Can We Dress Cool In The Internet Era?
Post-genre fashion where style is personal and getting dressed is an art form
Fashion is constantly evolving. We can thank many different elements for this change in pace, but one area that's shifted the way we dress is the internet. Yes, the internet. That thing that our eyes are glued to no matter how much we try to look away. That thing that can leave us optimistic one minute, and depressed the next. And that thing that the modern world can't live without no matter how much we try.
The internet has transformed the way we dress. Gone are the days when dressing cool meant you were up to date with what's in the pages of glossy fashion mags and you raced to your local department store to replicate and imitate such outfits. Nowadays, dressing ‘cool’ implies that you spend your time scrolling social media, absorbing whatever’s trending, and deciding where you fit into the chaos of it all. And in an era of core aesthetics, copycat sartorial statements, and micro and mainstream trends, its hard to look cool and stand out.
We’re living in a time where all things digital have played a significant role in making fashion more accessible, opening up our eyes to styles, outfits and aesthetics that we may have not come across otherwise. The internet has become central to the fashion industry and the various mechanisms that make it what it is today. And shopping for clothes has become a digital battlefield where we jostle for supremacy in the noisy public sphere of social media hashtags, trying to cultivate an identity that's separate and long-lasting while still abiding by the rules in some way, shape or form.
From high fashion to high street to premium brands, the entire fashion spectrum is influenced by the internet. This kind of cultural mash-up changes all the rules as fashion hierarchies are blurred. And with this shift, fashion interpretation has become deeply personal. Dressing cool now means the wearer, not the clothes themselves, define the value of fashion aesthetics. Instead of being dictated to and sold too, it’s us, the people, that decide what's cool.
But here's the twist. It's something many of us are guilty of, myself included. And it goes a little something like this. We wear outfits that imitate, imply or suggest a concept, rather than trying to embody it and live out its value in real terms. We've become a generation that wears the idea of an aesthetic just so we can fit in rather than truly embracing a certain vibe, which homogenises the fashion realm as we end up looking like carbon copies of one another.
So let's be real for a moment. Despite all the talk about individuality, personalisation and self-expression, there's still a pressure to conform to trends. And due to a constant churn of new, trend-led products, fashion has become increasingly ephemeral and less individualistic, with the clothes that fill shop floors and litter the pages of online retailers ending up looking uncannily similar. The copies become a copy of the copy. The same sameness persists on multiple levels, and it’s boring as fuck.
The days of relying solely on designer runway shows or print magazines for clothing inspiration are long gone. Instead, we find ourselves mindlessly opening and closing apps in search of a cool flex. But dressing cool in the age of the internet is about more than just doing what everyone else is doing, it's about expressing ourselves authentically and a little fearlessly. And that’s easier said than done.
The way I look at it is like this: there’s no monolithic cool way of dressing, and no right or wrong way to go about looking cool if that's what you want to do. Cool is a feeling and a vibe, its personal, and its intuitive. It’s also something of an art form, and when you get it, you just get it. So dress cool on your terms, whatever the hell that looks like.
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