I once jokingly referred to a Sunset Rollercoaster gig as the mullet convention of Kuala Lumpur. Millennial and Gen Z concertgoers alike were donning shag cuts, moustaches and impeccably-aged vintage tees paired with pseudo-hiking shoes — a pair of Salomon XT-6s. A stroll along Petaling Jaya’s notorious Taman Paramount neighbourhood — located 30 minutes from the heart of the city — revealed a hotspot for 20somethings wearing Heaven by Marc Jacobs baby tees with thrifted cargo shorts or mini bubble skirts paired with librarian-approved acetate frames. Across the Causeway are throngs of fitness enthusiasts who style their Lululemon Define Jackets with oversized Stanley flasks and puffy Beyond The Vines crossbodies. British author Beth Bentley recounts in her Substack Pattern Recognition that within six hours in London, she noticed 12 individuals who sported the same maxi skirt, Adidas Sambas, bomber (jacket), and hair in a bun combination. Even if these individuals did not know each other, it seems their social media algorithms did. Indeed, go to any creative-adjacent coffee shop and you will notice an unmistakable sameness in how people dress: loafers paired with wide jorts and a jersey; or the variant of matching a preppy button-down with athletic shorts and some Onitsuka Tigers.
To proclaim this phenomenon as a death to personal style is to undermine the dynamism of how we consume and assimilate with culture. I do not recall another time I received as many compliments as I did on the one occasion when I wore a pair of Adidas shorts with an Oxford shirt, a vintage tie, Dr. Martens loafers and a baseball cap. I vividly recall having referenced that outfit off my Pinterest homepage and feeling a sense of connection to both the attractive, nameless man who let me steal his outfit and my peers, who I bet had seen the same Pin on their page. Suppose the argument by critics on the death of personal style is attributed to the sameness in how we present ourselves, how does it differ from the archetypal signifiers of the eras before today? Is the enduring imagery of 1970s bohemian, 1980s maximalism and 1990s stark minimalism not attributed to a form of sameness dictated by designer trends and consumer demands?
If we were to look beyond the carpenter shorts and tasselled loafers, would the main driving factor towards this criticism be attributed to doubts of authenticity? A friend once excitedly asked a freshman at a college induction what her favourite AC/DC song was, only to be met with a confused look and silence — he had assumed she knew the band because she wore their merch. It is the same age-old rhetoric as “no one wears Carhartt for manual labour anymore, they are now worn by creative directors who vape and make decks all day”. With culture shifting to place the internet and social media at the forefront of most work and social interactions, there is an impression that experiences have become more artificial and surface-level. What this assumption overlooks is how culture has evolved over the years — shaping the way we perceive the world through our screens.
The mainstream now consists of us discovering, processing and learning new information, hence developing our sense of self through short-form videos, ChatGPT-generated summaries and digital archives. Reduced to mere visual cues, the paradox of striving to pass off as Old Money through fast fashion deals further creates a dystopian idea that fashion is nothing more than a thin costume that can easily be swapped out just to “fit a vibe” and not be representative of one’s identity. Funnily enough, one’s heightened idea of an Office Siren will probably not bypass HR dress policies in most conventional corporate companies.
Perhaps there may be dissonance in feeling a sense of ownership towards what we see online. Before the age of algorithm-driven social media platforms, there was an element of discovery as one would constantly traverse through communities and pages to find their tribe. Identifying other Lady Gaga fans from your city would mean sifting through hashtags and followers. Real effort was required by being active in forums and looking through news sites to identify new releases and who wore what. In the present day, we have been spoiled with an excess of information tailored to our statistical identity. In social media’s laboratory, users have become the product offered to advertisers, spoonfed with data meant to encourage engagement and conversion. Watered down to mere binary information decided in a marketing strategy meeting, the sameness in the way we present ourselves, jorts and all perhaps is an oversimplification pinned on our death of imagination. How can we dream differently if we are all fed the same diet? As creatives nurtured in this environment, it is also telling when the research begins and ends on Pinterest when campaigns and editorials all start looking the same.
On the days I went out in a pair of jorts and a jersey, I felt a sense of acknowledgement — being seen by my chronically online friends who share the same amount of screen time on our phones. Even without the backdrop of a vaguely European setting, I found it easier to romanticise the tarmac beneath my soles as a stand-in for cobbled paths. In the same stroke that the algorithm has buffed out our idiosyncrasies, the diluted sameness brings upon an unspoken kinship, a code for identifying potential peers in a crowd. It is not that we have copied one another, nor that we bear the shameful title of being “basic” — the phenomenon simply occurred as a byproduct of being unknowingly grouped through our datafied selves. The unwillingness to delve deeper than the façade of an aesthetic leads us into a dangerous phenomenon of reducing culture to caricature or, as we would put it, just “a vibe”. As optics and performativism take centre stage, post-ironic plays from brands like Balenciaga, who cashed in on the “Jane Birkin-ification” of fashion by selling pre-decorated bags and pre-distressed garments, conjure a sense of unease among fashion purists. First, there were dupes for individual clothing items, but now, there are dupes for an exact lifestyle you can buy right out of the store.
Fundamentally, the discourse on why every young adult with a screen time of eight hours daily looks the same comes down to doubts of authenticity and a general distaste towards what one considers artifice. With the evolving nature of microtrends, it is impossible not to be drawn to some. Yet, mindlessly chasing them for validation often backfires, leaving an impression of uncertainty and inauthenticity. Look beyond what is pushed to you through the screen and explore outside your usual avenues — you never know what might spark inspiration. And suppose personal style is a reflection of our own individuality and preferences, why would it be so bad for our styles to reveal our innate desire to blend in and belong, especially in this loneliness epidemic we are in?
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