and it's genuinely impacting us all.
There’s an undeniable expectation to buy more these days. Buying garments in bulk has become a common practice only further normalized by the fashion content we consume. A clothing haul will persuade you to frequently add excessive amounts of garments to your wardrobe while daily fit checks will convince you that you can never wear the same outfit twice.
Social media amplifies our fears of outfit repeating, but our culture of consumerism is the root of it all. Coddling our irrational fears and rewarding us with the ability to buy more, our consumerist society is what causes our aversion to repeating outfits. This paired with the unprecedented ease of acquiring clothing today has functionally created disposable clothes,
and this is reflected in our behavior. We no longer shop with longevity or practicality in mind, but rather, our access to a seemingly endless amount of fast fashion has led us to shop with overindulgent eyes and the expectation that we can buy an entirely new wardrobe at the click of a button if we so pleased. We shop for the fit check, for the hauls, and for the Instagram pictures.
Trends like “Blind Thrifting” exemplify this growing frivolousness with our clothing.
Participants in this trend randomly pick garments at a thrift store and throw together laughably bad outfits to go out in and ultimately post a TikTok about. Not to be a buzzkill but this is extremely wasteful. Now more than ever we intentionally and frequently purchase clothing that we only plan on wearing a few times with no regard for where they’ll end up. Fast Fashion has designed a system that both enables and thrives off of this behavior.
In addition to normalizing wastefulness, the fear of being an outfit repeater is slowly chipping away at our styles and identities within our wardrobes. As we are constantly in search of something new to buy and wear, we become susceptible to microtrends and fall victim to substituting personal style for what’s popular.
The ability to buy new garments is not a metric of style.
Take time to figure out what you like and build a wardrobe centered around exactly that. Be skeptical of what’s trending and when you make new clothing purchases buy things because you like and need them, not because you were influenced to. We may never get over our fears of being outfit repeaters but as the semester starts, consider the words of the great and wise Lizzie McGuire while getting dressed, “I may be an outfit repeater but you’re an outfit rememberer and that’s just as pathetic.”
Comments