A few winters back, I used to play this game on the bus whenever I got bored. It was called “style bingo” and it went like this: whenever I spotted a specific item – an Adidas Samba, an Ugg boot, a North Face Puffer, a Mubi tote bag or a checked Acne Studios scarf – I would internally say “bingo”. If I got all five, it’d be a full house. That winter, by the time I’d reached the end of my commute into central London, I’d nearly always achieved a full house (no judgement here, by the way – I own nearly all of the above items).
Much has already been written about why we’re all wearing the same things now (see: this excellent deep dive from Julia Hobbs, who spoke to everyone from tech industry insiders to cultural critics about exactly how TikTok’s algorithm has flattened the way we dress for British Vogue’s June 2024 issue). And, on the flip side, we’ve also seen a conscious push in the opposite direction: a move towards capsule wardrobes and the idea of cultivating our own “personal style”. Even so, the latter hasn’t done much to stave off this overarching sameness. As Daniel Rodgers wrote last year, “like most things in fashion, the idea of personal style has taken on as much of a commodified aesthetic as the bland, social media-cores it was meant to resist.”
All of this got me thinking… in this post-brain rot era, in which even “dressing for yourself” has the feel of a catchy internet term, maybe the secret to cool style – or at least a true sense of individuality – actually lies far, far away from the screen. Maybe it lies in (and I’m whispering this quietly so as not to get escorted out the building) simply logging off. And by “logging off” I don’t mean going offline entirely – how would you read British Vogue online? – but rather avoiding social media and specifically TikTok influencers, who will try to convince you that wearing jeans and a T-shirt represents “casual-core”. Or that you, an adult, need to be wearing Ugg Mary-Janes.
