Manufacturing a Personality: The Lost Art of Being Intentional

By Nandini Shah 

If you’re chronically online like me, you know there’s no escaping content creators who pick a new aesthetic to imitate every few weeks. Even creators who claim to be ‘fashion girlies,’ stage their personality by doing hauls of the latest micro-trends and creating a fake ‘everyday’ life. They successfully package personalities within things like their bedrooms, airport security trays and handbags, ensuring their comment sections are filled with demands for links.  

The beginning of the year saw the ‘messy girl’ aesthetic become popular. This trend was characterised by smudged eyeliner, frizzy hair, and flyaways, to represent the clutter and chaos of everyday life; a rejection of the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic. However, creators ignored the discourse and sentiment of authenticity behind the trend and sought ways to curate the perfect image of an unaesthetic life. This gave rise to numerous TikToks of messy rooms with carefully arranged coffee cups, candles, scrunchies and journals that gave off a polished, effortless and disingenuous feeling, making it obvious they’re filtered. The trend became all about self-presentation, contradictory to its original intent, proving that no content meant for consumption can lack curation. 

Miu Miu Spring 2024 runway 

Designers were quick to hop onto the ‘messy girl’ trend. At the Miu Miu 2024 Spring Show in Paris, models carried overstuffed handbags with modern-day accessories like cords, socks, heels and belts popping out. Jane Birkin, and Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen began trending on TikTok for carrying overflowing luxury handbags that looked scruffy and old. But that’s because their bags were actually ‘lived in’ and used sustainably for years. A TikTok under the popular hashtag 'Birkifying' shows a creator hitting her Birkin with a slipper and whipping it to give it the Jane Birkin personality. In another TikTok, a girl over-stretches her t-shirt to break it in, instead of wearing it to the point of natural degradation. Buying brand-new items only to manufacture wear and tear highlights the terrifying and vicious grip social media has over consumer behaivour.

People don’t like fashion as an art form; they like participating in fashion trends. Instead of engaging with fashion intentionally and creatively to develop a style aligning with our unique taste, we try to achieve the idealized, manufactured personalities creators sell.  

Developing a personal style is the only way to stop emulating the style of a new celebrity or aesthetic every season. It’s also how you can be mindful about purchases and resist the temptation to overconsume. Take a look at the clothes in your pre-existing wardrobe that you love to figure out which elements you are drawn towards. Categorise them according to fit, pattern, texture, and colour and write down details you like and dislike about them. Take pictures wearing each outfit to find which style suits you best. Lastly, if you want to buy something to emulate an aesthetic, look up photos of that item on Pinterest to get styling inspiration. Rummage through your wardrobe and come up with different ways of layering that item to ensure longevity. Find purpose behind purchases.