Jumping on the Personal Style Bandwagon

Reaction to Rachel Tashjian Wise's Essay

Rachel Tashjian Wise wrote a piece on her (invite only) newsletter Opulent Tips about Personal Style. If you’re on Fashion Twitter (or I guess Fashion Threads now?) you’ve already heard about it– or at the very least have seen the pull quotes. For those of you who haven’t, I’ll sum it up. It’s a pretty casual, stream-of-consciousness blog post. In it, she rages on about the current sartorial landscape: how young people are so brain rotted by the algorithm that they can’t form their own style, how the general public is a lot more tolerant to “weird” fashion choices these days and how disgusted she is by just the general way we talk about and codify our style.

I want to say up top: I like Rachel Tashjian Wise. I see where she’s coming from and I think, overall, I agree with some of her points. Also– and this is very important— I don’t have an invite to Opulent Tips. I read a bootleg on Twitter. So, there is a little bit of a “don’t hate from outside the club when you can’t even get in” dynamic to this.

But it launched a larger conversation on Twitter that I took issue with! So, I’m going to talk about it in my own (albeit a smidge less exclusive) newsletter. As is my god given right.

Let’s start with the main screenshot from her post that’s going around:

The second paragraph of this– where she talks about how “young people don’t know how to LIKE stuff anymore” is really a tale as old as time: Kids These Days Just Don’t Get It. Back In My Day…. We Didn’t Have The Algorithm To Tell Us What To Like! 

This view that somehow, this new generation of fashionistas is so radically different from you and so unable to participate authentically in culture is far removed and ridiculous. Coming of Age has always been (and always will be) a time period in which a person is so uncertain of themselves and so desperate to form an identity that they latch on to whatever cool media surrounds them. It’s just that, today, cool media comes in the form of TikTok. Now, I don’t mean to diminish the impact of The Algorithm on cultural momentum– that’s another essay for another day– but to wholesale admonish a generation for an inability to “LIKE stuff anymore” when it can so easily be attributed to a bedrock of human nature is a little unobservant, no?

I think the main issue I take with this piece is that it neglects to go further– to go deeper into these issues. I understand her surface level annoyances. I also think it’s frustrating when people try to co-opt this image of “individuality” when they’re really just wearing whatever’s trendy. But her line: “ saying you’ve got style because you realized you are “bohemian, rock star and vintage” IS DISGUSTING TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!” is unfair. It is projecting a very flat, shallow, unempathetic view on the people around you.

It reminds me a lot of this podcast I’ve been obsessed with recently: Celebrity Memoir Book Club. In the episode they did about Holly Madison’s book Down the Rabbit Hole, they note that a big problem with Holly’s account of her time at the Playboy Mansion is that she refuses to offer the same level of introspection and understanding of an inner life to the girls around her. Basically she says: everyone thinks I’m some dumb, bottle blonde when I’m really very thoughtful and smart– but these girls?! These girls are just dumb whores. 

It’s a symptom of Not Like Other Girls syndrome— a disease which I have also, admittedly, been afflicted with. This feeling that no one else in the world is as deep as you. No one gets it like you do. Sure, they may be wearing the same 1970’s Penny Lane Jacket as you– but you’re doing it in a poetic, post-irony, Warholian Superstar kind of way that they couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

It comes from a place of superiority- and I think THAT is disgusting. I will say it is an unavoidable truth that, in this world you’re either Basic, a Try-Hard or a Cool Girl. But whichever way you’re classified is totally dependent on your charisma and likability. It has very little to do with the actual clothes.

It can be easy to say that where you fall on this scale is largely determined by your thinness, your beauty and your wealth– but I don’t think that’s all there is. It’s something deeper, more obscure, more intangible. It’s this IT factor that can’t be learned or bought. So, if you don’t have it– you’re screwed. Whichever way you try to participate in this sartorial game will be viewed as Too Much or Not Enough.

I am a strong advocate for Personal Style- for wearing the clothes that you like regardless of societal expectations or traditions or social pressure. Be Yourself and wear clothes that reflect that. But I prickle against these “High Fashion Twitter” conversations that feel less like interacting with a beloved art form and more like High School bullying.

All that to say: wear what you like! But don’t get a big head about it. It’s just clothes after all.