Social media influencer Jiang Chacha was the face of YCloset’s marketing campaign

 According to predictions, clothing rental may overtake the fast fashion sector within 10 years. I personally think that having clothes for rental is a great idea, as I used to often find myself only wearing some items of clothing 5-6 times before not enjoying it anymore or even regretting purchasing it. Recently I have been making smarter and more thought out purchases with my clothing, rather than impulse shopping online or going into shops without needing to buy anything. Renting clothes would be more freeing in the sense that there’s no commitment to that piece of clothing/accessory and that I can just give it back whenever I wanted. However, there is something special about purchasing and owning something that you’ve wanted for a long time or just really love. So although I think that renting is a good concept, I don’t think that ownership will be fully replaced and that rental and purchasing would kind of coexist side by side.

I’m hoping that the trend of renting clothes will catch on and hopefully disrupt the growing industry of disposable fashion and be reduce the environmental impact the fashion industry already has. I don’t think that rental will be a popular thing at first, many of my peers didn’t seem to enjoy the idea of clothing rental when we talked about it. I think the idea of it must be sold in a really convincing way, the idea of renting someone’s used crop top isn’t the most appealing concept.

I think that rental will work the best in the luxury fashion sector. With social media being such a huge thing now, people always want to put the best version of themselves out there, including investing in designer brands to achieve that look. However, the problem with that is that if renting luxury brands is available to everybody, the exclusivity and brand image may be damaged. So luxury brands may not even want to offer this service?

Overall, I do think that having access to rent clothes is a great concept, I think how it is promoted/sold to the mainstream is a massive factor for whether it’ll be a success or not. If it is successful, I think it would be great for lessening the environmental impact that fashion has, hopefully less garments would be produced when renting is a popular trend.

Amy

Simon Sinek on Millenials in the Workplace

 Today we watched a clip of Simon Sinek talk about millenials on Inside Quest. I found the comments that he made pretty thought-provoking and generally my opinion was split 50/50 on the video. The video begins of him saying that millenials are accused of being “entitled and narcissistic, self interested, unfocused, lazy”, already giving me the impression that this is a massive generalisation of this group of people.

I did agree with some of the points that he made , there were some comments that I disagreed with and think are pretty untrue. When he talks social media, he compares excess use as the same as being addicted to alcohol, cigarettes and gambling, which I don’t think is a fair or valid comparison. He talks about how they’re all linked by the release of dopamine when you use these things, however, dopamine is also boosted from regular healthy activities such as exercise, eating, meditation or listening to music. So for me that argument didn’t make much sense, because I listen to music everyday is that the same as being addicted to alcohol? Although, he did go on to talk about the imbalance of using social media and if someone is surrounded by people and using their phone to talking to someone else then that becomes a problem, which I do agree with.

He talks about millennials being used to “instant gratification”, being able to binge watch tv shows and being able to order things online and have it arrive the next day etc. and he says that you can’t have the same with job satisfaction and relationships. I personally don’t think that there is a problem with “instant gratification”, in fact I think that its an amazing thing that technology has allowed us to do things instantaneously. It is very relateable to my generation as well, I think that it makes us digitally competent and quicker to process information. And I think the point about it not being applicable to relationships is true, but I don’t think that anyone expects our relationships or job satisfaction to be instant?

He also referred to millennials as “kids” a lot in the video as well which confused me, as most millennials would be in their mid 20s-30s now, so that made me question whether he was talking more about my generation, Generation Z, or was just being incredibly patronising?

Amy

As a fashion consumer I tend to do the majority of my shopping online, I feel like it’s much simpler to find pieces that I actually like and there’s a lot more content out there. The only times I’ll shop in-stores are in vintage/charity shops, I find them to be a much more interesting environment to shop in than branded shops as the clothing you find is more unique. I also enjoy shopping in-store if I’m travelling to somewhere with stores that I wouldn’t normally find here in Cardiff, such as the Dover Street Market store and Palace store in London.

Dover Street Market, London.

Palace Shop, London.

 I personally enjoy owning pieces that nobody else/that not many people have, so going into mainstream stores doesn’t appeal to me at all. I find that when you purchase things from Topshop, H&M and other similar high street brands, you end up wearing the same things as everyone else and individuality is kind of lost. I’ve also been more conscious of being more sustainable in my shopping habits, so recently I’ve been avoiding fast fashion retailers and investing my money into items that that are more high quality/unique, that I know I will wear for many years and not just what’s “trendy” at the moment.

Brands that I like vary a lot from street-wear brands to luxury brands. Some brands that I enjoy include: Comme des Garcons, Issey Miyake, Ann Demulemeester, Acne Studios, Carhartt, Palace, Gosha Rubchinskiy and Thames. Most of the luxury brands I’ve mentioned I buy vintage/secondhand, obviously as a student it’s not really possible for me to purchase from these brands firsthand (as much as I’d like to). Even some of the streetwear brands that I like can be pretty pricey, for example Palace’s garments have had a significant rise in it’s price over the past few years, due to their massive increase in popularity. Although the price point may be slightly higher, I still feel that these kinds of brands are more sustainable for me to purchase. If I ever wanted to get rid of something that I own from Palace or Gosha I know that could resell that item easily and make most of my money back, if not more, rather than just throwing that item away.

Amy

Avery Ginsberg runs a blog based around fashion and lifestyle. His content consists of outfits, fashion inspiration, travel and personal interests such as music, film/TV and books. He also runs his own YouTube channel and clothing brand STAATSBALLETT, with his girlfriend Kailee Mann, which he links to on the blog.

https://www.averyginsberg.com/outfits

 I’ve been following Avery for quite a while now, I discovered his YouTube channel about a year ago and a half ago and instantly liked his fashion sense and overall aesthetic. I personally follow this blog because the content that he posts is very similar to my own interests, in terms of the fashion, music and art, I always find something new that I enjoy from his blog. He also posts a lot about the time that he spends travelling around Europe, which really inspires me to go travelling myself.

https://www.averyginsberg.com/blog/?tag=Travel#show-archive

I like that his blog is easy to navigate and doesn’t contain paragraphs and paragraphs of writing, I consider myself more of a visual person, so the fact that his blog is more image based makes it more appealing to me. However, I do think that the blog could be improved if he added more personal comments on some of the content that he posts. For example, he will link interesting looking YouTube videos to his post, but not really give much context or many personal thoughts around the subject. I think that voicing his opinion in these posts would make the blog more engaging to viewers. Although, on his YouTube channel he does talk a lot more so maybe it just means that he’s more comfortable with vlogging rather than blogging.

The aesthetic of the images he posts is one of the inspirations for my own blog. Although there isn’t much writing, when there is I enjoy the style that he writes in. He writes very casually and writes about subjects as if he were talking to a friend. I’m not sure if I’ll take this approach with my own blog, but the images and minimalist layout he uses are definitely things that I will apply to my own blog.

Amy