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