tiktok is kind of bad for fashion - YouTube

hello my beautiful doves so i'm a little sick  today, which is why if i sound a little bit  

nasally, it's because my nose is congested. it's  nothing serious, it's a cold. i just have a sh*tty  

immune system so i get sick at random times of the  year and i guess july is the time of the year that  

i'm getting sick for 2021. so for today's video  we're going to be talking about tiktok once again.  

i was personally late to the tiktok trend, i  didn't make a tiktok until this year. but as  

i've been spending a lot more time on this hell  app of eternal doom scroll, i've realized tiktok  

has a problem. well there's many problems but  specifically in the fashion sphere of tiktok,  

there is a huge problem. it's arguably the same  problem that's plagued youtube and instagram  

at one point, it's just relocated. tiktok is the  new landlord. so what is the problem you may ask?

capitalism.

more specifically, one of those popular trends  on tiktok is doing a haul. so if you've been on  

youtube for long enough you probably understand  what a haul is. but for those of you who do not,  

a haul is basically when you go and buy a bulk  of stuff all in one go and then you share the  

things that you bought with your audience.  now i don't hate the idea of buying clothes  

because that would make me one big hypocrite.  that's not a cute look. but let's be honest,  

tiktok hauls promote overconsumption. even  those styling challenges... and yes i've  

participated a few times... require you  to make multiple outfits for one video.  

and while these challenges in theory are  harmless and meant to foster creativity,  

when people feel the need to jump in on  every single challenge going around–that  

can lead to overconsumption. and this is because.  to do well on the tiktok algorithm, you have to  

post essentially every day. much like instagram,  except with instagram, it's just one photo so  

one outfit. but with tiktok, most of these people  are doing multiple outfits in one video. the sad  

reality is that a lot of people think that  to make it as a tiktok fashion influencer,  

you have to have a lot of clothes. there's  still a stigma associated with outfit repeating  

even though it's something we all do offline.  and because of the pressure to post every day,  

people are pressured to buy more clothes to make  new content. this leads to two serious problems:  

1) the cheapest way to buy a lot of new clothes  is through buying fast fashion and 2) trend  

cycles or micro-trends are increasingly getting  shorter and lasting only about three months now.

so in 2020, shein, the most popular fast fashion  brand on social media, made about $10 billion in  

sales up from $4.5 billion in 2019. and according  to a report by hypeauditor, shein was also the  

most talked about brand on tiktok last year.  so i feel like there's a lot of articles and  

videos on the internet talking about the crimes of  fast fashion. yes it's environmentally damaging,  

yes it's very unethical because workers are  working in victorian era factory conditions,  

and a lot of the time, these companies steal ideas  and designs. but i also want to add a disclaimer  

that i am not going to take a dump–i'm not taking  a dump on people who shop fast fashion. unless!  

unless you're rich and doing it. i'm going to get  back to this point in a second but i just want to  

say that lower income people are not keeping this  industry afloat. they're just not and a lot of  

people are using that as an excuse to support  fast fashion, but that's just simply not true.

"you need to cut the bullsh*t, you really do." "okay." 

"just cut the bullsh*t." "okay."

now i've personally managed to stop buying fast  fashion for most things with the exception of  

underwear and socks, but i understand that that  is a privileged position to be in. and i am so  

thankful every day that you all have been able  to give me that financial security. but yes, i  

understand that it's a privilege and that there's  a lot of gatekeeping around sustainable fashion.  

a lot of sustainable brands don't have inclusive  size ranges and there's obviously, like i said,  

a price barrier. but speaking of price barrier, i  think one of the biggest issues with fast fashion  

is that it leads to the societal devaluation  of labor that goes into making clothes.  

of course if you're used to seeing $15 price tags  and consistent 50% off sales, you're going to be  

blown away when you see a sustainable dress  that costs $300. you're going to be like,

"that's outrageous!"

"that's overpriced!"

but this is where i'm going to stop you  because "overpriced" implies that the garment  

is not priced fairly, right? well it  is priced fairly. lingerie expert cora  

harrington wrote this twitter thread back in  december 2020 that has really stuck with me.  

in this thread she's talking about a $1000, yes  $1000, lingerie set that she photographed and  

is responding to how some people might insist  that the set is overpriced. she writes:

"in truth, the set is constructed of french  chantilly lace made by sophie hallette in the  

calais region of france with leavers lace machines  that are over a century old and take at least two  

people two months to thread by hand. loading the  loom with a new pattern takes at least a day.  

all lace patterns are drawn by hand down to  every thread. someone walks up and down the  

machine to monitor it as the lace is made to help  prevent major defects. once the lace is made,  

any faults or defects are corrected by hand  and any loose threads are trimmed by hand.  

any embroidery or embellishment on  the lace, as there is on this set,  

is also done by hand. the people who work with  laces of this quality are top level specialists.  

the lace is then marked up appropriately, because  none of these employees are working for free,  

to be sold to most typically fashion houses and  designers. as you can see there's already been  

a ton of labor involved and we haven't even  gotten to the lingerie making portion yet."

so in this production process for this piece of  lingerie, we have the lace makers who make the  

lace, then there's the lingerie designer who  designs the garments, creates sewing patterns  

for it, and purchases not only the lace, but other  fabrics, elastics, casings, fastenings, and metal  

components. the set that cora was talking about  specifically uses 24 karat gold metal components  

and real fresh water pearls, so they're expensive  materials. it then takes several days to sew the  

actual set and then is marked up appropriately to  cover the costs of everything, but also because  

the designer wasn't working for free. and then  the set is sold to a boutique and the boutique  

pays for shipping, insurance, and whatever  customs, duties, taxes apply. at the boutique,  

they usually hire photographers, models, makeup  artists, hairstylists to take ecommerce photos to  

promote this garment. they also have rent if it's  a physical store, overhead costs, employees to pay  

because they're paid fairly, and any other  kind of costs that go with running a store.  

and this is what the final markup price covers. of  course not every garment goes to a boutique. some  

designers have their own stores where they sell  directly to customers, but as you can see, even  

in the manufacturing process itself it's a lot  of time and it's a lot of money. it takes weeks,  

sometimes months, to bring a product from  production to our doorstep. compare this with  

fast fashion. the lightning speed at which these  companies operate at to get the $5 dollar version  

of a mugler bodysuit into our hands is crazy.  according to this one article i read, shein gets  

a product from drawing board to production  to live-online in as little as three days.

how convenient is that. wow.  how convenient is fucking that.

why is this a bad thing? well other than stealing  a designer's hard work, the turnover rate for  

fast fashion leads to overconsumption,  and overconsumption leads to a negative  

environmental impact. to put it into perspective,  the average american throws away about 81  

pounds of clothes every year and the majority of  fast fashion garments are not constructed to last.  

they're usually made of cheap synthetic fibers  like polyester, which is essentially plastic.  

polyester can take up to 200 years to decompose,  which is especially bad because the industry  

produces over 100 billion new garments every  year. we're essentially living on one big pile  

of plastic. and you know what? it really  sucks, because i really believe fashion is  

a great creative medium for everyone. that's kind  of why i encourage thrifting or buying secondhand  

rather than buying something completely new.  full transparency, the majority of my closet is  

secondhand and i'm not trying to offer secondhand  shopping as this like "poor person consolation  

prize." i think, for everyone, thrifting or  secondhand is the most sustainable option  

because the reality is–even though i'm sure there  are some sustainable brands that are sourcing  

fabrics that are organic and that can biodegrade  and are paying their employees well–but something  

needs to be said about the fact that there  are tons and tons and tons of clothes that are  

just sitting in piles. the more of those clothes  that we can actually put to use rather than just  

throwing away into the landfill, the better it is  for the environment. but with that said, there are  

also a lot of amazing designers that deserve to  eat as well, so i'm not saying like "don't support  

them," but you know... just be conscious of the  situation... which brings me to my next point!

so for much of the 20th and early 21st centuries,  a trend cycle would last about 20 to 30 years.  

but nowadays, with the invention of social media  and the internet, the trend cycle has gotten a lot  

shorter. this is when we start seeing  the rise of things like micro-trends.  

how are micro-trends created? i'm going to read  this little excerpt from wrapcompliance.org:

"before the rise of tiktok and  instagram influencer culture,  

we looked to models, movies, celebrities,  and fashion magazines to set the trends.  

this group of people was small and our  access to them was neatly curated."

this ultimately limited our exposure to  potential new trends and kept fashion  

cycles slower. however, with the rise of social  media, celebrities now have a stronger hold on  

our culture because we have more access  to them. and brands absolutely know this,  

which is why they hustle to get big celebrities  like kylie jenner to wear their products,  

because they know that immediately after she posts  the clothing item, it's probably going to become  

a trend. and our culture is still the same as  it was. we all race to the store to buy what  

she's wearing because she's a celebrity and if  we can't afford it, we buy a fake. but nowadays,  

rather than just showing up to a party wearing  the latest trend, impressing our local community,  

we post a photo or video online. because in  today's world, anyone can become an influencer,  

and to be an influencer, you have to be ahead.  but of course, everyone has the same idea  

and everyone online is now posting the same dress.  it's no longer cool, let's trash it. so obviously,  

if we're experiencing extremely short trend  cycles, the buying to trashing pipeline  

increases in frequency and brands absolutely  perpetuate this with their influencer marketing  

strategies. brands will send out hundreds or  thousands of PR packages to macro and micro  

influencers all the same time, so that when they  all unbox them at the same time and upload them  

at the same time, it feels like this trend is  extremely oversaturated. so in a trend cycle,  

there's typically five stages: the introduction,  the rise, the culmination, the decline,  

and then obsolescence. but with this influencer  marketing strategy, the introduction, rise,  

and culmination all get squished into one step,  severely shortening the length of the trend cycle.

"excuse me but how am i finding this  'house of sunny' dupe in a charity  

shop already? i mean it's just showing you  how quick all those trends are flying by."

so like i said, the people who are buying  fast fashion because it's all they can afford  

are not the ones contributing to  the dominance of fast fashion,  

because generally these people actually cherish  their clothes, and they don't have the disposable  

income to be buying new clothes every couple  days. but the people who buy $900 shein hauls–

"so i did it. i got on that sheen  website, s-h-i-e-n-e-i-n i don't know.  

and i wanted to be like everybody  else so i ordered a bunch of stuff."

–who throw out their clothes every two months, who  take a dump on people for wearing outdated trends–

"2020 trends toss or keep. scarf tops  really had their moment this past year.  

i say keep, but only for like another  year. animal print pants–toss."

"fringe trim, they gotta go guys. a little fray  here and there is awesome but that's too much."

how do we justify that? and it all becomes a  vortex because people who genuinely love the  

trendy pieces that they get, because yes, that's  possible, you could still love a trend even after  

it's long since died–and the trend will come  back anyway so don't worry–but you'll probably be  

shamed or pressured into throwing it away by other  tiktokers who are cosplaying as the most popular  

girls in school. for example house of sunny's  hockney dress was getting some controversy on  

tiktok a bit of time ago. because the dress became  trendy so fast, it also became old news very fast.

"i recently bought this house of sunny dress. i've  been saving up and i love her so much, but as we  

all know, she was more famous last year because  of kendall jenner. now on tiktok, it's popular to  

roast this dress into shreds because it's not  considered cool anymore, which is so stupid."

i think it's a genuine problem where people are  just buying whatever trendy pieces or whatever  

trendy dupe there is out there without really  thinking about whether they're gonna want to  

wear this piece months or years down the line.  or sometimes, they'll just buy into the trend  

to make one tiktok video about it so that  they can get their 15 seconds of fame  

and then the dress goes straight to the charity  shop after. or they'll return it to the store,  

and that's honestly not great either because  stores do throw out their excess inventory.  

like if you could take away one thing  that i say from this entire video,  

i just really want people to  become more thoughtful consumers.

now no one's a saint. like it's kind of a lot to  ask for someone to never buy anything and just  

to live minimally, i know that's not realistic.  but the act of consciously buying massive hauls  

or trendy pieces just for some social media  clout, all while knowing that you're going  

to throw out everything within the next two  months... that sh*t doesn't sit right with me.

now let's get positive, because that was a lot.  i don't want to take an enormous dump on tiktok,  

because i do recognize that there are great  communities on tiktok. on the fashion side,  

there are a bunch of accounts that do upcycling  tutorials, and upcycling is basically a practice  

in which you alter your old clothes to make them  newer and trendier. tiktok is also a great way to  

discover aesthetic communities like cottagecore,  regencycore, dark academia, all of which  

i know grew a lot because of tiktok. and i love  aesthetics. i think not only do they create  

little lovely online communities for people who  share the same interests but they're also a great  

way to sidestep micro-trends and overconsumption.  because if you're really subscribed to one look,  

you're obviously not going to chase whatever  new trend the kardashians are wearing.  

and a wonderful thing about aesthetic  communities is that while yes, there is like  

a spending element to it, as there is with most  things, but at the end of the day, i feel like  

aesthetics go beyond fashion. for cottagecore,  the aesthetic extends to gardening, cooking,  

and sewing. for dark academia, the aesthetic  extends to reading books, learning new languages,  

brewing tea–these are hobbies that don't  necessarily feed into a material desire.

okay everyone, thank you so much for watching.  oh my god i just got like super congested as  

the video moved on. so i really apologize, but i  wanted to keep making videos because usually when  

i'm sick, i can stay congested for literally up  to a month because my immune system is sh*t. so  

i just didn't want to keep you guys waiting for  that long. i know fast fashion is always a sore  

subject on social media because, you know, no  one wants to be reminded of climate anxiety.  

but it is really important to discuss so i want  to use my channel in this productive way. i also  

want to reiterate that corporations and the one  percent are the ones who are creating like 99% of  

the problems and we shouldn't lose sight of that.  but i also feel like you have to follow some kind  

of personal moral compass, because if you don't,  it just ends up breeding nihilism and if we ever  

want things to really improve, we need to stay  passionate and we need to stay bold. so on that  

note, i'm gonna head out. i'm gonna get some cough  syrup and i'll see you all next time, hopefully  

with less mucus in my f*cking nostrils. i hope  you have a lovely rest of your day and yeah, bye!

you