(I’m speaking as a person who lives in Canada and sees what Gen Z are wearing in Canada. Not what online influencers are doing. I see some of the same Gen Z faces quite often so I get a glimpse of their closets. And I take public transportation. This is where my assumptions are coming from).

I get that social media has a lot of influence, but I’m confused by the super cropped “shirt” trend that Gen Z are over wearing (full closets instead of a few shirts) because of the state of the economy. Where are they getting the money?

I’m a Millennial that entered the age of majority just after the economic recession hit. This meant that my clothes had to pull double duty. It’s why we have memes of Millennials going to night clubs dressed as secretaries. (I know that Canada wasn’t hit as hard as other countries, but we still felt some of the effects of the Wallstreet crash.)

When the cold shoulder tops and distressed shorts and pants came out in in the 2010s, I never bought any because my wallet couldn’t justify participating in a trend I wasn’t enthusiastic about anyways. And distressed is so not environmentally and wallet friendly. The reason we hem clothes during construction and patch holes is so that they last longer. Selling clothes with a purposely shortened lifespan is robbery. It’s not just about an aesthetic. I remember looking for denim shorts in the 2010s and spending all day at the mall unable to find hemmed shorts.

Even though we had low rise jeans (and I only bought them because mid rise didn’t exist for my body type), I only owned two pairs in plain styles so that I had something to wear while one was in the wash and took two days to hang dry (that’s how I stretched the lifespan of my clothes). That’s how tight my clothing budget was. I tried to have a versatile closet with mostly plain styles so they could be worn more often and it didn’t look like I was repeating outfits.

So looking at today’s prices, I don’t get it. Housing and rent is through the roof even if you do have a stable job, but you’re paying off student loans. Food is more expensive too. Medicine is twice as expensive. I found an expired polysporin tube that was twice the volume of the new one I bought by the same brand which was also more expensive at selling price. You’d expect the selling price to at least stay the same even with nasty shrinkflation happening.

Clothes are expensive, especially if you’re trying to get clothes that doesn’t fall apart or pill after 4 washes. (Imagine my horror when a brand new knit maxi skirt started pilling 4 hours later while I was wearing it out and about for the first time before even washing it—normally I do wash clothes after buying them, so don’t come after me…). That’s when I started researching about fabric quality and learned that fast fashion is just allowed to sell you fabric that falls apart (this should be criminal!).

Anyways, I can understand owning like 2 or 3 cropped shirts for casual outings if this is a style you actually like (not because you’re trying to be trendy), but having a whole closet of them? You can’t wear them to work or to establishments with a dress code. They don’t transition to colder weather wear. And when they wear out, you can’t use them as clothes to do yard work and house work (not protective enough). They don’t protect you from the sun either. And sun screen isn’t cheap to cover exposed skin.

And my tired self can’t picture adding more work in the morning to cover my torso with sunscreen. I’m that tired in the morning that I invested in a loose long sleeved high collared linen blend button up shirt to protect me from the sun while I commute in the heat just so that I don’t have to apply sun screen to my arms and décolletage. Saved so much money in sunscreen!

As an aside, when you get tired of trends, donating them to a thrift store isn’t really an environmental solution. Most of them end up in a landfill if they don’t sell. Our thrift stores are full of low rise pants (well, low rise on my body) that nobody is buying.

The women’s section is full of fast fashion synthetic fabric tops and skirts. I’ve had to go to the men’s section to find sturdy cotton shirts that I’ve resewn to fit me.

(However, I don’t think we should have to learn to sew to have sturdy clothes fit us reasonably, not perfectly. Women’s history already has non stretchy clothes designed to be adjustable/accommodating to the fluctuating female body, so there’s no excuse for the fashion industry to force us in to such clothes that doesn’t accommodate us living as female human beings with fluctuating bodies through many years— but that’s a different rant.) Elastin clothes absolutely don’t last. They are only appropriate in dance/athletic wear, swimwear, underwear, and bras. The top layer of your outfit should be sturdy enough to survive years of washing, in my humble opinion, and be adjustable to body fluctuations.

Sorry to derail at the end there… I just don’t understand how this fashion trend has taken over so much of the Gen Z closet with the current living expenses overtaking the take-home income.