TRENDS

HAS INDIVIDUALITY GONE OUT OF FASHION?

Link a la versión en español

Last September, there was an article in the New York Times titled “Has the era of peacocking come to an end?” where the author talked about how the styles seen in the street style around New York Fashion Week seemed to have given way from extremely creative into subdued and elegantly thought out outfits. The idea that individuality could be going out of fashion stuck with me, and I’ve been mulling over it for the past few months. “Is it true, can it be?”- I kept asking myself. My stylist brain would snap a very strong “No!”, but my analytical brain thinks otherwise because as much as I believe in the power of self-expression through clothing, this is a realm where only a few feel comfortably at home. Everyone else either doesn’t care or struggles to find a style that feels respectful and accurate to their personality within the demands that “style” makes on being fashionable. 

To investigate deeper on the concept of individuality, I went to the thing that sees it all: Google. When it comes to deep, intense emotional feelings, Google knows because we keep asking it. There’s this great tool called Answer the Public, a website that scans how words are being searched for on the internet and arranges results by countries and languages. I typed individuality and these were the main searches related to it:

• Why individuality is important 

• Why individuality is important in society

• Which colours represent individuality

• When is individuality valued by society

• What does individuality mean

• Individuality: can I be me

• Individuality vs conformity/personality/identity

• Individuality vs individualism (This is one of the big mamas)

In the UK, the search went deeper and somewhat angstier, with searches like: 

• Individuality is an illusion

• Individuality is important

• Individuality and uniqueness

• Individuality and conformity

• Individuality and identity

With these results in mind, it is clear that our collective psyche seems to be concerned with two things, how to attain it and how to keep it. Which is funny because we are all individuals, we are, each one of us, inherently unique. Nevertheless, we live in a system that either makes us doubt it or worse, makes us believe that our kind of uniqueness is not good enough. 

According to these results, we also worry that individuality can lead to individualism. This is tricky because although individuality is the expression of one’s self, individualism relates to freedom of action or independence of thought, but it also refers to the action of ignoring anyone else’s needs and circumstances but our own. We fear that by being ourselves we might be disregarding other people. It takes me back to the NYT article and its author’s use of the word peacocking (dressing for attention) as a synonym for individuality. Is uniqueness in fashion equal to the desire to be looked at? I would swear with my hand on my heart that it certainly isn’t, but in today’s world, with the way we have come to understand fitting in and being seen, it might well be. 

Why do we care so much about what individuality means and how to attain it?