DRESSING IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

How to stay sane in a constant state of confusion and overload.

This is the first part of a two-parts post. While this will cover the emotional and psychological sides to dressing in the age of social media, the next part will be on how to use social media for a better wardrobe without experiencing bad side effects.

Part 2 will be online next Wednesday, January 29th.

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This article started out in my head as a hateful yet sarcastic ramble on the down sides of dressing during times in which the average attention span of an adult is eight seconds long while a gold fish has an average attention span of nine seconds. Then I started thinking about the measures I take with my own social media consumption to stay sane and landed on a few guidelines which are helpful not only for your mental health but also for your wardrobe and personal style.

Before diving in, I am a neutral observer here - I love social media and I have experienced a lot of positive side effects from it more than I have experienced any harm. However, you can’t deny you have to use it with caution, especially with respect to fashion.

You can easily point out the critical affects that come from high screen times with regards to your wardrobe and your personal style:

• Everything is designed to make you buy things: We are basically living in a marketing machine right now where it has never been easier to blend the borders of every day life and advertisement. When you’re consuming social media, you’re consuming ads disguised as ‘normal life’ more than ever before. You’ll see the latest ad by your favorite influencer in between the proposal pictures of your best friend and news on the latest hurricane. Your brain will not distinguish between any of this content and will have a hard time validating all of this content into ‘I like this’ and ‘I will simply look at this’.

• Decision fatigue: You are bombarded with affiliate links. The pace is high, the quantity of items you could buy is endless. No need to extend on that. Your brain has too many choices.

• Comparison is endless: Before the age of social media, you had your friend group and your colleagues to compare yourself with. Now it’s not only them but also your childhood friends who randomly found you on Instagram three years ago but whom you lost touch with … twenty years ago. And most of us are not even creators with a number of people following that could build an entire city. There are so many more people that seem to have an opinion about the things you wear.

• You have less private space: Remember the times you didn’t care what you were wearing to the beach during your vacation? Me neither. And I am not even an influencer. Even if you’re not taking pictures yourself, the events and situations you might be photographed in have increased. So you dress for occasions more than ever and you dress for a bigger audience.

• Clothes look different in pictures than in real life: Dressing for social media therefore is not dressing for real life. Textures, silhouettes, colors and the way clothes look on a person with a matching personality you can experience in real life, are extremely different. You’ll hear that from any photographer you’ll ask. Simple things will look way better in real life. Even with the increase of video content (which is closer to a real life experience), it is another understanding of the (moving) picture seeing it on screen.

Well, we knew about all that, you’ll probably say now. Yes, we do know about all of the above issues. So how can we improve our experience with social media with regard to our personal style and fashion consumption?

Whenever I think about this topic, I will land on one resuming thought: All bad side effects of social media come down to an alienation of our natural needs: a sense of self, deep human connection, purpose and security, attention, a need for control.

thomaslelu

A post shared by @thomaslelu

The better I can implement or at least transfer those human needs onto my social media behavior, the happier I am online, too. And as I am writing about fashion on here, let me break this down for you with respect to your wardrobe:

• Define your private space online (human need: security and need for control): Be clear on what you want to share and what you don’t want to share and find your safe spaces. Keep in mind people will not see your entire personality - and your entire wardrobe - online.