Personal Style Is Dead. Long Live Personal Style!
Did a discussion and penned some thoughts on the "Death of Personal Style" discourse that has been popular the past few months:
https://alittlebitofrest.com/2025/02/16/personal-style-is-dead-long-live-personal-style/
https://soundcloud.com/styleanddirection/e134-long-live-personal-style
TL;DR the algorithm and capitalism are certainly to blame for the flattening of personal style, but I believe its all bolstered by a need to be a particular kind of "cool person" that characterizes the 2020s. Breaking free of that idea and wanting to express who you are without social cachet is the key for strongly held personal style.
Personal Style doesn't need to be unique to be personal!
Ethan M. Wong
a little bit of rest
Personal Style Is Dead. Long Live Personal Style!
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Style and Direction
SoundCloud
E134: Personal Style Is Dead. Long Live Personal Style!
Personal Style is Dead...at least thats what all the publications, critics, and influencers say. The SaDBoys dive deep into this topic, discussing how much of the Algorithm is to blame, how the term
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Very interesting, thanks for sharing
Lovely article that really resonated with me. To me it really underlines the importance of not only looking outward, but also taking the time to look inward and reflect on how stuff makes you feel.
I went down the rabbit hole reading all the links you referenced in this. It's pretty interesting reading about all this as someone who lurks to see what's what in the menswear world and picks and chooses things I like and that fit into what I'm trying to express with my style.
I've never been, nor will be, someone who wants to take fit pics or so this whole discourse has been very alien to me.
Don’t forget fit pics can be for you too. Most pics I take of myself I don’t post. I’m just enjoying being curious and cataloguing what works and what doesn’t. Like journaling, but for clothes.
Oh for sure. I should’ve clarified that I don’t do it for posting purposes!
What about navigating the difference between how you feel wearing something and how it comes across (as it is language, as they say). You mentioned liking Chelsea boots even though they might a have new and different context. For me it was wearing flat caps twenty years ago in an outdoorsy workwear kinda way, but then along comes Peaky Blinders and “ah fuck okay I guess I’m done wearing this.”
I guess the answer is probably you just choose to commit or not. Like how much does the “mis-associating” bother you vs how much you want to wear what you’re wearing
Yes this is it
I think most people are bothered! Or it seems so.
Because the reasons for getting into something is shallow, the way out is also shallow
or alternatively, what is more important, the desire to wear the item or the potential misjudging from others
a red cap obviously signals something currently but in choosing to wear a Nats hat i'm accepting of whatever comes up
Totally. Makes me wonder what else people choose to wear in spite of its possible connotations. And what WOULD you wear that you don’t because of potential misjudgments?
i personally don't think i have anything like that!
i have a pretty locked in style and most of it is innoffensive
other than the usualy formality stuff
i talk about this with @zeometer quite a bit actually
but i am still selfaware
i wear fedoras, but i usually do it on my own vs a night with friends
for me specifically the "misjudgments" tend to be criticisms of perceived inauthenticity which come with being Black and actively wearing tailoring, ivy stuff, etc. so imo i've already crossed that bridge
but in general i don't think there's much i hesitate to wear out of concern for misrepresentation - most of what i wear is palatable but moreso stuff i like wearing, and just like period
yeahh that makes sense
Great episode and post though. Thanks! I am not on IG or TikTok so I had no idea this was even a debate lol. If I don't pick up on something from this server it doesn't exist to me
I’ve been thinking about this and I sort of understand it from a personal point of view. Like, you use the internet for inspiration/you are part of the internet subculture, and you aren’t sure if your taste is driven more by the algorithm or by something inherent in yourself. But is style overall actually flatter than it used to be? I swear just 2-3 years ago the same evidence was used in support of the idea that there are more choices/styles than ever. That you could subscribe to any niche trend you wanted and look fine because there wasn’t some overall defining aesthetic
Or is part of this also a reaction to the perceived slow death of iykyk? That every new “cool” is quickly exhausted because you’re now exposed to so many people online
Ethan, I like your ideas around the “cosmopolitan cool guy”, I think a slightly different take/lens than all the other “style dead” articles. But maybe all converging around the idea that remaining cool by chasing the zeitgeist constantly is a Sisyphean task, and maybe more doable when trends were slower
I had the same thoughts about timeless style, that the fear of losing “cool” probably involves the anxiety around aging, which is also a proxy for the anxiety around death
i think it's more of fear of not fitting into modern beauty standards
I think its the reality that these niche trends aren't actually all that differnt
or rather these niche trends are no longer subculture driven but simply trends themselves. shallow. It's their own means
and that approach, the combination of vintage pants, ssense sale pieces, etc is the defining thing now
vs th idealized attitude that there are multiple subcultures happening
i think that was true initially 2-3 years ago, or at least pandemic ish
but now its a huge meta game
so sorta this + the cosmopolitan cool guy idea
agreed!
irrelevance/being left behind = death in the chronically online age
i saw a tiktok of a girl where its like "i dress like ima cool creative director/influencer who goes to paris fashion week" instead of just beign a tech person
i used to think that was fun, but i think the issue now is that the aspirational image is so capitalist
its not even that you dress like a skater bc you love skating even if your day job is corporate
its that you want to dress like you have leisure
that you are perceived to be that type of person
vs actually being that person
all really good points. im sure im not the first to make the comparison to "simulacra and simulation" where it feels like we are in that 3rd stage where we are representing the previous representation/signals of what is "real", the activities/leisure you mention.
really appreciate the article and your long form writing!
thank you!! that means a lot!
it's always been though right? or at least in the US with the "american dream"
the only thing I'll say to this is if that's how you get through the day then fair enough, but at that point i guess it turns from personal style to a coping mechanism
like the longform of fake it until you make it
yes you're right
but with social media, it was typically under the guise of other things
it was subtle
but now its back
its funny, even though everyone hates social media ads and sponsored content, people actually love it
its a dream
i think one of the most evil and also most awesome parts of the internet is how easy it is to find a niche that it would be near impossible to find in real life. for example: my friend is really into obscure 90's brit pop and no one around them is very into that, therefore they find kinship with internet strangers. pretty cool, but somehow i feel like it results in a converse homogenization that i do not understand
isn't that how subgroups work in general though? the members of the group take on the beliefs, attitudes, values, etc of the group and, if not challenged, that calcifies what the group's identity is
if you don't have a strong connection to whatever the group's identity, be it through strangers online or friends in real life, then you run into a similar problem of letting the clothes or idealized aesthetic be a substitute for actual values
especially if monetized
We’ve done this in other ways before. The popularization of the suburb is a great recent example. The wealthy lived in suburbs and didnt work. Then the working class were sold the idea of being like the wealthy but were forced to commute long distances to still work which killed inner city communities, inner city economies, and much of the value of the leisure of the suburb
(and also led to environmental disaster from its global implementation + combustion engine emissions + tire dust microplastics)
Offering us the lifestyle of the wealthy is an inevitable success because we value being a part of things we can’t or won’t be in.
See also: wealthy people/non manual laborers wearing workwear and ripped clothing
This
And this
Put together
Yeah, in the end we returned to dressing as a way to express status.
its so unfortunate
i mean subcultures will always be related to status
but ideally subcultures are a way to celebrate the status you are in
and alterative types of status
but now personal style is aw ay to turn those into commodities and flatten them to be considered an omnivore
in a surface level way
i guess the hope is that people stick with things and add it to their life
theres nothing wrong with trends as a way to discover something you may not have been exposed to before
but it should stick with you
fake it till you make itI once had a director level colleague who loved to say “perception is reality”. And to the core of my being, i hated (and continue to hate) that perspective! Reality is reality! There really is stuff out there! Perception does, however, inform reality, impact reality and is part of reality. And as social apes, we really do care about how we are perceived by others AND by ourselves . And so I presently believe that unless someone is very sociologically or neurologically untypical it is almost impossible to do something as visual/sense-data-driven and external presenting as getting dressed without “perception” being a key driver in the dresser’s choices. There will always be more to be read into what someone is wearing than the wearer intends to write, because every object (let alone combination) has more potential connotations and associations than an individual can possibly be aware of.