Does fashion make everyone feel lonely, or is it just me?
By Florenne Earle Ledger published 05/02/2025
I’m in Tesco looking to buy some noodles, and I’m confronted with a plushy cinnamon roll and “Curtis the cavapoo” as part of their Valentine’s Day gift collection. Dating and love are everywhere around this time of year, and it’s made me think about how the brutal dating culture we have all experienced isn’t so dissimilar from our relationship with shopping and trends.
Think about it: we go on dates to try and market the best version of ourselves, and we're seeking some kind of validation from the other person, or ourselves. When you’re shopping, you’re looking for something that makes you feel like the best version of yourself, and if it doesn’t, you don’t don’t wear it again. The same goes for when you experience a bad date. You rule the person out, but it often leaves a small part of you wondering “was there something I could have done differently?”, even if you didn’t actually like the person. When certain trends or clothes don’t work for us, sometimes we feel like we’re the problem. Maybe we will go back to it and try to make it work, only to make us feel more confused than before. Or, we’re spat back into the fashion world, looking for something else to make us feel whole, or look as good as that girl we saw on our FYP(which is the same thing, right?).
Feeling isolated
I recently read (and loved) Fashion: A Manifesto, by Anouchka Grose. It shared lots of interesting ideas about how the tragedy of humankind is a sense of isolation. When we don’t truly like who are, we feel isolated from the version of ourselves we wish we were. That aspirational “us” is what fashion lures us into thinking we can achieve, without any groundwork, just a shiny new top. The fashion industry likes to keep us on our toes because it keeps us wanting to buy more, looking out for new items that might be the answer to our problems.
A sense of alienation doesn’t just come from thinking about who we could be, it’s also shown in who we can pretend we are when we’re wearing certain clothes. “You can put new clothes on and, while they’re still strongly linked with an external image, you can enjoy the satisfying alienation. You’re temporarily other than yourself’, Grose writes. We’ve all been there when wearing something a little bold feels daring and exciting. It could be the same for dating. You meet this person who doesn’t know anything about you, you can hide the bits of yourself you may not want them to know about, and see how it feels to be a different person for a bit.
As with wearing clothes that don’t feel like a true reflection of your style, a relationship built on this dynamic probably won’t work, but for a moment it might have been fun. Ultimately, situations like this haven’t made me feel good about myself, but the opposite. It just makes the real me seem even more distant from who I was trying to be and as a result less valuable.
"Wearing clothes that don’t truly reflect the essence of “you” is the same as investing in a relationship where you can’t be yourself– it might be fun to pretend for a while, but it’s exhausting to keep up with long-term."
Getting strung along
Most of us have been led on by someone who wasn’t clear whether they were interested in us or not, but we let them because we wanted to see if they would change their mind. I feel like trends function the exact same way. Grose likens fashion to a theory by Lacan called ‘Controlled paranoia’ where you’re trying to work out what the other person thinks of you, but you can’t. As with fashion and dating, it can be hard to know where you stand. Grose describes trends as “a game where the rules can change so suddenly you can never be fully sure where you stand”. Just as trends can lead us to second-guess our personal style, tempting us to change, dating can cause a bit of a crisis in our sense of self-worth and make us wonder how outcomes would be different if we changed something about ourselves.
What now?
It all sounds quite bleak, so why do we keep putting ourselves out there? Because we want to find someone who makes us happy, and we want to find clothes that make us feel good about ourselves. The paradox of feeling happy and sad when it comes to what we wear is exactly what keeps us interested, as with dating and our search for love.
I’ve found exploring the link between fashion and dating has made me realise how our emotions are involved with consumption. It’s not simply, “I’m having a bad day, I want to buy something” but it’s actually about our sense of trying to find and complete ourselves, to feel more comfortable in who we are. Trying to obtain a better version of yourself through buying a new top, is similar to trying to find the missing piece in someone else, which we know isn’t a healthy mindset. Treat your wardrobe like you would your dating life, and only let in items that bring out the best in you, rather than encourage you to be someone you’re not– only distancing you further from yourself.
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