Consumption is not just consumption. In a country where 9 out of 10 people restricted their clothing purchases, departures and small pleasures for economic reasons in recent months, it would seem that consumption is in pause. But no: it is transformed. Becausealthough the pocket is adjusted, the need to belong, show and sustain an image no rest is taken.
It is there where the rise of platforms such as Shein makes sense. It is not just Fast Fashion: it is an access route to the last, to an outfit that “work” in the camera, in the selfie, in the history of Instagram, at a price that people can pay. In a permanent exposure ecosystem, be seen It is a form of validation. And when you cannot pay what would be in the shopping or at the premises, speed, variety, novelty is chosen. Shein understood it as few: consumption no longer revolves around what is needed, but to what is See.
In Argentina, cases like Shein or Temu It is revolutionizing digital trade by combining ultra prices accessible with game mechanics that capture attention, especially the youngest. Influencers and users viralize experiences where, through a digital roulette or simple missions, they can obtain very high discounts and even completely free products. This strategy not only breaks the pocket barrier in a context of high economic restriction, but also the distrust of whether the order will really come.
Stimuli, novelties, low or low prices, access to the latest indispensable or completely accessory. A tempting promise for the consumer, without a doubt. But this access also opens an awkward conversation: at what price? There is increasing cultural contradiction between the desire to show us aligned with trends and the awareness that the same system generates textile waste, labor exploitation and an increasingly accelerated aesthetic obsolescence.
The expansion of Fast Fashion in the world is accompanied by an environmental impact. According to global data, this industry represents about 10% of carbon emissions worldwide, even surpassing combined air and sea transport. In addition, each garment produced consumes huge amounts of water: between 7,500 and 10,000 liters are required only to make a jean. To this is added an accelerated consumption logic where many garments are used on average only 5 to 7 times before being discarded, feeding a mass discard model: every second a clothing truck is buried or burned on the planet. This cycle also releases microplastics: 35% of microplastics in the oceans come from synthetic textile washing. However, according to our most recent investigations in the Trend Lab of Youniversal, although 9 out of 10 people in Latin America are concerned about the impact of consumption on the environment, only 13% manage to consume in a way consistent with those values.
But today the gaze no longer stops in the price or the trend: it begins to question the origin, the conditions of production, the traceability of what we consume, even in the universe of luxury. The prestigious Italian luxury seal PIANA LOROpart of the LVMH conglomerate, was put under judicial administration for a year after serious practices of labor exploitation were discovered in its supply chain in Italy. This news shakes the consumption of luxury where consumers and regulators demand more transparency, responsibility and real consequences for the irresponsible management of the production chain.
See and be seen. In parallel, the culture of visibility invades all spaces. Not only did we dress to leave: Also to be captured, for the camera that can always appear. The recent scandal in the Coldplay recital demonstrates it: a couple was focused on the “Kiss Cam” and, in a matter of hours, it was not only viralized that they were “in fraganti”, but also their labor identity -ceo and director of HR. The look of others today has unprecedented power. Are we prepared to live so exposed?
Meanwhile, celebrities mark new coordinates of what “it is worth looking.” For example, the singer Bud Bunny He released his album “I had to throw more photos” surrounded by a marketing narrative and strategy as emotional as disruptive. Instead of following the traditional script, the Puerto Rican star co-counted the morning news Noticenter at dawn in Puerto Rico, He participated in comic interviews on local television and presented unexpected public facilities in cities such as Madrid. The same artist appears in the show of Jimmy Fallon With an informal shirt, almost home. But that gesture is not careless: it is message. Only those who already have a insured place on the cultural podium can afford to ignore the traditional clothing code and, still, mark a trend. Informality becomes a symbol of power: the sign that one no longer needs to demonstrate anything.
Look at the past. There is also another look of consumption: the one that seeks aspirationality looking back, times that imagine (or remember) simpler. The return of Oasis -And the special editions of Adidas that celebrate them- reinforces this other face of contemporary desire: that of reconnecting with a simpler, more novel, more “before.” It is a nostalgia for times in which the world seemed less uncertain and the most stable identities: Oasis declared in his recitals that everyone could feel calm because, with them, “there were no Kiss Cams.”
The obsolescence of desire. In short, all these phenomena orbit around the same question: how do we want to be seen … and for whom? Consumption is not just an economic transaction; It is a tool to build our personal narrative. The decisions we make about what to dress, what to share, what to hide or what to show, are decisions about what we value and how we want to look at ourselves.
The programmed obsolescence It is an industrial and commercial design strategy through which a product is created with an intentionally limited useful life for the consumer to be forced to replace it before.
Today that logic that applied to electronic devices has been sophisticated and extended to new ways: something would stop using not because it does not work, but because it is no longer fashionable. Social networks, hyperacelling of trends and hyper consumption models intensify this dynamic, pushing consumers constantly renewed so as not to be “out of code.”
Today more than ever, it is worth stopping to ask ourselves if we buy by genuine desire or by foreign pressure. In times where everything is seen, true freedom is not only in what we buy, but in Choose with Consciousness What to show And, above all, who we want to be.
*CEO and co -founder of Younginal
By Ximena Díaz Alarcón
