The Slow Dissolve of Ownership and It's Effects on Fashion

We see it everywhere; streaming services instead of physical media, cars and phones we’ll trade in long before we ever pay them off, and renting homes and condos we could never hope to afford. We’re even encouraged to “buy now, pay later” when transacting the most basic of online purchases. This perpetual debt is so ingrained into our daily lives we hardly notice it as we go on paying for all sorts of things with no guarantee they’ll belong to us tomorrow.

Wait, this sounds like the start of an financial article how does this tie into our wardrobes? Renting an occasional tux or gown for a formal event is hardly the same thing as subscribing to our clothes. Even considering the recent rise of beauty subscriptions, we own the goods we receive. They’re not going to show up and take away the products that have already been paid for the way streaming services can delete movies and other media with little to no notice, so how does this affect fashion?

Before I get into that, take pause, and ask yourself a few questions.

• “How long do my clothes last?”

• “Do I get rid of clothes because my old ones are worn out or because I have too much and I need to make room for new ones?”

• “Do I purchase more than 20 pieces of clothing a year?”

Maybe you don’t follow micro trends and you don’t seek validation through Shien halls on TikTok but how many times have you “reinvented” yourself since 2020? How many times has your style changed? Maybe you consider your wardrobe turnover sustainable, you shop at thrift stores, you donate to thrift stores. A friendly little cycle of buy, sell and trade. Unfortunately, it’s more likely “buy, sell and trash.”

Anytime you view your clothes as single use or seasonal items you’re doing more harm than good. Thrift stores already receive more than they can process and huge amounts of clothes still end up in landfills. What’s the connection from sustainability to our discussion on ownership, you may ask? As so often the case it circles back to fast fashion. Much like subscribing to a streaming service, we’re sucked into buying fast fashion by the allure of targeted marketing, low prices, and trending outfits. Only for our purchases to ever so quickly be deemed last season and replaced by the latest advertisement. Now you’re faced with a choice; do you buy the latest product or continue to use what you’ve already purchased, despite its early signs of wear?

Remember those three questions from earlier? Fast fashion isn’t designed to last, if you purchase clothes created for the purpose of quantity over quality, odds are your garments show wear quickly. Let’s assume you’re not buying clothes just because you can, and the garments you have are beginning to look worn. If you’re replenishing your wardrobe with more fast fashion of the same short life cycle, you’re only going to need to repeat the whole process in another month or so. Companies like Shein, Temu and even Zara, know this. They’ve designed their products and their advertising platforms to make it easy for you to follow trends, and to make it easy to get used to it. Trapping you in a whirlpool of consumerism where your clothes wear out as fast as they make new ones.

So what do you really own if the things you’ve bought have been designed to throw away? You wouldn’t brag about throwing out your fine China for paper plates, even though the paper plates do the same job for a fraction of the price. So why do we feel this way about clothes?

-Coco Elouise Marie

How Does That Make You Feel?

Fashion’s Impact on Our Emotional Wellbeing

Many of us are aware fashion isn’t just about appearances. Psychologists have published many studies over the last few years showing the profound effect clothing has on our mental health. What we wear affects how we perceive ourselves and others, while also affecting how we preform tasks. (Enclothed Cognition by Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 48, Issue 4) We shape our personal style based on how it makes us feel. When we get dressed in the morning what we wear sets the tone for the day. Choosing to wear clothes that fit our personal style can boost confidence, empower us, and build self-worth.

This begs the question: if it’s so impactful, why isn’t everyone doing it? A large factor is developing personal style requires a period of trial and error and with such, the risk of rejection. Our confidence is frequently tied to our personal appearance and the fear of being viewed as socially out of step can keep many people from experimenting with their clothes or even wearing what they feel comfortable in.

It’s interesting to note, in 2020 while a large part of the world was staying home and cut off from social contact, those interested in fashion began using their newfound free time to discover their own styles and aesthetics. For the first time in most of our lives we had the opportunity to experiment with our wardrobes and experience our own taste and flare without the fear of outside judgement. If we liked what we put together we could upload a picture on our social medias and bask in the praise of our mutuals in the form of likes, shares and comments. If we decided we didn’t like the outfit we wore the solution was simple; don’t post it. We could chalk it up as a lesson learned and no one would ever have to know how ridiculous we may have looked while trying something new. We also had the advantage of accessibility. With the rise of brands like Shein and Temu, and the moral implications of creating a fast fashion supernova not yet fully realized, we had all the means for dressing however we wanted literally at our fingertips.

Now days we may not have the advantage of testing new outfits and aesthetics out of the public eye, however, resources are anything but scarce. Why then, have we stopped playing dress up? Lockdown was five years ago and rather than encouraging individual styles we’ve fallen prey to a whirlpool of micro trends drowning us in overconsumption.

That brings us to the topic of sustainability. The word has graced the headlines of newspapers, magazines and blogs all over the world in the last five years, but has anything really been done about it? The pertinence of the subject seems to have grown from our own crippling buyer’s guilt. No doubt sparked by the sheer amount of waste produced by the fast fashion industry. Buyer’s guilt alone seems to be our beacon of hope that the public’s minds are becoming more environmentally aware.

The industries have become aware too, however, and have proven themselves more interested in sales than in actual beneficial change. Thus sparking controversy and the birth of “green washing” as a means of falsifying their claims of ecological responsibility.

Now the consumer is left going through the five stages of fashion grief. First denial, that anything was truly wrong. Then anger over the fashion industry betraying the environment. We bargained with our own conscious when buying new clothes, (“The label says 100% polyester, but the sign says sustainably made…”) until finally, finding ourselves in the depressing reality that unless we change our shopping habits, the industry is not about to change its manufacturing practices.

So what’s next, acceptance? I think not. In our present economic and environmental climate we’re seeing all the signs that usually point to a recession.  Whether this truly means we’ll be growing our own gardens or opening our homes to boarders is yet to be seen. However, the aesthetic of the mindset is already here. We see it in the growing popularity of minimal living, longer hemlines, natural color pallets and thin, willowy body types being romanticized by the media.

As always, there is an optimistic way of viewing this, as people lean towards “recession era” mindsets the demand for long lasting products grow. If the common thought process is that we will have to grow our own food to eat, we’re not going to want to garden in jeans that give out in the knees after two washes. Already we’re seeing a collective interest in learning a craft or trade. This is reflected in the fashion world as a growing interest in Japanese brands (Cottle, Garcons, and Yohji Yamamoto come to mind.) that are recognized for putting a greater emphasis on the craft and longevity of their clothing than many western brands.

I’ve heard the phrase “late-stage capitalism” thrown around a lot lately, though it may or may not be true, I find it interesting when we feel our way of life as we know it is facing immanent change our instincts lead us back to the art of creating with intention. Whether the intention is to survive or simply to create something more meaningful differs on the individual. When we find ourselves romanticizing the holes in our jeans with hand sewn patches or buying a new shirt from a brand that hand dyes their collections one piece at a time, the message is clear; we want to feel something.

I hope you enjoyed the read! If you've made it this far consider leaving a review!

-Coco Elouise Marie

State of the Brand Address

Looking back at April, I had plans of releasing my usual S/S collection in the form of several vintage inspired accessories. As most of you know the collection was delayed and ultimately canceled due to my grandmother's declining health and subsequent death. In the following few months I've hoped to get myself together enough to launch the collection sometime in the summer. However, the more time that passed the less confident I felt with the idea of a late release. I scrapped, I redesigned, and I altered my patterns until I had a completely different line of accessories. By then we were mid-way through June and as I took a step back to soak in my new creations I came to a realization:

All of my sales this year have come from custom orders and specialty designs. I haven't made a single sale from my available collections since the end of December.

From there I was forced to ask myself, how sustainable can my brand really be if it's not even paying for itself anymore? Though I stand by my brand's pledge to remain sustainable to the ecosystem everyway I can, the brand is no longer sustaining me. I've been careful to avoid creative burnout, but I'm discovering I can burn myself out in other ways too, financially, socially and even spiritually from devoting all of my time to the brand and feeling like I've gone nowhere.

Since this realization, I've made a pivot in my goals regarding the brand and in my own creative practice. I've started prioritizing my blog, my social media, and trying to build sales. Until my sales are up again I will be putting collection releases on hold. Hopefully this will be something that builds up quickly, as it is important to me to continue to create new clothes and bring new designs to the public.

If I haven't been creating new designs what have I been up to? I've been using this newfound free time to write, paint, check out some of my local coffee shops and do a lot of reading and studying to improve my designs in the future. Though to an outsider's perspective it may look like the brand has been set aside for different interests and ideas the reality is I'm using new mediums to further inspire and develop the brand in the future.

So what can be expected of TBB in the future? New releases are still on the horizon, just on hold. You will likely see increasingly creative content on The Belated Beatnik Instagram page, as well as regular monthly updates on the blog. I will continue to share new ideas, hobbies and opinions about fashion and vintage lifestyles. Looking forward to sharing this new chapter with each of you!

-Coco Elouise Marie