I’m lying on my couch illuminated by the cold, blue narcotic glow of my phone screen. I’m doing what we all do at 2:00 AM. I’m doomscrolling.
I stop on an image. It’s a skirt. Not a bad skirt. It has decent lines, a silhouette that suggests it might actually drape rather than hang. But then, I make the mistake of reading the caption.
And suddenly, I’m exhausted.
It’s not just a skirt, I’m told. It’s an armour. It needs quiet interpretation. It doesn’t ask for permission, it declares. And then, without a hint of irony, they add: “We believe in slow living, and here are five colours you can get this skirt in.”
Please. Give me a break.
The fashion industry has contracted a severe case of verbal diarrhea. I don’t need to know that the cotton was rain-fed by a specific cloud in Coimbatore, and I certainly don’t need to know that the lack of buttons represents the ‘freedom of the post-colonial soul’.
It’s boring. It’s tedious. And frankly, it’s uncool.
We are living in a sensory assault of over-intellectualized mediocrity. Brands act like insecure lovers, filling every gap in the conversation with justification. “Love me,” they scream. “Look how good I am. Look how much I care.”
Most brands forget that there is seduction in mystery; good things hit the lizard brain in a way that does not need explaining.
When a designer gets it right, when they really sweat over the cut, the fabric, you just know it. You put that product on a mannequin or share a grainy photo on a feed, and it speaks for itself. It doesn't need an AI caption or a backstory. It just is.
We, the audience, are not stupid. We have eyes. If a thing has a soul, we will figure it out. We will find it. That is the thrill of the hunt. But when you plaster a manifesto over a mediocre product, you apologizing for it. You’re using "sustainability" and "mission" as a garnish to hide a bad product.
This isn’t an attack on sustainability. Sustainability should be the baseline. Make that the backstory for the About Us page on your website. If I care enough to look, I’ll find it. But on the front lines? On the feed? Show me the work.
Make something beautiful. Make something that makes me feel like a better, cooler, more dangerous version of myself. Put it up. Step back.
If it’s good design, it will sell. And if nobody buys? Well, maybe it just wasn’t that cool to begin with. And no amount of explaining was ever going to save you.