At the beginning of the year, Brittany spoke to ELLE Fashion Features Director and author, Véronique Hyland, about the growing trend of underconsumption content online. No-Buy January, buying secondhand, and mending old clothes seemed to be taking hold amongst some of the most popular influencers - even though the guiding principle of underconsumption is something we've been doing for a long time. Then, Trump started implementing tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada - and now even the European Union. That made Brittany think: how would fast fashion be affected by this? And would underconsumption move from a hashtag to a lifestyle? To find out, The Indicator's Wailin Wong joins the show to break down how tariffs will affect Americans who love to shop... when the prices drop.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Two or three months ago, I went into my closet to do my routine purge. Attempted it and failed many times. But this last time, it actually worked.
Emma Chamberlain, who's one of the biggest influencers, she became known in part for her thrift hauls. And she just threw out 95% of her wardrobe.
That is Veronique Hyland. Thank you for having me. Fashion features director at Elle and author of Dress Code, unlocking fashion from the new look to millennial pink. She's followed online fashion trends from Mob Wives to Vera Bradley's TikTok revival. And after watching Emma Chamberlain's closet clean out, she noticed the latest shift in online fashion. Under consumption.
I was seeing people sometimes refer to it as underconsumption core. And I thought, well, this is something that a lot of people have been doing for a long time because there are people who are doing no buy January or even no buy years. And then there are sort of more low buy or shop your closet, as we called it during the recession.
According to McKinsey & Company, from 2000 to 2014, clothing production doubled, and the number of garments purchased per capita increased by about 60%. That's in part due to the rise of fast fashion. And now, some consumers are seeing the fallout of that.
People have remarked that there's been an overall decline in clothing quality, or that when they're getting vintage pieces, even sometimes from a specific brand, the quality is better than before. the newer and people talking about relying on natural fibers like wool and cotton more, looking at tags very closely to see if things will last.
At the time of our chat, we wondered if the shift would stick in the post-New Year's resolution shuffle. It's no secret that Americans are deeply concerned about the economy, and there are numerous concerns about what fast fashion is doing to the environment. But that hasn't stopped the rise of places like Shein or Taimou.
However, there's one other piece of the puzzle that may influence the way we buy.
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