Gemma Spake

That is why micro trends and fast fashion caters more towards younger people.

Yes, because it's cheaper, but also because they don't know who they are yet or where they fit in.

They also don't have a sense of personal style because they don't have that identity.

So they're really quick to buy whatever is trending because of that lack of identity stability, regardless of whether it's made poorly, because it doesn't really matter.

They don't need it to be.

fit they don't need it to be something they wear in like three months because their identity is probably going to change as fast as the trend is it's also why um teenagers or people in high school younger people um

that's where subgroups really start.

Often in younger groups of individuals, because their identity is so unstable, there's this greater sense of wanting to align with a subgroup or a type of fashion or a type of identity that is represented through fashion that is stable and that means one thing and that can be categorized because it's kind of like...

this life raft for them it's kind of like this thing that they can hold on to when everything else about them is kind of like floating around similar to this it's also why when we enter a new social environment we really feel the need to reinstate or reinforce our personal style or reinvent it so that's why we go and buy new outfits for a new job it's why freshmen always buy new wardrobes before they start university it's why someone who just moved to Berlin wants to dress more Berlin

This is what is called enclosed cognition.

It is a psychological phenomenon coined by this man, Harjo Adams, whereby the symbolic meaning of our clothing actually influences our cognitive processes, which in turn affects our thoughts, affects our feelings, affects our behavior, etc.

The researcher who coined this term, in his research, he basically discovered that this can influence everything from our emotional state to how we see ourselves to our intelligence.

What you wear can literally influence how smart you feel and how smart you are.

In this now very famous 2012 experiment, participants were essentially asked to complete a bunch of attentional and memory tasks, either wearing a doctor's lab coat or not.

And some were even told like the lab coat was like a painter's coat.

And then some people didn't wear it at all.

The people who went into these tasks wearing the doctor's coat did significantly better on those tasks compared to the others.

And there was a large sample size here.

And the only thing that was different, yeah, maybe there was slight personality and intelligence differences, but that was definitely different.

controlled for the only major difference was that they dress smarter this is why things like dopamine dressing or dressing up for a date or dressing for the job you want not the job you have can actually change the way you feel in those situations