Fuck Fashion

Georgia Wearing (she/her)

No, seriously. Fuck fashion. I am tired enough as it is, having to get up every single day and put clothes on — let alone make them look good, or even attempt a chic effortless combination of textiles and statement pieces. 

But before I can illustrate the exhausting, consumerist culture cult of fashion, I have to admit that I do love clothes. I browse The Real Real during my morning yoga and have a very strong, persistent shopping addiction. I am, however, always buying and very rarely wearing. My wardrobe drawers are overflowing with clothes, designer, second-hand, thrifted, consignmented and yet every morning I grab the same mid-rise jeans, a plain top and platform sneakers. 70% of my wardrobe is unworn, I’ve brought outfits for events and ended up hating them, I’ve brought heels I can’t be fucked walking in, and niche beautiful pieces that I’ve worn once and probably will never reach for again. I’m the perfect consumer, but it seems like the perfect consumer is someone with nothing to wear.

When I went through my seasonal closet clean out, I realised that a lot of these unloved pieces were thrifted. Secondhand shopping is far more sustainable than buying brand new. However, combing through aisles and aisles of clothes you think are ugly has the same effect as scrolling on Tinder: what you would have never normally picked out suddenly becomes a lot more appealing. 

That Y2Kish tee you found after digging up pile on pile of polyester SHEIN garbage looks cool, but it’s not your style, doesn’t go with the rest of your wardrobe, doesn’t fit quite right or doesn’t serve your lifestyle… but you pick it up. After all, you’ve just spent two hours looking, leaving empty handed would be failure. And besides, what if you left it behind, realised later you loved it, only to go back and it's gone. This is your one-time opportunity to have it so you buy it, try to style it, maybe forcibly wear it out once or twice and then it ends up in your donate pile ready to start the cycle again. 

Online thrift stores are also part of the problem. The inflated prices and the one-time opportunity to own something encourages quick impulse purchases. Consignment stores often rush through sorting and pricing items and miss broken zippers, holes and price items too high so the racks are bulging, difficult to look through, and item turnover decreases. Unfortunately, the only way to develop a strong personal style and decrease overconsumption is to buy less and buy higher quality. There actually isn’t a lot of resale value in clothes. I’ve spent $1,000’s on clothes only to be told a year later I could probably only sell it for around $150. 

Fashion is a never ending cyclical machine, what was once new and cool becomes old and ugly then new and cool again. Every spring, summer, and fall trend is predicted, overdone and then discarded. It’s no longer good enough to wear your clothes, you should be styling them, have an overflowing drawer of claw clips, banana clips, skinny scarfs, leg warmers, gloves, hair clips, chunky bohemian bangles and minimalistic fine line pendants. Pant waists go ribcage high then y2k low, styles you thought might be flattering aren’t, and the trend experts that sold you on the shape will include them in their next declutter, anti-haul, regrettable purchases list. 

We delude ourselves into thinking clothes are so important because influencers and corporations are in the business of brainwashing us — all so we’ll click their affiliate links and continue to passively consume. And during a chaotic political and real-world climate it’s a cheaper and easier thrill to just buy. It’s escapism, retail therapy, to own things. It’s something tangible in exchange for your hard earned labour.

I’ve tried to give up, but I can’t. Throw my entire wardrobe out and start from scratch, dress in the simplest most basic template outfit but I can’t, the pressure to cheat my way to mysterious coolness is too tempting. I dream of being able to chuck a couple random layers on, add some unironic fake glasses and shortchange my way to a halo-effect. 

After all, who do you want to be friends with? Who do you feel drawn to without saying a single word to them? The stranger in the fly as fuck fit. But it’s all pretend, dressing up as someone who can tailor approachability, and eventually you’re running late because you can’t find the one top that goes with this skirt you’ve squeezed yourself into and it all falls out, that you're just not as interesting as your clothes. That these tactile things we strap on ourselves are just stuff…cheap, plastic keychains clipped to excess on a Kmart Birkin don’t quite sell the personality we think it does. 

This stuff won’t save us, it won’t even look good in two years.