Why Fashion Is So Much More Than Shopping
The fashion industry at large has drilled a lot of untruths into our heads over the years.
You need to keep up with the latest trends or risk looking “outdated”.
Or that this next [insert: blazer, dress, pair of jeans, etc] will solve all of your problems.
But I believe the most damaging idea that the fashion industry has forced on us is that the only way for an average person to engage in fashion is by shopping. To take what is, at its core, a creative art that we all have in common and twist it into something we only see as accessible through commerce is such a disservice. It’s late-stage capitalism at its finest.
It’s high time to turn our attention to all the ways we can engage in fashion without shopping.
You could edit your closet and digitally catalog your pieces. You could look back on your recent outfits and analyze what you liked and didn’t like about them. You could reflect on why you bought the pieces in your closet and whether they fulfilled what you thought they would. You could re-style the clothes you already have into an infinite number of new outfits. You could watch old movies and appreciate the incredible vintage fashion, comparing and contrasting to what’s available today. You could take up a new hobby entirely and learn how to sew a few pieces yourself. Or, experiment with creatively tailoring existing pieces into something that feels new. Even just getting dressed every morning is a prime example of you engaging in fashion.
And all of this isn’t necessarily “slow fashion” or “sustainable fashion.” It’s just fashion.
I love that “no-buy” or “low-buy” challenges seem to have become increasingly popular over the last few years. It’s a sign that we have finally been overshopped and are all questioning whether all this shopping has really fulfilled us in the way we were led to believe it might.
But, I’ve also noticed that no- or low-buys are often talked about as a kind of deprivation. We build it up like it’s New Year’s Eve and our resolution is to go on a (temporary) diet.
Over a year ago, I started a “low-buy” of my own. I was inspired by a Vogue article reporting on a study that found that to stay in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we should all be purchasing only five new garments a year. We often hear that our current pace of consumption is a climate disaster in the making and that we need to consume “less,” but by how much exactly? I was fascinated by this study as it was the first I’d seen to actually put a real number on the problem.
That being said, just five new garments a year felt like a stretch to me…so I personally set a goal of twelve new garments. It felt simple: one per month. Progress over perfection, okay?
Here’s what I found.
When shopping is unbounded, it’s easy for all your creative fashion energy to get sucked into it. After all, the industry has poured untold billions of dollars into making the act of shopping an entrancing, addictive, endless scroll experience.
But when you set a self-imposed limit to shopping, you can redirect that energy into something else. After buying my one thing for the month, I didn’t try to shut down my interest in fashion entirely (the ascetic approach). I redirected the same fashion-y creative energy I used to put into shopping into the other activities I described above.
And in this, I found so much more joy in fashion than I had ever experienced.
I think this is because when fashion is all about not what you have but about what you don’t have yet (i.e., shopping), you are constantly striving towards something that feels *just* in front of you. You’re always hungry but never satisfied. The simple choice to reframe fashion into something already under my creative control with the closet I had changed everything.
Fashion stopped being something I needed to buy on the suggestion of someone else or needed to “keep up with” in order to seem cool to someone else. Instead, it became a creative outlet for me. One I could access anytime, anywhere, regardless of the status of my bank account.
Shopping less doesn’t have to be a sad, dull, depressing thing. It can really, truly be so much more FUN!
A cool added benefit? The pieces I do buy have gotten much better. Since I know I’m buying less, I can afford to invest more in each individual piece. Impulse purchases have effectively gone to zero, with each new piece carefully considered in the context of what I already have and what would add the most value to the collection. More intention invested in each new piece automatically translates to more emotional connection with each piece. Easy come, easy go…and I find shopping this way essentially the opposite.
For me, this “low-buy” didn’t end up a temporary thing. I didn't want it to be temporary once I saw how it changed my entire mindset. I can’t see myself stopping the “one-thing-per-month” rule for the foreseeable future.
And look: it’s all about finding what works for you. I’m not asking you to join some sort of pledge. But, what I hope I can do through the work we do at Indyx is break that seemingly rock-solid mental connection between fashion and shopping by building tools that make it even more fun to engage in your own closet and reap all the many benefits of prioritizing styling over shopping. Because unlocking your own creativity should hold at least equal weight to bringing in outside inspiration when it comes to “fashion.”
If you’re looking for a tool to help make fashion about more than just shopping and fall back in love with your closet, our free iOS or Android app is what you’ve been searching for.
Devon is a co-founder of Indyx and currently leads Growth for the company from San Francisco. She enjoys admiring other people’s gardens and sleeping in with her French Bulldog, Reggie.
