The Life, Potential Death, and Lasting Legacy of Fashion TikTok

This week on One Size Fits All, we’re going to explore the positives and negatives of TikTok: how it pushed fashion forward, how it changed marketing, and how it’s dooming the world.

Hi friends!

Last week, SCOTUS passed the unanimous decision to force a divest-or-ban decision on TikTok, banning the platform from the US cyber-ecosystem. As of Saturday the 18th, Trump announced a 90-day delay of the ban, but the threat looms. I am not a political science expert. I do not know whether the Republican party is using the threat of a ban to distract from the ongoing ICE raids, but I do know that TikTok made a massive impact on the world of fashion, and potentially losing the app permanently would mark the end of an era.

I’ve seen a variety of reactions: some mourn this loss as if they’ve lost a family member, feverishly collecting their favorite videos or crashing out in group chats as they try to circumvent the ban. Others are celebrating, smoking “TikTok pack” and cheering on the disappearance of the app.

I’ll address my personal view and bias here. I’d be very happy if TikTok went dark permanently. While it taught me a lot about how to grow online, I firmly believe that the app’s erosion of the average attention span, proliferation of misinformation, and contributions to large-scale ecological destruction (more on this later) through mindless consumption on the TikTok shop outweigh the benefits of the app’s continuation. With that being said, I will explore the impact of the app as objectively as I can while presenting opinions from both the pro- and anti-TikTok camps.

I am going to keep this contained to the fashion-related impacts of the app, as I feel best equipped and well-qualified to discuss and don’t want to bullshit you in areas that I’m not confident in. After all, your favorite neurotic, Jewish, hot, 6’2”, well-researched fashion writer is nothing if not honest. Let’s dive into what TikTok did for personal style, what the ban means for fashion, and where we go from here.

A quick note before we launch into the proverbial meat and potatoes.

Thank you so much for continuing to support the Substack! It’s been so wonderful to see such engagement with what I’ve been writing, either in my DMs, in person, or through replies to the stories I post looking for opinions or personal experiences. It’s a wonderful motivator to see people wanting to contribute, answering my million-and-one questions, and being so honest with their opinions and experiences.

As always, One Size Fits All is free, and I intend to keep it that way. If you’re enjoying what I’ve got going on, please subscribe, share the article with someone who’d enjoy it, and continue to engage with me!

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Community Creation, The Power of Friendship, and the Snowball Effect (The Positives)

I hate when the lede is buried, so I’ll state it plainly here and quickly summarize the good parts of TikTok. The app:

• Levels the playing field and allows many of my contemporaries to grow and build authentic communities of like-minded individuals.

• Promotes snappy, accessible, and candid explorations of topics and interests, which make it easier for new entrants and old hobbyists alike to learn and engage.

• Creates communities around interests more organically than on Instagram, Reddit, or Twitter due to a strong interest-based algorithm.

• Gives everyone a voice should they be interested in posting videos or making content.

• Permanently changed how brands approach marketing.

If I haven’t lost you, keep reading to get a narrative and research-based justification of all the points above. On the very miniscule chance that I have lost you, please let me know where I came up short in holding your attention so I can improve.

Let’s launch into it! TikTok offers an unmatched space for communities to grow. The informal and personable creators on the platform attracted and resonated with Gen Z’ers (the largest age bloc of users) who felt as if they could tune into the platform and interact with one of their friends. As time on the app increased, virtual communities formed (organically!) around hobbies like fashion. However, these research on increased participation in online communities finds that:

• Interpersonal community weakens as a result of reduced in-person conversation and social contact.

• Increasing rates of disengagement from “the neighborhood,” or those in your direct physical vicinity.

• A decline of public community in the form of reduced social gathering, decreased involvement in voluntary organizations, and less commitment to the community at large.

The pandemic was a perfect setup to further entrench people in their online communities; there was no in-person community to return to. As restrictions eased, people stayed on their apps and in their digital neighborhoods. Fashion, in particular, facilitates and lends itself to a community-based approach and the formation of hyper-niche communities. For people living in suburban areas, online communities are often the only way to engage with a hobby or interest outside of a school setting, increasing the attraction to spaces on TikTok. This shift in where and how we converse with others is complemented by an information economy within the fashion community at large. We gravitate towards people who know more than we do, and with TikTok, we could more easily find, engage with, and form relationships (parasocial or not) with those people. The TikTok algorithm perfectly plays to this desire to learn by serving users increasingly niche, novel content that suited their increasingly niche tastes; @hhhenge commented on his experience in the early days of TikTok:

“I mostly received content that aligned with what I was already looking at: a lot of avant-garde and anti-fashion type shit. TikTok helped me hone in on some styling cues by serving people’s outfit of the day content. Some of the things I saw were fast-paced TikToks that showed flashes of CCP, Yohji, Margiela, Rick, etc. to breakbeat/drum and bass/techno.”

As we’re in the “good things about TikTok” section, I’ll use Henge’s discussion to point out one of the lovely things about the platform that will be sorely missed. TikTok was fantastic at recognizing what you were interested in and serving you more content in order to keep you on the platform, appealing to those with niche interests and those who sought increasingly esoteric knowledge while uplifting creators who could best serve that kind of content.

This algorithmic push towards community involvement drove the app’s fashion communities forward. Clothing, and fashion in general, acts as both medium and substitute for identity. Further, it provides a stabilizing base or insulating external shell for a younger person grappling with feelings of isolation or alienation. This isn’t exclusive to TikTok or digital communities: important fashion designers and identities arose from outcast or niche communities, like Vivienne Westwood’s alignment with the nascent punk scene in London. Creating “if you know you know” clothing and communities is rewarded when the communities in question exist around that space: TikTok’s algorithm ensured that those communities would be served their content of interest regardless of location, monetary investment, or level of participation. The heuristic nature of content discovery further endears viewers to their creators of choice: content recommendation feels more organic on TikTok than it does on Instagram, and, for a brief period of time, felt free from brand influence or sales-based marketing pushes. Communities who feel as if the creators they stumble upon are more aligned with them personally are more likely to continue to interact with those creators, especially those on the TikTok platform who use fashion as a medium to express themselves. The authenticity of that representation can be debated endlessly, but let’s give everyone the benefit of the doubt for now: large followings are built from the invisible hand of the algorithm driving like-minded individuals to people (not brands!) doing cool things.

Many personal friends reaped the rewards of TikTok virality. Julian Carter, fashion DIY king and all-around lovely guy (quick lip service: Julian is so enthusiastic and earnest about his interests; it’s wonderful to see, and I can attest that he’s even more personable offline) explained that during the pandemic, he grew by posting DIY sewing content. Interest from the younger fashion community in particular drove people to his page. With an awestruck expression on his face, he explained that young kids who learned on the app are now “absolutely going crazy” as they experiment and drive patternmaking and garment construction forward in a new-age arms race. TikTok, especially as a place to learn and quickly gather information, is fantastic; digestible, accessible, and succinct content thrived, especially in the early days of the app.

Other friends saw business success as a result of viral videos. Bailey, who I’ve talked about before, explained how virality contributed to his growth:

“I hate to say it, but TikTok gave me several career boosts. There’s been like 5-6 viral TikToks that people posted about my work that got so many eyes on what I do. I broke 10,000 followers when Watching New York stopped Alan—who’s been a friend since—and asked him for a fit breakdown.”

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A post shared by @baileyxgoldberg

Zach, who I met through a group of friends while playing fantasy football, explained that his brand, Digits238, experienced the same boost as a result of TikTok:

“I grew up with TikTok and because of TikTok. I gained a following by posting skateboarding content and always dressed like a skater kid. Seeing other people posting fashion videos made me want to improve my style; if it wasn’t for other people being so confident with their outfits on that app, I would probably have a terrible sense of style. I was also inspired to start my brand because of TikTok, and it has since become my full time job since high school. To be honest, I would not be living my dream of making clothes if it wasn’t for TikTok and the fact that the environment allowed everyone a shot to ‘be somebody’.”

The community-sharing aspect and cycle of learned-coolness on TikTok extends to both creators and viewers, and both groups agree that TikTok was the best place for these more approachable discussions and videos that ultimately facilitated the unique, attractive environment. The aforementioned Julian Carter called Instagram a “virtual resume,” while describing TikTok as a “public journal,” the latter allowing for increased access and a laid-back, casual atmosphere where jokes, open conversation, and a continued dialogue could flourish. A massive contributor to this interplay between creator and consumer on TikTok was the reply function, which encouraged and publicized an open dialogue and gave the audience a direct channel and a voice in the action. As such, egalitarian communities formed where the creators were as much ringleaders as they were conduits for the conversation at large, a departure from the “outside looking in” nature of Instagram pre-2023.

These communities sparked real-life friendships as like-minded individuals found contemporaries and formed relationships that transcended the app. Armand explained his experience with finding and engaging in a social scene facilitated by TikTok:

“In NYC, [TikTok] 100% facilitated my social circle. It allowed me to interact with and be a part of the men’s fashion space, a community that I’ve always wanted to engage with. I not only feel like I’m a part of the space, but I feel like I’m accepted and appreciated; something I didn’t feel on Instagram/Twitter/Reddit. I’ve been timid in terms of posting [on TikTok] and the ban has me hitting levels of FOMO/regret like no other, but it’s made me realize that I want to be a part of the fashion community by actively participating and making content. Finding great friends like Mark [Boutilier] and Tanner [Dean] allowed me to explore and be more comfortable with what I love and enjoy in fashion.”

I also asked Armand to talk to the overall impact of his friends and creators in general. He continued to explain that:

“Many [viewers] look to [my friends] as a source of validity, but both Tanner and Mark allow for such a wide array of people to indulge in their content. I think men’s fashion as a whole has brought men’s fashion even further into the main stage and educated even the least informed man to begin at least trying to dress in a manner more representative of their interests.”

I do agree with Armand: TikTok, in its algorithmic push for those who could appeal to wide audiences through humor (in Mark’s case) or through niche interests or aesthetics (as in Tanner’s), pushes people who are interested in the realm of fashion deeper into the hobby. Here lies the second grand point and lasting legacy that I want to make about the positive effect of TikTok: the platform rewards one-upmanship.

People will always gravitate toward those who serve as avatars of what they aspire to be (famous athletes, the ultra-wealthy, etc.) or unique individuals who seem too iconoclastic to ever be replicated (Björk, David Bowie, David Lynch, etc.). Fashion on TikTok suits both avenues. Creators like Mark, who make fashion approachable but inspirational, exist alongside creators like my friend Tanya, who collects rare McQueen runway pieces. Mark has said multiple times in the past that his strategy to grow was simply to post multiple times a day: this rapid pace necessitates a more casual, laid-back approach to video-making. Tanya, in particular, posts candid, day-in-the-life videos (like a vlog about running the NYC marathon) alongside her Prada hauls, which humanizes her and creates a virtual depth of character that isn’t as easily facilitated by a fitpic grid on Instagram.

TikTok gives a more ‘authentic’ look into the worlds and lives of the creators on the platform. In some ways, that’s a good thing: people with rich personal lives who are willing and driven to share that find success on the app. That purportedly rich personal life and resulting increased access for viewers drives deeper connections with the people they frequently watch; let’s examine how that dynamic between viewer and creator changed marketing permanently.

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Intermission: The Presence of Money and the Downfall of Organic Spaces

I’m a firm believer that marketing campaigns, and the need to monetize, and our capitalistic society mean that nothing can stay good forever.

The most important things to organic communities are the ability to choose for oneself (self-determination) and exclusivity (the belief that what you’re doing couldn’t or isn’t easily replicated and is in some way unique). Commodifying an organic community—in this case, influencer marketing on TikTok—almost always undermines the community as a whole; products are generally successful when they appeal to a broad audience, meaning that exclusivity falls to the wayside, and when they’ve cornered a market, undermining self-determination. The way fashion TikTok operated in its early days wasn’t ever going to last, as fashion inherently relies on a buy-and-sell economy in the consumer sphere.

As influencers curate their online presences to better attract brands and brand deals, organic community construction fades: the communities no longer exist to spark conversation, share information, or make jokes with the end goal of community, but rather with the end goal to sell a product. I can tell you, for a fact, that some influencers pull in close to six figures. When this kind of money is in play, influencers are picking a check over their communities. I can’t really judge that. Throw $100,000 my way and I’d honestly fold pretty quickly. Brands discovered that they didn’t have to spend millions on a spread in Vogue for a product to succeed (we can talk about the death of print in another article), but can rather send $10,000 to ten or fifteen influencers to make it appear that a product is organically infiltrating a space. Creators who I used to watch for fun, informative content are now making sponsored posts for almost all of their content. It’s sad to see!

I’ll also talk more about microtrends and increasingly esoteric product development through collaborations, a result of this shift in marketing strategy, later. Hopping on my soapbox for a second; I want to explain that this shift is why I shirk at the idea of monetizing this newsletter. I don’t want my readers to feel like I’m doing this work to sell them anything, but want them to feel like the person behind the writing is in it for the same reasons they are: love of the game.

Overall, is this shift a good thing? In some ways, yes: creators can monetize their interests and ensure that their hobbies can be their jobs into the future. Is this shift a horrible thing? Also yes: communities are unwittingly duped into buying products that serve as a facsimile of or a substitute for their actual hobby.

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The Death of Authenticity, Microtrend Burnout, and Ecological Collapse (The Negatives)

Ok; let’s do a quick level-set. TikTok excelled in creating communities, rewarded those who could relate to and include their audiences through conversational-style videos, and broke down barriers that seemed inherent to the fashion industry. All good things, for the most part! I love a community, I love people sharing their interests, and I love opportunities for young and hungry individuals who may otherwise be gated from an industry because of convention or the perception that things must happen in a certain way because ‘that’s the way it’s always been’. With that being said, let’s do a quick summary of the negatives of TikTok. The app:

• Gave rise to toxic communities that exist to bully others and spread negativity.

• Accelerated the speed of fashion—which was already at a breakneck pace—to an unsustainable level.

• Gave rise to disgusting overconsumption and pushed fast fashion to new heights, exacerbating the climate crisis.

• Commodified viewership through microtrends and ultimately undermined the best parts of the app: community creation.

• Contributed to the erosion of the physical ecosystem of shopping.

• Glorified and rewarded negativity within fashion (some of which is warranted!).

• Permanently changed how brands approach marketing.

However, TikTok’s legacy isn’t all good. I need to double back on some of the points I made in the previous section. Sorry, everyone. With every positive community that’s been formed, negative ones formed in kind. I can definitively say that I’ve seen the unequivocal rise of the ‘fashion-cel’ as a result of TikTok and Instagram. These young men (mostly) firmly believe that their interest in Rick Owens, Undercover, and Mihara Yasuhiro (among other brands) makes them too esoteric and unapproachable to get a girlfriend who isn’t rocking Guidi boots or Marc Lebihan. There are creators (I’m not referring to them by name and giving them the pleasure of being acknowledged) who take pride in being the most nasty and being best able to weaponize vitriolic and toxic communities to bully others within the fashion community.

Unfortunately, this toxicity has bled into communities that I consider positive. Every story I post that mentions a significant other is met with a litany of swipe ups with rhetoric about never being able to find a relationship. A joke video I posted in 2021 on TikTok about how to use Buyee earned me a weeks-long barrage of messages telling me to kill myself and that I was what was wrong with the fashion industry. The same reward system that promotes increasingly niche informational exchange gives rise to those who believe that it’s their role to guard that information from those who have not earned it.

Creators were aware of how to benefit from the algorithm, and for almost two years, we had a new trend almost every other week. Y2K, Gorpcore, Blokecore, Workwear, Loafers, E-Boy, Cottagecore, Dark Academia, Techwear, Indie Sleaze, and Cowboycore beat viewers over the head with new things to buy and new styles that promised entry into the ‘in-group’. The consistent algorithmic pressure reached a breaking point in 2024, with many writers-in commenting on trend fatigue. Trend fatigue is just one part of the problem: writer-in @no_paulitical_agenda jumped in my messages with an especially fiery take on influencer fatigue.

“TikTok influencers are the worst in my honest opinion. Why is everything a detail? This details this, the details that: Do you know how easy it is to just google? Is it a detail or is it a button, a bow, a buckle, a dart, or a pleat? Is it the fit or the cut? What are you trying to say? [As a result of TikTok], we all dress the same and like the same shit because a couple of idiots online know how to make a catchy video but can’t string together a meaningful sentence. The second I see a bitch shaking a parcel at the camera, I can write the script in my head: “Obsessed with the details! She’s perfect! etc.” Personally, I’m moving to substack because if you’re boring or illiterate there, you won’t gain as much traction.”

I think that the point here—while strongly worded—is salient. In a push to attract a wide audience, even in a niche interest, influencers result to the same playbook and same video tropes to ensure continued viewership. In using generic language and watering down concepts for their audience, people grow tired and feel like the creators are condescending or simply don’t have anything better to say. The desire to attract brands means that people are less willing to take risks and make the videos they want to make.

Positivity break! Importantly, staying consistent in making the videos and passions they want to make rather than what they have to make allows earnest, talented creators to gain traction, like our friend Adam Small!

adam_____small

A post shared by @adam_____small

Adam lies on one side of the coin, an enthusiastic creator working to share his process and vision while selling products to support his continued success (a positive, additive interaction with his community). On the other side of the coin, creators appropriate aesthetics, inauthentically align with culture, and curate false digital images in order to sell products (a transactional, reductive interaction with their community). Many people wrote in to comment on the proliferation of inauthentic creators on the platform: @1deviine comments that “TikTok caused a PAINFUL influx of new rinse-and-repeat clothing brands with nothing to say and no real goal or focus.”

People are tired of being told to buy a flavor-of-the-week item and are wisening up to pandering influencers who adopt the veneer of ‘one of you’ to mobilize a community in pursuit of monetary gain. There’s no longer a core-of-the-week on TikTok (thank fucking god) and I think the streetwear and the same writers-in expressed pleasure about the death of microtrends, which were never really about creators or community. Rather, these trends were manufactured by industry and are sales techniques to get viewers to buy into the trends. Here’s how this cycle works:

1. A market gap is identified.

2. A hyper-specific product is created (see literally any collab for literally any hobby).

3. Influencers who best exemplify a market gap (skaters, office sirens, etc.) are paid to wear, promote, and sell WGSN-aligned schlock to people who want to be like them.

4. That audience feels as if products are being made for them and are enjoyed by people they aspire to be or that they know intimately.

5. That personal relationship facilitates a sale with an inherent trust in the influencer’s taste, regardless of whether or not the product was organically endorsed.

Reduced attention spans and patience as a result of the app meant that people no longer take time to cultivate and align with an aesthetic and would rather pay a premium to ‘have it now’. Just as the platform purportedly offered authenticity through its personalities and creators, it commodified that same authenticity to pawn off flavor-of-the-week items and monetize the same communities it created.

TikTok also promotes disgusting amounts of overconsumption and glorifies the purchase over all else. The ecosystem closely mimics the cowboy economies proffered by the late philosopher/economist Kenneth Boulding. He states:

“I call the open economy the "cowboy economy," the cowboy being symbolic of the illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behavior, which is characteristic of open societies. In the cowboy economy, consumption is regarded as a good thing and production likewise…. If there are infinite reservoirs from which material can be obtained and into which effluvia can be deposited, then the throughput is at least a plausible measure of the success of the economy.”

TikTok (and fashion) were and remain like the wild west. Consumers do not have to internalize their social or environmental impacts. Countless reports are issued every year about the increasing amounts of landfill waste, the horrible labor conditions in developing nations, and the horrifying implications of polyester as a carcinogen and particulate within ecosystems or bloodstreams. Additionally, fashion is contributing to wide-scale planetary collapse! It’s true! The cowboy economy that rewards consumption is alive and well on the platform.

The ever-hungry mouth of the audience for content means that pickup videos, unboxings, and hauls will always find an audience and will generally do well, further emphasizing the importance of consumption-as-success. Further, with increasingly niche communities who are interested in purchasing goods that come ready-made as signifiers of participation in the in-crowd, brands are producing increasingly niche goods. Did we need a Salomon X Sandy Liang collab for all the coquette hiking girlies? What about those horrid New Balance Loafers, for all the aspiring creative directors stuck at Ernst & Young? Does the world need literally anything from Sporty and Rich, made for the most annoying clean girlies in SoHo? These collabs are a byproduct of a market that gets bored easily: TikTok rarely allows for repetition of items in showcases or videos. People crave novel items and get bored easily.

Producing these new and exciting products requires massive amounts of material inputs, energy, and labor. In contrast, vintage clothing is generally better for the environment. However, buying vintage, as much it’s lauded as a panacea to fashion’s impact by so many influencers, still requires transportation of goods and still has an ecological impact. Further, buying hundreds of pieces of clothing is simply not ecologically responsible, no matter how you slice it. It’s better than buying all of those things new, don’t get me wrong, but overconsumption is overconsumption. The only way to change this is to change the speed at which fashion operates, a point endlessly reiterated by scientists and industry insiders alike. It will not happen, in my opinion, even if TikTok is banned, a permanent impact that will continue to shape fashion and add fuel to the not-really-a-proverbial ecological fire.

This fire is only growing hotter. Friend-of-the-podcast Federico Barengo weighed in on the impact of TikTok overseas:

“TikTok made everything worse. While it helped shed light on small businesses, the infinite scroll and hyper-short-form content made it possible for fast fashion brands to exist in the way they currently do. In Italy, Shein, Temu, and Zara are within the top 10 most downloaded apps in the Apple app store.”

That certainly seems bad, doesn’t it? In the US’ popular app list, Temu sits at spot #18 and Shein lies at #29. I do not think a single item of quality exists on these apps, and I think people that shop on these apps are lazy. 10% of the world’s total annual carbon emissions are a result of the production of fast fashion. A common argument I see regarding the existence of Shein is that it provides more size-inclusive options to those with larger or unconventional body types. I'd counter these arguments and explain that clothes on these apps fit like shit, regardless of body type. You’d be better off and find more success searching eBay, Mercari, Poshmark, or thrift stores; the time investment is worth it. Fuck fast fashion, and if you use the apps, please reconsider. Also, fuck reps. That’s an essay for a different day.

I do not like the TikTok brand of engaging with fashion. Logging on to the app feels like you’re scrolling QVC. Nowadays, hobbies, interests, and nostalgia are all commodified, and the TikTok shop turns shopping into a mindless transaction that pumps even more garbage product into the hands of consumers and eventually into landfills. Unfortunately, increasing time spent on these apps and a lack of in-person community surrounding these activities or interests is beginning to affect the way we spend time with one another offline.

Anecdotally, many fashion week parties are filled with people waiting for action to happen so that they can film it for their followers as proof of participation rather than simply participating or starting the action themselves. I bemoaned the lack of dancing at parties again and again during the 11^th season of the podcast, and I regrettably think it’s only going to get worse. Just as with most experiences, brands and influencers infiltrated the spaces where authenticity, identity, and personality thrive, and actively erode those spaces by selling or watching rather than joining in on the fun.

I refuse to leave a section about negativity on a bitter note, so let’s quickly talk about critics, a wonderful resurgence birthed from the algorithm’s love of negativity. Critics of the fashion world grew as audiences learned more about fashion (through apps like TikTok!) and sought articulate voices for their displeasure. These new-gen authorities found ways to ride the headwinds of what the platforms called for (well-researched, snappy, digestible content that called out inauthentic or bad collections) and build a platform for what fashion missed in much of the late 2010’s: actual criticism. A quick history lesson! Brands, in a past marketing push, found that simply paying off or sucking up to critics was the easiest way to remain in good graces. As publications like Vogue and Harpers’ Bazaar relied more on these brands’ advertising budgets for their continuation, fashion criticism went the way of the dodo.

The onset of TikTok saw influencers and publications continuing to suck up to brands in hopes of seeing a monetary reward, but the platform also allowed for a new crop of critics who had nothing to lose: no existing relationships (in most cases), no editor or advertisers to please, and no existing show invites that could be lost. I’m a fan of these critics even if I don’t agree with everything they say: I think real criticism is good for the fashion world! I’m glad they’re back.

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What’s Next?

Well, TikTok wasn’t banned. As for what’s next, I think that the maintenance of the app only solidifies the continued quickening of the fashion industry. I fully expect brands to continue cracking the marketing problem; I wouldn’t be shocked if we saw some form of direct-to-shopper integration from a brand like Victoria’s Secret that enables viewers to buy clothing, ephemera, fragrances, and accessories in a limited window during a runway show to capitalize on the modern consumer’s desire for unique, one-of-a-kind experiences.

I can’t say that I know how to address the negative legacies of the app. I usually write something prescriptive at the end of these papers, but the more research I did, the more questions I had. I’ll turn the microphone to my readers and encourage you to message me and let me know your thoughts: has fashion on TikTok reached its breaking point with many experiencing influencer and microtrend burnout? What else do you see happening as a result of the platform’s continued existence? Can we curb our appetites or is hyper-consumption the new normal? Do you think the current political climate in the US (de-emphasizing environmental protections but attempting to limit the import of Chinese goods) will mean a potential ban or lessened regulation on Shein and/or Temu?

For once, I don’t have all of the answers. I can say that I think an import tax or a waste tax that internalizes the impacts of buying new clothing would help tremendously in dampening the rampant overconsumption that grips the current fashion world. Overall, I’m fairly optimistic. I think your average fashion fan is presented with more information, more chances to learn, and an abundance of experts that span an incredible variety of expertise. Further, I think that there is an appetite for learning that I’m hopeful will spawn a new crop of talented designers who make their own paths into the fashion-sphere rather than being forced to walk a tried-and-true path. We’ve seen a number of influencers or personalities make their way into pop culture, movies, television, and music, but haven’t yet seen a designer break out of the TikTok-sphere and solidify themselves in the upper echelon of high fashion designers. Whoever, however, or wherever they break out, I’ll be watching.