GETTING DRESSED IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY

Our wardrobes are trying to tell us something

Apr 03, 2025

Do you ever wonder what will we be remembered by?

When you think about decades of the past, it’s pretty easy to close your eyes and picture a dress, a car, a make-up look that defines the era. But what about the 2020s?

Last year I wrote: I’m struggling to imagine what our grandkids will point at and say oh yes, this is unmistakably a picture of someone back in the 2020s.

I think I know now.

Now that we're halfway through the 2020s, patterns are coming into focus that IMO are v telling. Also quite confronting.

I’m not talking about particular trends that have outperformed others (i.e. stuck around for more than a couple of weeks). I’m talking about the forces dictating why those things are trending at all.

Is how we’re choosing to dress in fact a deeply-rooted, widespread, daily psychological response to life in a confusing, anxiety-ridden decade? Are our clothes helping us, maybe, to process that anxiety, seek stability, and find community?

Back to the grandkids…I think there are five things they might recognise as hallmarks of our era, when they look at what we were wearing and try to imagine what life might have been like in the 2020s:

1. The great simplification: minimalism as a coping mechanism?

In a chaotic world, controlled simplicity creates sense of order.

As fashion historian Valerie Steele put it in her 2020 interview with the Financial Times, "In times of economic uncertainty, we see a retreat to simplicity."

Or like Dieter Rams told us: good design = as little design as possible.

In her 2022 book, fashion psychologist Shakaila Forbes-Bell unpacks how people often gravitate toward minimalism during periods of heightened stress in their lives.

The message? I'm stable, even if nothing else is.
Or maybe: I'm so wigged out, give me simplicity in at least this part of my life.

Like I’ve said before, I think The Row is the brand of our times for good reason.

(it’s also one of the major commercial success stories of a turbulent time in fashion: the org is privately-held and fiercely discreet, but last year it received significant investment [from folks including the family behind Chanel and the heiress of L'Oréal] that was based, it was reported at the time, on a billion-dollar unicorn valuation).

And it's not just minimalist dressing.
It’s also a minimalist approach to shopping, as a coping mechanism.

We are finding all sorts of ways to strip back the variables and create order in a chaotic, chronically overwhelming shopping landscape: streamlining our closets with capsule wardrobes, applying colour season analysis or Kibbe body typing or Alison Bornstein's three-word method to simplify shopping + getting dressed.
We're digitally cataloging our clothes and using AI to suggest outfit combinations. We're managing (and sharing) live wish-lists in Google Docs. We're setting alerts on pre-loved platforms to keep us focused on the pieces/brands we actually care about and stop the mindless scrolling that leads us into mindless buying. We’re even making our own clothes - how better to get the fit you want than to cut and sew until it’s perfect?

Anna Newton

is the queen, and the source, of all of this and more. Nobody’s capturing the spirit of the age in fashion consumption better than she is IMO. And happens to be an aesthetic minimalist herself.

2. Defensive dressing

McKinsey x BoF’s 2024 State of Fashion report tells us technical outdoor brands and gorpcore continue to grow, as we all embrace healthier lifestyles and yearn for the outdoors.

I think that's only half the story.

The ongoing dominance over the past 5 years of indestructible fabrics, utility tones and cargo silhouettes has had, IMO, as much to do with cultural weather systems as nature’s weather systems. Are we dressing defensively because we’re feeling threatened? Is this primal? Fight or flight? Are we dressing for the elements in more ways than one?

Think of the delight/relief a lot of the internet feels when they find pockets in a dress (you will have seen that ongoing thanks, it has pockets meme with the millions and millions of views). Are we dressing like we might need to grab essentials and go?

Or think of Demna's Balenciaga disaster-core - that wasn't just a stunty fashion moment, it was a sign of the times.

GQ declared Gopcore itself over. But the technical drops keep dropping. See Snow Peak x Finisterre this week:

3. Anemoia (as an escape hatch)

ThredUp's 2024 Resale Report shows the secondhand market growing 21 times faster than conventional retail. Depop reports searches for 'Y2K' increasing by 830% since 2020. 90s-inspired pieces from Prada and Miu Miu have driven record revenues for both brands. Tumblr-era Indie Sleaze has been bubbling back up for the past 12 months.

This feels like more than just fashion's natural rhythms of nostalgia.

It feels like refuge. A retreat to eras that (with rose-tinted hindsight) seem like they were probably better...more stable, less confusing, less threatening, happier.

Anemoia is nostalgia for times we never experienced. We can see it, perhaps, in the heat around flip phones among teenagers (Nokia reported a 400% spike in sales during 2023), the boom in vinyl records (currently experiencing a 17-year high in US sales according to RIAA), and the whole old money aesthetic movement.

And when you actually talk to real people like I get to do in my day job, I think it becomes very clear that this nostalgia doesn’t feel like simple, harmless passive longing for the past. It feels more like active resistance to the now.

The late Harvard cultural theorist Svetlana Boym called nostalgia "a rebellion against the modern idea of time." And it's a dangerous emotion, says historian Agnes Arnold-Forster. In her recent book she talks about how nostalgia used to be considered an illness that could literally kill you.

4. Comfort, in uncomfortable times

The casualisation of everything, combined with the premiumisation of what we used to consider downtime-only clothing (tracksuits, leggings, hoodies) allows us to do a new thing: signal our status without conceding any of our physical comfort.

I've been rewatching old Mad Men lately and (having worked in notoriously relaxed creative agencies for years) I'm still shocked by the formality of dress. Peggy's pointy heels and tight waistbands while pulling late nights at her desk. Don’s restrictive ties and buttoned-up tailoring, even when he’s on holiday.

The athleisure market is worth IRO $350 billion, with projections to reach $660 billion by 2030. Loro Piana's cashmere track pants ($2,695) were a sell-out. Brunello Cucinelli's hoodies ($2k) are among the brand's top-performing products.

Sociologist Erving Goffman might call this "the backstage becoming front stage." (The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959). Clothes once reserved for private, comfortable moments are now our street clothes, our workwear, our partywear. Could that be - at least in part - because we're craving any kind of comfort we can find, in uncomfortable times?

5. Dopamine dressing, absurdism + maximalism as acts of resistance

Some seek refuge in clean, uncluttered minimalism. Others respond with the deliberate display of joy through colour, pattern, and exuberance.

"Dopamine dressing" isn't just fashion media jargon. It's a psychological coping mechanism. Moda Operandi reported a 37% increase during 2024 in sales of bright, heavily patterned, or maximalist pieces (from brands inc. Chopova Lowena and Marine Serre). Valentino's pink PP collection drove a major sales spike for the brand during the Pierpaolo years.

Colour psychologist Karen Haller talks about how we may be drawn to colours that evoke positive emotional responses especially when environmental stressors are high. Our clothing choices can actually trigger dopamine release, temporarily alleviating anxiety or negative emotions.

And maximalism, deliberately eclectic styling, anachronistic combinations, and the rise of ‘weird’ could all be read as resistance to the steady march of algorithmic meh-ification. When every social platform tries to predict what you'll like and show you more of the same, dressing unpredictably probably does become a form of rebellion.

See also the rise of ‘bad taste’, the push-back on conventional beauty standards, and a surge of interest in absurdism (interesting discussion on Style Zeitgeist podcast this week) – it all speaks to a generation seeking autonomy in a world where our preferences are being predicted, manipulated, and monetised.

We’ve talked about what we're wearing.
But what about how we're shopping?

YOLO, mental accounting + the paradox of doom spending

While all logic would indicate we should be responding to uncertainty (and climate anxiety) with caution – shopping more carefully and buying only what we need – that isn't really what's happening.

During 2023, at the peak of the cost of living crisis, and with the climate crisis dominating the news cycle every day, in the UK alone spending on clothing and footwear went up to a record-breaking £1.71 billion a week. That’s just online.

That doesn’t make sense economically or ethically. But it makes a lot of sense sociologically.

So called ‘treat culture’ isn’t just a TikTok trend. It’s an anxiety response. When a stable career, your own front door and a retirement plan feel like ludicrous fairy tales, why not buy the Loewe basket bag?

This Bank of America investigation found a third of their Gen Z and Millennial respondents described themselves as being addicted to shopping. And this study looked into how much more susceptible younger consumers (18-24, 25-34, and 35-44 age groups) are to impulse shopping compared to older generations. The verdict? Very much more.

So a lot of young people seem to be spending impulsively. A lot are also spending big. Bain has been banging this drum for ages - its projections indicate that by the end of this year young generations (under 30) will account for 70% of luxury fashion/accs purchases globally.

The mega behavioural economist Richard Thaler's concept of "mental accounting" explains all this better than anything else I’ve come across. When people take a pessimistic view of the future - when the life we want feels unattainable/unlikely - we tend to stop ‘saving’ psychological currency for it. The result? Present bias. YOLO. Caution to the wind.

This split response to anxiety – some preparing for the long-haul while others are embracing the moment – exemplifies the psychological tightrope we're all walking right now. Same fear, different coping mechanisms.

So in my opinion these five fashion truths aren’t just quirks of the fashion cycle, or trends that have endured for longer than is typical these days – they're the defining psychological patterns of our decade, expressed through how how we get dressed in the morning.

The idea behind the idea, maybe?

Thanks for reading/see you next time.

Beth