11/16/25

Like any good post-grad student, desperately clinging to the artistic side of themselves that will soon be replaced with cafe orders and/or a lifetime of dead-end retail experience, I spend as much time as I can consuming art-related content to give myself some semblance of continued commitment to the genre. Social media, as anyone with marketing experience will tell you, is a powerful tool when it comes to collectivizing cultural ideals, and fashion is no stranger to this concept. Over the last four and a half years, my Instagram, TikTok, and, of course, Pinterest, have slowly become corrupted by fashion. Small-scale designers trying to make their big break, high fashion houses releasing their quarterly collections, influencers presenting their archival collections, and everyday bloggers showcasing their most recent thrift finds. Fashion is inescapable, and thankfully so, but more often than not, the all-consuming spyware inacted into every one of our accounts mistranslates what it is you're looking for. With every haute couture piece, runway breakdown, and Vinted haul is an ad, a sponsorship, or a "recommended for you" post that simply misses the mark. 

Urban Outfitters, Sketchers, and even Jaded London, from time to time, my feed is plagued by the ghosts of fashion's past, beckoning my wallet and moral compass to allow such needless spending. It makes sense that, given the amount of time spent looking at fashion as a whole, and given that 99% of said fashion is not from brands or businesses that are likely to promote themselves in Instagram stories, my social media advertisers would have trouble identifying exactly what to show me. Despite a complete and utter lack of interest in actually shopping, much less even considering shopping at any of these stores, every so often, one of them catches my eye. The last few times I have come across such posts - weird gridded 2 by 4 stories showcasing the most clickable pieces being sold for the next two weeks before being replaced by the preceding two weeks of highly sellable garments - I find myself shocked at the sheer intricacy of the pieces, verging on higher-end design work (or at least trying to). I've found myself pondering the different brackets of sellable fashion and what sets them apart from one another, but for the last few weeks, I've taken note of this kind of shift in their marketing. 

The uprise of thrifting is no unknown secret. Over the last decade, consumers have begun directing their attention toward more circular forms of shopping. My thoughts are that this is largely due to an equal uprise is class conciousness, primarily if not exclusively within young to mid 20 year olds. We saw the trends our older siblings drove, creating so much space for brands like Hollister, Abercrombie, and The Gap to flourish that the logos and brands themselves became something of a trend in their own right. But as we aged, we were made astutely aware, more so than any generation prior, of the impact such shopping habits have had on the rest of the world. What's more is that, due to our staggering consumption of the internet, something kids our age were also largely the frontrunners of, we were exposed to fashion as a whole, and in much broader terms. Our view of fashion, styles, who wore what, and current trends was not limited to what was currently popular. No longer were we confined to fashion magazines, nor TMZ, MTV, or morning talk show recaps of celebrity fashion on the red carpet. Rather, we navigated the web by discovering the nooks and crannies of fashion that often required us to dig beyond the closest fast-fashion retailer. We emphasized not only sustainability, but quality as well, deciding to spend our money on long-lasting, more expensive archival pieces from the previous five-plus decades, and ditching the - though admittedly trendy - lower-quality and widespread styles of our local American Eagle Outfitters.

For decades, fashion has pulled from a very identifiable place - runways being inspired by life, art, and what consumers are most likely to be consuming by next season's roll-out; fast fashion trying their hardest to match the colors, patterns, and lining of their higher-priced competitors, and consumers doing what they can with these two options. It's called the trickle-down theory, a trend finding a source in one place, and slowly finding its way down the ladder to your closest rummage sale (think cerulean sweaters).  However, within the last few years, the dramatic shift in most brands' target market has left them, for lack of better words, scrambling. For the first time, most fashion enthusiasts are not relying solely on accessible first-hand clothing brands to dictate their wardrobe, and what's more, they are rarely even looking to them for basics anymore. Shoppers now have a multitude of alternative shopping options aside from fast fashion, finding actually cool and interesting pieces - basics and statements - that make their closet feel more curated to them, as well as adhering to more globally concious spending habits. The transition away from relying on the brands to dictate our styles has left them struggling to make anything at all, often falling short of anything even remotely purchasable to the average stylish individual that these brands have faithfully sold to since our parents were our age. 

Perhaps it is because of the staggering amount of space that fashion takes up in my head, or simply a psychotic symptom of having very little else to think about, but after a certain amount of time spent consuming Vogue, GQ, and Runway-centered media, trends begin to have as much of a pulse as the industry itself. You can begin identifying when things will become more widespread, when they will remain in their niche sub-styles, when things will blow up into the mainstream media, and, of course, when they will hit the global stocking shelves. Fast fashion brands have spent decades relying on what the masses, and designers, are already wearing to dictate what they will sell, therefore assuring large profts. But the recent fixation on the less palatable styles, things found exclusively in thrift stores, curated vintage shops in Soho, and high-end designer stores alike, has noticeably, yet slowly, disrupted the system. When the styles of tomorrow become too intricate to replicate today, what options are they left with? 

If you go onto Urban Outfitters' website right now, a majority of the clothing, especially the menswear, is going to be your basic pants and tees. However, spending enough time, you will find what I imagine to be what they consider hidden gems. Sweatpants with cut lines up the center, flaring on the sides and decorated with stainless steel rock studs across the waistband; faux fur trimmed jackets with rib knitting at the waistband; asymmetrical faux-cashmere sweaters with cascading seams; polyester silk dress shirts with breast pleats running from the shoulder to the hem and a ruffle across the plunging neckline. As they're target markets move slowly toward less replicable, better quality clothing, fast fashion brands are scrambling to make their basics market more applicable to statement pieces. But how sellable is this idea in reality?

2020 is when consumers' minds slowly began to shift toward more sustainable shopping methods. Though a major surge of online, fast fashion purchases existed simultaneously, the uprise of street level fashion, and therefore increased emphasis on designer labels, spread the understanding that fast fashion should be more of a last resort; somewhere for the occasional pair of jeans, or blank white tee shirt, rather than a full wardrobe. And it was around this time that we saw the first attempts at brands trying out the upscale designs at lower scale branding. Marc Jacobs' "Heaven" had a major spike around 2021-2022, marketing themselves as a cheaper, yet not cheap way to acquire some very trendy and very brag-able pieces. Similarly, Jaded London had their major media moment around the same time, 2022-2023, quickly garnering widespread popularity for their eye on fashionable, less palatable trends, astutely marketed toward a specific kind of (insufferable) fast fashion shopper. Though both brands made staggering amounts of money, with celebrity collaborations and acclaim on most platforms, it didnt take long for them to fall back into the shadows as more customers reported on their low quality and lack of creativity. 

Today there is a problem I see happening quite frequently - the same problem that Heaven and Jaded London fell victim to, and the same problem that causes the death of previously popular brands like Forever 21, and is slowly killing brands like Urban Outfitters. Given the current widespread popularity of "fashion", with every Becca, Brady, and even a few Bob's flexing their most recent fits on your timeline, conversations revolving around the best place to find the best pieces for the best prices are littered throughout every For You page. It seems as though once a month, Brenda posts a TikTok - "Run dont walk to your nearest Walmart for this floor length, faux fur trench coat for only $30!" She exclaims, presenting the hand made polyester garment. As consumers flock to the shelves, buying up every last piece, someone named Kai will leave a comment, explaining that somewhere in Thailand is a very sad woman sewing acrylic hairs onto nylon mesh for $0.12 cents an hour, so that you can have a statement piece for this season that will inevitably end up in a Goodwill by the time the leaves grow back. Everyone will slowly remember why we dont buy all of our clothes from places like Walmart, before turning to Target or H&M for the next designer collaboration shlock. It is a different kind of circular fashion, one that feeds into the never ending racks of equally shitty pieces plaguing the thrift and antique stores normal people regular. 

The death of fast fashion does not mean the death of their profits. In fact, most fast fashion retailers have managed to not only ammend the damages dont to their revenue during the Pandemic, but sore beyond it in recent years. Rather, the pattern of struggling retailer, to sellout, to profitable, and then back to struggling has slowly resulted in the death of their reputation. Real fashionistas, the ones with money to be spent and closests to overpopulate, dont shop at malls anymore. They have Goodwill bins, Vinted and Depop, Ebay and vintage stores carrying real statement pieces that are actually worth the money being spent. Fast fashion is not dead, but the last century of filth that they are almost exclusively responsible for - the dyed rivers, and wastelands of discarded scraps and yardages, have left their reputation with an ink mark on their very names. Upon their arrival, the sheer volume of eyerolls from those with a passion for fashion has left them