The End of Personal Style

By Hannah Schmidt-Rees (also hi! PERSPEX is back!)

Ballet core? Coquette? Clean girl aesthetic? What is happening?

There’s been something happening to fashion recently, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But I think I’ve figured it out - personal style is dying. There’s a lot of different reasons for this, big and small.

You can probably expect this, but fast fashion has a role in this. Taking advantage of their cheap production costs, they can pump out cheap clothing that’s based on the latest trends, essentially filling an entire store with just the top 10 trends. It supports social media, and social media supports fast fashion, there’s no way to seek things out, explore, discover. If you have the slightest inclination to buy something you see online, there it is ready to buy now. There’s less thought needed to figure out whether something reflects you or not, if it actually is your personal style.

Fast fashion leads into social media and celebrity culture. In a time where each celebrity or influencers outfit is instantly posted across multiple platforms and placed into everyone hands, celebrity ‘style’ is flooding everything we see. Not sure why what Hailey Bieber is wearing to - get groceries? whatever rich people do - is front page news, but here we are.

Whilst we’re inundated with style and fashion everywhere, to be honest, most of it is all the same. You can probably imagine what I’m talking about (I’m just imagining lots of beige, white and blue). This creates a filter in a sense, while we are getting more access to fashion than ever, most of the time, its all the same thing. How can people explore different styles and subcultures if all they’re seeing is just the main trends?

On the other hand, tying it back to fast fashion again, fashion media (and media in general) moves incredibly fast. Takes days if not hours for breaking news to become old news. The moment one trends takes hold, another one replaces it. It’s exciting to see new things constantly, but it’s also exhausting. It’s like fashion whiplash.

This makes it harder for people to get into subcultures, I mean, whats the point investing time and money into something that lasts for a few weeks? Whats the point of a personal style if its only temporary? Especially with these recent trend of,, Eras? Aesthetics? Cores? (whatever they’re called), it feels like even anything remotely different from the norm are costumes, not personal style, made to fulfil a viral requirement, not actually identifying with the culture and community a fashion aesthetic holds.

Realistically speaking, economics have a part to play in all this. As the cost of living rises, many people have less disposable income to purchase new fashion, or to be financially comfortable with buying things to experiment with, especially quality items.

Hey, quick question - what’s tomato girl? Is it just lots of red? I mean, not just tomatoes are red.

Oh and another thing (this is like creating a bad fashion megazord), luxury knock offs are another part of this issue. The lesser the financial investment for high-end goods, the more likely we are to buy more items, not single items that we know will last us a lifetime. This just perpetuates this shallow cycle. The basis of personal style is to gather quality pieces that last forever, after trends have gone. Personal is supposed to last forever, evolving with you, not changing in a week.

Alternative ways to showcase unique personal style have mostly died, being taken over by more popular and widespread mediums, social media mostly. For example, FRUiTS, the magazine focused on showcasing the street style of Harajuku, ended production because there simply wasnt enough style content anymore. People who create content based on subcultures because they truly love it, are less and less common, its hard to compete (socially and financially) with mainstream content creators that are backed by multi-millionaire fast fashion and knockoff companies.

And I’m coming back to social media again. The nature of it, especially platforms like Instagram are visual, the primary content being photos and videos. And with that comes another issue - feels like everyone is dressing just to be seen, not to feel something. Not to feel confident or unique or reflect who you are through clothing, just to be seen a certain way. To show that we’re wearing the latest thing, regardless if it reflects our personal style or not. And, because we’re wearing the latest thing, we get that instant validation from others. Rinse and repeat. It makes you think, are we really having original thoughts about style or are we just followers? Consumers?

We’re not meant to just be fashion consumers. That’s not what fashion is about. Fashion is one of those industries that go deeper than most, more personal than most. I dont think we should just wear for anything or anyone but ourselves.

This article sounds like I’m an old man yelling at young kids on my lawn, ‘things were better in my day’ and stuff like that, my day being like, not that long ago. I’m not trying to sit here and preach to you, I just want people to think and express, not just consume. Fashion is supposed to be a delight, actually be delighted in what you’re wearing.