Overconsumption Core in Fashion: What Is It and Why Is It an Issue?

If you scroll through TikTok or watch a few Instagram reels, you will find it’s easier than you might think to stumble across another ‘haul’ video of some kind. Influencers and non-influencers alike love to share their latest purchases and finds with their followers. This isn’t always an issue of course. After all, we don’t love to gatekeep around here, and it’s great for people to share their beauty and fashion secrets. However, what with the vast number of items people are purchasing so frequently, what started as an innocent and fun YouTube haul, has now transformed into something rather immense – and not in a good way!

The Overconsumption Core Trend

The overconsumption core trend. This trend has, regrettably, been going on for a while, and started on TikTok. Users would purchase absurd amounts of clothes, accessories, makeup, etc, and would share with others all of the ‘stuff’ they bought. And the more people did this, the more it became a thing unfortunately. Influencers especially seemed to promote buying so much more than necessary.  

Why Overconsumption is an Issue

Now, we’re hoping you will have come to the conclusion as to why this is an issue by yourself. The fact is, overconsumption fuels the fire for many things. Mainly materialism – being obsessed by and with ‘stuff.’ And we all know how addicting it can feel to buy stuff you may not need but definitely do want. Overconsumption can also lead to environmental issues as well though. If more and more people buy things, more of these things – clothes, shoes, makeup - will have to be made, and more resources will be needed to meet the demand for consumers. You get the gist, it’s sort of a toxic cycle of never-ending consumerism.  

Fashion’s Role in Overconsumption

Now how does this relate to fashion we hear you potentially asking? Well, again, you’ve likely already figured this out, but clothes are a big part of the overconsumption core trend. Probably the number one thing purchased is clothes. And the fashion industry already has enough sustainability issues to be getting on with without another futile trend spurring these issues on. With people buying more and more clothing – especially from fast fashion companies (although that issue could take up a whole other article in itself) – there is higher demand for resources needed to meet these demands. So many resources like fabrics and materials needed for making clothes, are the opposite of sustainable unfortunately.  

Reflecting on Our Choices

So, how does this affect you personally? Of course, we aren’t going to interrogate you on your own choices when it comes to fashion and where you get your clothes from, and how often you do so. However, trends like this are fuelled by people partaking in them, so to get rid of them once and for all, we all (myself included of course!) need to reflect on our purchasing choices, as well as our relationships to materialism and consumerism generally.

A New Trend: Underconsumption Core

The way forward is something that we hope could now be about to take over from the overconsumption core trend: underconsumption core.