An Alternative Approach to Finding Your Style: What We Can Learn from Independent Labels Taking up Space in Fashion
“Good things take time,” they say. With everything in our world constantly moving, urging us to all do the same things—be productive, put work first, stay on-the-go—how can we explore, nurture and develop ourselves? There is no easy answer. But I’ve found fashion to be an outlet, inviting this bloom of understanding into my life as a consistent personal practice.
If dopamine rushes from social media and online shopping proves anything, it's that our innate fascination for novelty and need for connection have become monetized by complex algorithms in an attempt to sell to us—constantly.
From influencers to Pinterest boards, all the work of gathering new trends and their significance is done entirely for us. Gone are the days of subcultures gatekeeping their mysterious meanings; arrived are the days of trend saturation and *insert detached fashion posers reference here.*
Having a Moment: Independent Designers
Telfar Clemens, founder of TELFAR
From sell-out releases to a name-drop by Beyoncé, the rise of queer, Black-owned label TELFAR over the last few years reflects a growing demand from fashion consumers, one that puts inclusivity, ethical production, creative innovation, and functional, quality construction at the top of its list.
These considerations are usually sacrificed at the hands of fast fashion, a capitalistic dilemma that has increased accessibility to cool and trendy clothes at the expense of long-lasting garments and social and environmental concerns.
Yet, this is exactly why independent labels like TELFAR have caught so much attention; they champion these traits by challenging the pressure to churn out new collections at rapid paces and follow trends that will be labeled “yesterday” within a few months.
In a time when social media, specifically TikTok, plays such a huge role in the acceleration of fashion cycles, there’s so much hurry to participate in trends, signaling an “in the know” status of what's popping, that there's little room left for the personal storytelling that allows fashion to connect with us as an individual and not a consumer.
A Lesson From the Success of Independent Labels: Storytelling Through Fashion
We’ve all heard the rationale that clothes constantly express identity, values, and associations with people around us. To those with similar appreciation or who “get it,” this signals an immediate connection just from an alignment of fashion tastes.
As college students, it's often easiest to buy into trends and wear things you like but don’t necessarily attach any personal significance to outside of its hype. There’s nothing wrong with this—it saves time, usually money, and more people understand your fashion reference point.
But revisiting fashion as a method to develop ourselves is what sets independents apart and why they excel in unbounded creativity. It’s also, arguably, where fashion as a whole began. The challenge of this growth is to translate our understanding of personal values and emotions into the garments we choose to wear.
Partial inspiration on how to develop personal style comes from the talks of Rian Phin, a brilliant fashion and social commentator I highly recommend you watch–her perspective is truly worth every second.
“...I can imagine things…then I see someone selling [that] and [it’s] a really cool, slay moment [that] comes from having your own personal sensibilities and expectations of a brand rather than letting them tell you what's going on and cool.”
Hopefully I offered some inspiration from broader fashion horizons to help you find your story–have fun with it!
