Are We Fashion Victims?
I was 12 when I had the revelation that I wanted to work in fashion. It was met with wide eyes and disbelief, but mostly with head shakes and tutting and people telling my parents that I should choose a different career path. Luckily for me, my parents pushed me to pursue my crazy dreams and, 14 years later, here I am – working in the fashion industry. It’s an industry where the film ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ can be your daily nightmare, or a funny thing to watch, yet also where you meet incredibly creative individuals and people who truly push the boundaries of clothing and design. It inspires and pushes me every day to do more, to do better, and to be fearless in being myself. I also have an incredible support network without whom I wouldn’t have made it this far. However, this article isn’t about my journey in fashion, it is about how fashion pushes us to be us.
The term ‘fashion victim’ is claimed to have been coined by Oscar de la Renta (for anyone not following fashion, think pretty, flowy, flowery dresses meant to be in a museum) and is used as a rather negative term for someone exaggerating in ticking fashion boxes, all in one outfit if possible. I wouldn’t want to use it negatively though, as fashion is something incredibly subjective, and we each have our own interpretation of it. I want instead to look at how it impacts us as both a collective and as individual consumers.
How many times have you stared at your wardrobe and thought ‘I’ve got nothing to wear’? I can tell you I’ve done it many times throughout the years, sometimes even a few times per day, and it’s normal. The age of over-consumption is clearly well into this millennium, and we cannot resist temptation. It is estimated that in the UK fashion is the 3rd worst pollutant, with used clothing that ends up in landfills amounting to 350,000 tonnes of waste yearly (WRAP, 2018). We don’t like to be called fashion victims, yet we shop like there is no tomorrow, and we never have anything to wear. I am guilty of this, don’t get me wrong, working in fashion sometimes comes with perks, but most of the time comes with feeling that you are not fashionable and cool enough. And what makes you feel better? Shopping, of course.
We’re not wearing all the trends at once, but we have fallen prey to all the pretty stories we see and hear that are at the tip of our fingers and the click of a button. We might think that the exclusive and elusive luxury market is no Zara of this world, but actually, it grows and grows until exclusivity is in the hands of the super-rich who buy Haute Couture only, as opposed to your usual designer bag, as the rest of the products sold will become more readily available to the normal consumer. We are bombarded with information from all sides, and this pandemic has shown that brands adapt quickly to make sure we, the consumers, miss absolutely nothing under the sun – despite not being able to go in the physical stores. Many brands, especially on the high-end and luxury side of fashion, have refused to go the e-commerce way and are now battling excess stock they don’t know what to do with. Exclusivity comes with a price, but is our planet worth the spend?
Around May of this year, articles started appearing about fashion’s excess inventory issue. It is a tale as old as time that we produce more than we buy, in the event that it will be bought, and we all remember at least once a year a major brand is shown as the absolute ’evil’ for burning or destroying inventory. Truth be told, they all do it to some extent, so it is great to see how this global crisis and the outpouring of dismay at these practices has pushed many brands to check on their inventory and see how they can reduce, reuse or recycle it, as long as it doesn’t stay somewhere unsold. Harrods, the king of exclusive retail space, has created an outlet in partnership with Westfield London to ensure the excess inventory that resulted from the store closing during the lockdown is sold, even at a fraction of the price (Drapers.com, 2020). Many brands already operated in outlet spaces such as Bicester Village or Hackney Walk, but even so, as a big brand you cannot expect to just dump unused inventory to an outlet without ensuring that place also has storage options, and will not overflow for many years to come. Even opening outlet stores still assumes the consumer is there to spend. But when you think of the fact that we only use about 70% of our wardrobes, with the rest sitting there, untouched for around a year, do we really need to go to any outlet and buy some more? We’re all fans of Mary Kondo-ing all aspects of our lives, and our consumer behaviour could be another aspect we look at next time we shop. I remember the best advice that I received a little while back from a friend of mine who is constantly looking at ways to reduce her excessive consumer footprint; it’s a list of questions I ask myself every time I want to buy an item. For me these questions are 3, and they are quite simple:
Do I actually need this item?
Can I use this item with half of my wardrobe? (Please note said wardrobe is extensive)
Do I have anything remotely similar to this in my wardrobe that I can continue using?
This set of questions not only grounds me but makes me avoid crazy spur of the moment spending I would normally succumb to because I am human, I work in fashion, and I love clothes – especially shoes. I reached these 3 questions coincidentally after a Mary Kondo marathon – I also read her book, so it was double-marathon – and cleaned my vast wardrobes. While neatly re-arranging each item and looking at it, asking myself whether or not it brings me joy, I realized I had a few repetitive items in my wardrobe. The question of whether it brings me joy is not included in my usual questions because while performing this exercise I realize that all clothes bring me joy to some extent, and I didn’t know which side of this extent counts as a giveaway pile, so I invented my system.
I am definitely a fashion victim, but not necessarily in the really negative way in which this label is so commonly used. I am driven by trends and my spending comes from a belief anchored in my brain since I was a child that having ‘stuff’ brings you joy. It doesn’t, but it’s also hard to come out of this pattern when I constantly look at pretty things in media like magazines and talk about really beautiful things I cannot afford. Besides this, there is another aspect that isn’t talked about enough, and that is what is fashion doing not only to adapt to consumer behaviours, but to also push them.
Especially now, in what we consider ‘the end of the wave of this pandemic’, so many articles have popped up talking about fashion’s return to ‘normality’, but how can we expect to normalise something that was so broken before? If consumers keep on consuming, fashion keeps on producing, but changes in this idea that once seemed so linear are on the rise. For example, Gucci’s reduction in shows, from five a year to two, alters the economic ‘hype’ which usually surrounds these shows, both from consumers and the expensive outlay the brand has to make on them. These shows will not only differ in numbers throughout the year, but they will be ‘seasonless’, meaning that they will be evolving the Gucci story throughout the years to come rather than halt it every six months (Forbes.com, 2020).
I want to say that this shook the industry to its core and more brands have followed through, but Gucci was somewhat alone in this decision. Of course, it is not something to necessarily be taken lightly, and I’m sure more brands will follow through after seeing Gucci test it out, similar to Burberry’s live shows in the stores, and the ‘see now, buy now hype’, but a brand of this size bringing in such a massive change to the way it operates has been met with widespread admiration. Online retail spaces are also on the rise via brands such as Farfetch, where they have consumer behaviour at the core of the way the company operates, allowing them flexibility to change their offering and the way they offer it based upon consumer habits. In luxury fashion it is rare to find the consumer so close to the ethos of a brand, but in all honesty, the consumer dictates how things are done – and we live in a day and age where this can’t be ignored any longer. We have the power literally at our fingertips, and it this shows through previously non-negotiable brands making adaptability and consumer opinion an important aspect of their ethos.
I don’t believe that the term ‘fashion victim’ will have a necessarily positive connotation in the future. However, I do believe that its connotations, once anchored in the belief that a specific outfit was ‘trying too hard’, will change into how we look at our overall consumption. It will highlight the people who buy a lot and don’t wear the items, and it will maybe even point the finger at people living a less sustainable existence. We can all look beyond our wardrobes and ask more important questions than whether our clothes simply look good. At the same time, we can also push brands to act more sustainably because every step in this direction counts, no matter how small. We, as a collective of many individual consumers, can consciously change fashion sustainability in a much faster and easier manner than big brands changing their approach. The power is within us, we just need to push it forward.
Written by Andra Maier
Working in fashion teaches you a lot of things, but it leaves little space for creativity outside of work, because we are ‘always available’. Having a creative space is something important in my ‘switching off’ process, and writing comes easiest, especially in busy times. I love everything fashion and food related. If I am not found writing or scribbling, I am found reading the latest fiction releases, fan-girling over Harry Potter or some pretty shoes, and writing for my blog. Being able to express myself outside of work boundaries is freeing and incredible, and honing the creative spirit is one of the main resolutions I had for 2020.