OMG! I’m an Outfit Repeater
Even though I’m quite aware that no one cares about what I wear, I still can’t help but think about the deep shame that Lizzie McGuire felt when her school bully, Kate Sanders, called her an ‘outfit repeater’ at their graduation ceremony, in the cinematic masterpiece that is The Lizzie McGuire Movie (Fall et al., 2003).
Oh, the embarrassment that came across her face, and that of the hundreds of thousands of tween and teen girls attentively watching that scene.
Many of us had never even heard the term ‘outfit repeater’ before. Yet, we all quickly understood the social implications of being labelled one. To be honest, I strongly believe that the fast fashion industry received a great impetus from that movie, not only in 2003, but also for years to come.
According to the GH Institute (Seymour, 2022):
“Fast fashion refers to the relatively new phenomenon of rapidly producing high volumes of cheap, trendy clothing that match runway and celebrity styles… [and] get[ting] the[m] into the hands of the consumer as soon as [possible]...”
Given the undeniable role that social media plays in our everyday lives, outfit repeating on the gram appears to be the greatest fashion faux pas that any socially active (young) woman or femme could commit.
Many of us, while somewhat mindlessly scrolling through our feeds, have had that moment when we abruptly pause, analyse a photo and ask ourselves incredulously: “Hasn’t she already posted that outfit?!” just before heading to the accused’s grid to confirm our assumption.
This is why it has become part of social media culture for influencers, and everyday people alike, to call themselves out in their captions for wearing and posting an outfit more than once: “This dress is my absolute fave! I keep coming back to it because I’m obsessed with the way it flatters my waistline.” #Sustainable #RepeatOutfit
Influencers are hyper aware that followers depend on them to model the latest fashion trends, review popular products, and provide them with unlimited discount codes. Hence, the internal pressure to address the elephant in the room, even though preaching the importance of embracing a sustainable lifestyle has now become the new in thing (McKinsey & Company, 2020).
Although a number of major brands seem to be continuously touting the social, political and environmental benefits of purchasing (their version of) sustainable pieces, we can’t forget that the true goal of consumerism has never been to save the planet or to improve our relationship with money, but rather to keep us — i.e. women, femmes and girls — spending, even when our closets are already packed full of clothing with the tags still on.
This is why it should come as no surprise that a 2015 report from the UK government waste body, Wrap, revealed, “the value of unused clothing in wardrobes has been estimated at around £30 billion”. (The UK actually spends the most amount of money on clothing in the European Union (DW Documentary, 2020, 21:11).) Moreover, given the fact that the average person only wears 20% of the clothes they own (DW Documentary, 2020, 19:00:00), I think it's safe to say that we’re really all just outfit repeaters at heart.
But, why do we feel so compelled to keep purchasing even when it’s pretty obvious that our new garments will never see the light of day? Well, I think this quote from Rebecca Bloomwood, Isla Fisher’s character in Confessions of a Shopaholic (Hogan et al., 2009), sums it up quite perfectly, “When I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it's not, and I need to do it again”.
I'm sure many of you are scoffing at Rebecca's words and chalking up her actions throughout the movie to her innate irresponsible behaviour. However, when we peek behind the elegant curtains of the fashion industry, we realise that Rebecca, and countless other women, femmes and girls across socio-economic spheres, spend hundreds, thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars on fashion, due to the effectiveness of very expensive, and strategic, sensory marketing and advertising campaigns.
Krishna (2010) defines sensory marketing as, “marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affects their behavior.”
But what's so bad about that?
Well, for one, the fact that we are manipulated into spending so much money on items that we’ll basically never use, means that an estimated £140 million worth of “gently-used clothing items that are fully functional, just no longer “in fashion” goes into landfills each year (Wrap, 2015; Seymour, 2022).
Furthermore, the majority of the poor quality, stained and damaged fast fashion clothes that we drop off at charities and place in recycling bins actually get sold to African countries — such as Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania — and Latin American countries — such as Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Mexico — where they eventually make their way to second-hand markets, landfills, and saddest of all, to rivers and seas (Brooks, 2015; Unreported World, 2022).
Needless to say, fast fashion is devastating to the climate. It also negatively impacts the health and safety, as well as the financial security of factory workers living and working, not only in the Global South (i.e. Bangladesh, Pakistan and India), but also in the UK (DW Documentary, 2020; DW Documentary, 2022).
This means that the only surefire way to combat the dire effects of fast fashion is to shut the whole industry down. But, since that will most likely never, ever happen (at least, in my lifetime), the onus is on us, the consumer, to stop purchasing (low-quality) clothes altogether and instead opt for the ones we already own, while educating ourselves and others, on the harmful effects of capitalism, fast fashion and overconsumption.
At the end of the day, I guess being an ‘outfit repeater’ is really not all that bad. Take that Kate Sanders!
Sources:
Brooks, A. (2015). Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes. Zed Books.
Bruckheimer, J., Jackson, T., Firth, T., & Alpert, K. (2009). Confessions of a shopaholic [Film]. United States; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
DW Documentary. (2020, March 3). The clothes we wear [Video]. YouTube.
DW Documentary. (2022). Fast fashion - The shady world of cheap clothing. YouTube. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://youtu.be/YhPPP_w3kNo.
Gallagher, K. (2017, June 12). Luxury fashion brands shift budgets to digital. Business Insider. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://www.businessinsider.com/luxury-fashion-brands-shift-budgets-to-digital-2017-6?r=US&IR=T
Jansen, S. E., Decter, E., & Strauss, J. J. (2003). The Lizzie McGuire Movie [Film]. United States; Buena Vista Pictures.
Krishna, A. (Ed.). (2010). Sensory marketing: Research on the sensuality of products. Routledge.
McKinsey & Company. (2020, December). The next normal – the future of Fashion: Sustainable Brands and 'circular' business models: The next normal. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved October 20, 2022, from https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/the-next-normal/fashion
Seymour, E. (2022, April 21). Nearly $183 million worth of clothing ends up in landfills each year. Good Housekeeping. Retrieved October 18, 2022, from https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/beauty/fashion/a39662653/fast-fashion-definition/
Unreported World. (2022). Ghana: fast fashion's dumping ground. YouTube. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://youtu.be/VC5KYX74AP4.
Wrap. (2015, March 3). Household waste prevention hub: Re-use - clothing. WRAP. Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://wrap.org.uk/resources/guide/textiles/clothing#:~:text=The%20value%20of%20unused%20clothing,goes%20into%20landfill%20each%20year.