Brand Breakdown
Do the brands you wear really matter?
I get asked this question a lot and the short answer is, no, not really.
In the long answer I explain why you don't need to worry about what brands to wear and how to have a wardrobe full of clothes that feel more valuable and stylish regardless of who made it.
Brands do matter in terms of them being insightful when it comes to your personal style in the sense that a brand is an aesthetic and knowing if it aligns with the vibe you want to give off with your clothes, it can help you.
However, wearing a brand for the sake of fitting in, or the trending value, or societal value it has, is not important. For example, at the time of writing this you don't need to get your basics from Aritzia for them to be great, you don't need to get your work out clothes from LuLuLemon to have a good work out, and you don't need to have anything designer in your closet in order to be stylish.
Mostly because no one knows what you're wearing, and people don't ask where you got something from so they can judge you harshly for it. They ask because they are drawn to it and want to know where they can find it too.
It's the same way that brands like Abercrombie & Fitch once were looked at as something you should wear if you want to be considered stylish. Then they almost completely disappeared from fashion, and within the past couple of years reinvented themselves and are seen as a popular brand again.
It is all marketing.
The brand is not what makes you stylish. Knowing which brands are trendy right now also is not what makes someone stylish.
What matters is if you feel good about the clothes a brand sells. If their clothes, regardless of if they are trendy right now, are clothes you want to wear and would wear even if they weren't so popular, that's a good sign.
The other reason you don't need to worry about wearing the right brands is because the value something has been given, or the value something may even sell for is not a value everyone will always agree on.
Don't get me wrong, it is possible to purchase bags and items that are more like assets in the sense that they have the potential to make you money if you sell them at a later date but most clothing isn't like that so it is important for you to understand what you feel the value of something is to you.
A really good example of this is the iconic Chanel double flap bag. Some people think it is worth the expensive price tag, some think certain ones are worth even more than they are listed for.
While other people don't even know what the Chanel double flap bag is and simply don't care/don't see why someone would spend the money.
The last kind of person might know or might not know about the bag but their personal taste is not aligned with the bag so even though they can objectively see its value they would never purchase it because it wouldn't be valuable to them.
I want you to think of all clothing and brands like this bag. You don't need to know the value in terms of what the rest of society thinks or even what the price tag deems its value to be, what you need to know is does it align with what feels good to you when it comes to what you wear?
If it does, how well does it?
What is that worth to you in terms of how much wear you assume you'd get out of it and how much are you already excited to wear it etc?
What is that good feeling, plus the amount of time you'll get to enjoy having that feeling worth to you?
Over time a $50 bag could have more cost per wear than a $1000 bag.
If you buy a $50 bag and wear it twice and then move onto something new because it wasn't quite right or maybe the quality sucked that was $25/wear.
Where as if you are obsessed with the $1000 bag and you want to wear it every single day after a few years it would only cost you 0.91 cents/wear.
I'm not saying we should all be buying $1000 bags because the opposite could be true too. The $50 bag could become a bag you wore so many times that it becomes practically free, and the $1000 could sit in its dust cover untouched.
That is why the brand doesn't matter, and your personal value of it does.
Which is why I want to invite you to start giving your clothes sentimental value: "The value of something to someone because of personal or emotional associations rather than material worth."
All you need to know or be able to do is notice when a piece of clothing feels good to you.
From there, notice what about it feels good so you can anchor that which draws you to it, within you. Making a personal connection with your clothes.
I love doing this with clothes.
Noticing what makes a piece of clothing special to you, gives you your power back.
When you have sentimental belongings, other peoples opinions of them don't mean much because the item's meanings are personal to you and that's all that matters.
You can take this a step further too. You can create the value of how much you think you'd pay for something before even looking at the price tag, which makes the brands value irrelevant.
Which, by the way, all pricing is made up. The cost for major retailers to purchase the product they sell is typically so low you're looking at very large mark ups in the prices you see, which they can sell at thanks to marketing hype and demand.
Once you know just how good an item feels to you, you will probably already have an idea of how much you already intend to wear it.
How many times you see yourself wearing something + how good it makes you feel = how much you're willing to pay for it.
Most of us typically don't shop in stores that we can't afford. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you tried something on, fell in love with it and know you'd pay for it with your left arm if you could, but you simply can't afford it.. that's okay because you can still use that to inform you about what you like about that piece that you can look for in others within your budget.
It could also inspire you to save money for that piece. And it opens you up to the possibility of being someone who could afford that in the future.
Wanting something you can't have in this moment isn't something you have to feel bad about, it can be an amazing opportunity for you to see the kind of person you could become in order to afford that thing that you would absolutely love to wear and feel good in. It can inspire growth.
A bonus of doing this is that it also helps you step away from impulse shopping, or buying something simply because it's trendy or on sale (ie: wasting money).
Being able to assign value to the things you like and want to purchase that is outside of the brand and societies ideas of what something is worth is an incredibly useful skill to have, and can lend to making easy decisions while shopping.
You won't need to look at the price tag to know if it is worth it to you to buy, and the price tag won't have as much power over you. You'll know what you're willing to spend ahead of time, and how valuable something actually is to you, outside of what others say, or what brands are popular.
You can figure out the value you of something to you simply by noticing how good it already makes your feel or how excited you are about it, and then accounting for how much you intend to wear it (how many times you'll get to feel good wearing it). Then just ask yourself what is it worth to you to wear something you'll feel great in over a hundred times?
The other really great thing about this is it helps you focus on if it's something you intend to wear long-term which is great in terms of slowing down fashion.
The only time being informed on brands matter is if you have the ability to be socially conscious. Which is the ability to choose not to support brands like Shein, or any brand that is known for horrible workplace practises, sexism, racism, fat-phobia, or unnecessary destruction of our environment, etc.
If your values don't align with a brands that is when it matters what brands you wear.
Otherwise, the brands you wear don't matter. It's how you feel in the clothes that does.
Love & Trust Yourself