Would you rather: be conventionally dressed or unapologetically you?
What’s more self-invigorating than the discovery of something you equate to your identity like your personal style? It’s like a satisfying pursuit of creativity, marked by your preference of presentation, and marketed towards bettering your self-image and giving people around you a chance to get to know you without saying a word. It’s a split-second indicator of self-definition, geared to display self discovery or suave confidence that you wish you always had more of.
Under the logic that every one of us is very individually unique, one would expect a society of great breadth in outfit variety. I think, however, that we can all agree that that’s just not the case. Realistically, most people gravitate to trendy attires or conventional styles. They seek appearances that reflect the people around them. Of course, this is not without appreciating their own personal flair, but why is conventionality such a core component of styling?
To achieve more meaningful answers to these questions, I rather nervously conducted several coffee shop interviews. Those that argued for a more conventional style approach cited pragmatics and blending in as primary reasons. For example, Anis described his choice as a weighing of practicality and flamboyance. He explained that for him, choosing athletic outfits for daily attire to meet his active lifestyle often overtook dressing up. However, this wouldn’t steer him away from balancing that functionality with preference.
Noura also cited balance as a key motivator. While she desired to avoid the spotlight of attention, she would infuse her own flair – through, let’s say, jewelry – to counter the dullness of conventionality in a way that still didn’t draw attention. McKenzie, on the other hand, would dress more unapologetically, experimenting with vibrant color. That way she could present her choices and stylistic discoveries to others. Here lies a dispute in one’s perception of the purpose of personal style: one for presentation and communication and the other to blend.
Thus, the desire to blend in is propelled by personality. But besides personality, what else shapes a society’s conventional dress choices? Obviously, humans experience a primitively-rooted desire to follow trends and present themselves like others. But why have fashion trends evolved so much over time? Why were modest, more conventionally formal outfits the standard of previous decades and centuries, while “unapologetically you” has seen more of a rise in younger generations?
I’d attribute social norms as a leading factor. Back in the heyday of white waistcoats, black tailcoats, and trousers, going out into the public meant putting on a facade of formality. Fashion, in a sense, has evolved not because professionalism and formality has taken a backburner; rather, it has evolved into something more celebratory of free self expression because social norms and expectations have been uprooted by generations and generations of social change.
In a nutshell, social progress has paved the pathway of greater self reliance and expression, no longer suffocated by gripping norms, making “unapologetically you” a viable outlet for this long-sought individualism. But what if fashion trends have to do with more than just biological preference and social norms?
I’m thinking about the Industrial Revolution – a time where textile factories swept across Europe and eventually America via burgeoning technologies like James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, and eventually Edmund Cartwright’s power loom. That, coupled with consumerism becoming a new way of life, created streamlined clothing industries. This was the trend; dresses were no longer hand-sewn atop musty oak tables in prairie settlements. This, over time, made higher quality clothing more accessible to consumers. While it wasn’t the advent of style, mass production certainly accelerated the formation of trends.
And, think about this: ever since the mid 1900s, the freshly-manufactured, department-store clothing from the Industrial Revolution and following decades has been handed to the backs of following generations through thrifting. As a meteoric trend embracing Gen Z, secondhand clothing has diversified the materials and time period styles thrifters choose to combine, making “unapologetically you” more attainable and desirable.
While online retail and advertising promotes more conventional, trend-setting clothing (also known as fast fashion), regions of the internet and social media platforms are a vibrant promoter of reusing clothing for its widespread benefits: saving resources, being environmentally friendly, and being an outlet for diverse groups of people to express themselves.
At the end of the day, I don’t think there is a right answer; creative, attention-grabbing fashion balances nicely with conventional trends and standards. The answer is not what I sought, at least – instead I sought an understanding of the outside influences shaping fashion trends over the last few centuries and the personal reasoning that affects individual choices of style – an understanding I now have. Maybe, as the lines within societal expectations, constructs, and norms become blurrier and blurrier, normalcy will keep getting wackier and wackier. That or “unapologetically you” will attract more and more young generations. Either way, I’m excited to see what future perceptions of fashion will have in store for us.
Written by Corban Vogler
