Tejaswi Marripudi
Almost every one of us has got an idea as to what consumerism is, right? Some might ask, how does that term belong here in our fashion industry? Fashion is about expressing ourselves! It’s about what we are inside. Then how does a word which literally means finding happiness from the material possessions find its way into Fashion? It doesn’t belong here! Then why are we discussing it, now? And, why are we thinking about the effect of pandemic on such thing which doesn’t even exist?
To all those people, have you ever noticed that strange person with weird outfit and all you did was naming him/her as fashion illiterate? Or have you ever used the phrase ‘no fashion sense’? Then, I say, the fashion you know is not the real fashion, its consumerism. Being guided by that one person’s or one brand’s ideology, following the trends set by one model or one influencer, usage of phrases like ‘trend-setter’, ‘vintage’, ‘out-dated’ and all are exactly what I am talking about.
If fashion is about expressing yourself, then why are we running behind all those brands, trends or anything for that matter? Has the question “what’s true fashion?” misguided us? Did we ask this question by ourselves or did someone else put these words in our mouths?
The answer is, whatever they make us believe, at last the truth is Fashion is also an industry, it’s also a business. It also needs tactics and trends to survive. It always needs something new to lure us and earn profits. What are we doing? Falling prey to all those tactics and ending up with a closet full of unwanted material. I say, the colourful words of self-expressionism are just advertisement strategies and act as the primary step to build consumerism in fashion industry that increases their number of customers.
The enormous amount of time that’s available…Has this changed anything?
Now that I have made my point clear, I would like to ask a question. Has this mind-set of us, keeping up with trends and defining our happiness with the products we buy and wear, changed because of the pandemic or has pandemic played a hand in making that strong? Of course, no question has one single answer. This question too has different answers. It’s almost one and a half year of pandemic and all I can think of is how it has affected our mind-set. Not that every one’s mind-set is similar but the same pandemic has made us look at things differently as already mentioned.
Two different takes on one situation
Exploring ourselves:
Some of us think doing nothing also has its perks. It gave us the time to think about the worldly needs, pleasures, and different ideologies. It provided us with an opportunity to have a stand on the ongoing issues. And thus, we found ourselves comfortable in minimalistic mind-set. Why? With pandemic affecting the financial stability in each and every person’s life, most of us have found ourselves calculating everything based on our needs instead of wants.
To make my point understandable and basic, I would like to confine myself to dressing instead of discussing the entire fashion industry in this piece. It’s common knowledge that a number of people have found their comfort in casual wear. With this minimalistic ideology, we haven’t felt the need to wear branded outfits to find comfort. A casual pyjama has worked for us. Thus, we started questioning our unknown impulse to find happiness in branded outfits with already set accessories.
This one single question has cleared all our doubts and stopped us from being puppets of consumerism. How? The doubt has made us look into our individual happiness and what we want and not what others made us think we want. All those advertisements, all those influencers and all those brands aren’t affecting their happy hormones from that moment of realization. If this isn’t the effect of pandemic, then, what is?
Constant need to follow trends:
And then there are some of us who feel the need to dress up and look different. Our perceptions of dressing up for a particular occasion have come to a halt. The only occasion that’s available to us is to be in our homes. Now, a businessman is nothing if he doesn’t use an opportunity for his gain. With this pandemic being used as an opportunity, the strategies haven’t stopped but changed. The increase in trends, the increase in number of brand ambassadors, the increase in giving endorsements to those with huge number of followers, and the increase in online / digital shopping etc. are some of the strategies used for the rise in fashion industry.
And of course, all these strategies aren’t something bad and illegal and I am not suggesting them to be too. But, I would like to point out that these strategies are nothing but promoting consumerism. Suggesting only certain ways to dress up are the proper ways to dress up is nothing but consumerism. A popular way of doing business is to let the consumer think that it’s his own decision and at the same time tampering that decision-making process with the inclusion of all the trends, advertisements, and ideologies drafted by the businessmen themselves.
For example, in this pandemic, most of us have faced lockdowns and also unlockdowns phase-wise. There were moments in between all these phases where everything’s opened for a while. I remember the large discounts and sales that were offered in these gaps which were put before us as valuable opportunities that created an ultimatum for us to buy. These ultimatums will definitely create some hurdles in our free thinking thus giving them the chance to mould our thoughts into their convenience. This can be named as ‘Impulse Buying’ which is nothing but “purchasing a product on a whim. It’s not planned, not budgeted for and, often, it’s not needed. The goal is to create urgency for consumers to make a purchase, without giving us time to consider how useful the item actually is”[1] as defined by Michelle Chavez, an ethical fashion blogger.
Creating a situation where a consumer feels the need to buy one product even though there isn’t one in real is impulse buying and making a consumer feel that having such product in possession makes him happy is consumerism. And finally, it is the consumer who ends up falling into all these strategies and feeling the constant need. And thus, the pandemic helped the consumer to feel the need and it gave the opportunity to strengthen such need.
Then, is consumerism bad? What’s the final point?
There’s not one thing in this world that’s just good for all or bad for all. In the same way, the idea of consumerism is necessary for the fashion industry to survive. However, using it beyond a certain extent is not acceptable. Similarly, creating a situation of impulse buying isn’t ethical too. Using the true sense of fashion as the advertisement for only one particular trend isn’t ethical too. The point here is, before this pandemic, most of us haven’t got the time to think what’s real and what’s fake. We just fell into the ideas laid down using these consumerism tactics.
The pandemic, clearly, has changed a lot but not everyone experienced the same change in thought. Now, people are thinking before acting on impulse. However, there are some people who fell deep into these pits of consumerism too at the same time. The thing is the truth of the consumerism’s presence in the fashion industry has come into the light for some, and for some, it’s still lurking in the shadows behind the mask of colourful and branded luxuries.
Reference:
[1] https://www.vogue.in/fashion/content/how-to-control-impulse-buying-in-the-pandemic-era (last accessed: 29th August 2021)
