We’ve never had more access to taste, references, and “perfect” outfits — and yet personal style has rarely felt so uniform. The algorithm didn’t democratise fashion. It industrialised it.
Open any feed and you can predict the next ten looks before they arrive: the same trousers with the same drape, the same knit with the same collar line, the same sunglasses that turn every face into a familiar silhouette. Different cities, identical codes. It’s not that people dress badly — the opposite, actually. Everyone is dressed “right”. That’s the problem.
The internet didn’t make style accessible in the way we like to romanticise. It made it legible. It translated taste into a set of recognisable signals and then rewarded those signals with attention. The result is a world where being stylish is increasingly common — and being distinct is increasingly rare.
When everyone has the same references, the room for interpretation collapses.
From Discovery to Compliance
Style once carried geography. You could sense where someone lived, what they did with their afternoons, what they could realistically access. Clothes came with friction: what you found, what you inherited, what you repaired, what you compromised on. Those constraints weren’t limitations — they were personality builders.
Now, constraint has been replaced by clarity. If you want the exact jacket, you can find it in minutes. If you want the exact proportions, you can learn them in a reel. If you want the exact aesthetic, you can buy it — shipping included. It’s efficient. It’s also flattening.
The Moodboard Era
Inspiration used to be a spark. Today it’s an occupation. We collect images the way previous generations collected stamps: carefully, obsessively, with the belief that accumulation will eventually become identity. But references aren’t identity. They’re a language. And when a language is repeated too perfectly, it becomes a dialect without character.
The algorithm rewards what is instantly understood. That’s why so much modern style looks like it’s designed to be decoded on a phone screen in under two seconds: high-contrast choices, familiar silhouettes, predictable “taste markers”. It is fashion as caption.
Why Everyone Looks the Same Now
It’s tempting to blame brands, but brands are responding to the same pressure. The system has taught all of us the safest route: wear what photographs well, repeat what performs, refine what gets approval. In practice, this means style becomes less like self-expression and more like self-optimisation.
The most revealing shift is subtle: we don’t ask Do I like this? as often as we ask Does this work? Work for the feed. Work for the identity people already associate with us. Work for the moodboard we’re trying to live inside.
We’ve confused being informed with being interesting.
Personality Needs Risk
Interesting style has always had an element of risk — not necessarily loudness, but tension. A contradiction. Something that feels slightly inconvenient or too specific to be copied. The problem with internet-approved style is that it eliminates tension. It makes everything smooth, coherent, and instantly repeatable.
But real style is rarely coherent at first glance. It changes with seasons of life. It carries strange preferences. It includes pieces you’d never recommend to a stranger because they only make sense on the person who owns them.
So What Now?
The answer isn’t to reject references — that would be dishonest. We all borrow. We all learn. The point is to stop treating the feed as a template and start treating it as raw material. References should be ingredients, not the finished dish.
If you want your style to feel like yours again, build it around your life instead of your output. Dress for the day you’re actually having. Wear the thing that only makes sense if someone knows you. Let a look be slightly imperfect in exchange for being real.
Because the most compelling people don’t look “right” all the time. They look lived-in. They look specific. They look like they have somewhere to be that isn’t the comment section.