The Inspo Trap

Foof, this isn't even what I was planning to write about this month but when the muse speaks she speaks!!!

All I do all day long is look at clothes and the people in them. In stores, in closets, online, on social media. And while I absolutely succumb to the errant impulse-buy simply because I am coming into contact with SO MANY BEAUTIFUL CLOTHES ALL THE DAMN TIME, I like to think I've gotten pretty good (because of this job) at noticing the little covetous gremlin inside me yearning to be fed by capitalistic desire and going "hush hush now, my child, this is not the way" and moving on with my life.

I'm thirty full years old and have decent critical thinking skills (I hope??) and can usually see an influencer account and almost as quickly as I am flushed with the urge to PURCHASE in order to BE LIKE THEM and BE SO PRETTY AND LIVE SO NICE I am hit with the recognition that it is all fake. That it is all designed to make me feel insufficient, to make me feel like my life is a sloppy little un-esthetic mess and that no one actually lives like it looks in photos. And that, in fact, the more someone's life looks perfect in photos the more time they probably spend hunched over their little phone making SURE it looks perfect in photos.

It's easier to notice the artifice when the sell is right in the front. "USE MY CODE!" or "so excited to partner with!" or "I spoke to @XYZ about my blah blah blah!"

Where it gets trickier is when I see people who really are, maybe, artists of some sort. Curators, creative directors, designers, painters, etc. People who truly DO have a point of view, who are offering a sort of fantasy to us through social media in the way a movie or book or work of art can be a fantasy that shows new ways of looking at things.

I think there's value in this.

But I don't think we live in a world, right now, that makes much space for someone to create that kind of experience without it getting swept up in the all-gobbling monster of capitalism. And it makes it really hard to separate out "what am I enjoying as a creative / aesthetic experience" and "what is very very powerful marketing?" And I'm not sure the creators of these spaces know the difference, either. And if they do know the difference, I'm not sure it matters if the algorithm is going to feed me products to buy that remind me of their aesthetic anyway.

I stumbled upon this person's instagram today (these people are almost always white, and they are most certainly always thin, aren't they?) and had a total gut punch of "I'm doing everything wrong with how I dress and live my life and eat a peach and must be rid of myself of everything and start anew in my fresh life as a dainty artful beautiful person!"

What the hell, man? How is this still happening to me? I really do think this person has a fantastic sense of style, and a really sharp eye. She's not necessarily breaking the mold with the stuff she captures....it all does feel vaguely interchangeable with everything in the artful euro minimalist quirky canon. But I found her outfits and pieces particularly inspired. Aha! Inspo!

The truth is I have not been a big inspo person in general, or at least not a very deliberate one. I mostly use Pinterest for my clients, and my saved images on Instagram are almost entirely indie brands I want to remember for...you guessed it....clients! I like to think of myself as some sort of original genius who immaculately concepts every brilliant outfit I put together without any influence from outside forces like trends or influencers or marketing or media or culture. Which of course is fucking FAKE AND NOT POSSIBLE. I know I speak a lot about being anti-trend in my approach to style, and I mean it, but it's also not completely possible and maybe not entirely aspirational. I guess I want to separate out the marketing of trends from the organic human cycles of culture and art. These things do have natural cycles! Technology and culture shifts and the way we dress ourselves, the things we collect and admire, they shift too! This is actually beautiful, I think? And the process of true inspiration. We see someone do something in a new way and it makes us think differently about the way we do things. Inspo, no? But what I find myself frustrated with is living in a moment where it's completely impossible to separate that organic human cycling of ideas and affinities from the micro-trend marketing machinery of....CAPITALISM, BABY!

Here's the thing -- I really believe there is a skill, or even an art to creating this kind of imagery, to generating an encompassing....vibe....if you will. It is not dissimilar from any kind of collector, curator, or person with a really captivating point of view on how they arrange and see the things they encounter in their life. This isn't new, and it's not something created by social media. Tastemakers and iconoclasts and visionaries who care about the way their space looks and feels have been around as long as humans have. I think of the images of Georgia O'Keeffe's home. I think of Kensuke Ishizu and his artfully tattered school uniforms. This isn't all capitalism! Even I have to admit that! It is the human yearning for beauty and meaning and order and identity and individualism and connection and the messy way these things all mix together a little different for each of us, and that there are always people doing that mix in a way that captivates people. Whether those people are just friends visiting for a cup of coffee or a million followers on the internet.

Knowing that there is something really human about the urge to curate beauty, and also really human about the tendency to react to that beauty and have it evoke emotions in us, to want to find it for ourselves or emulate it so we can experience it again -- it makes me want to know what modern "inspo" accounts and culture could look like disentangled from capitalism and fast fashion. Because the question I come back to is...what am I being inspired to DO? What impulse or action gets ignited in me when I see these images? And what if it wasn't just to go buy something? I think the raw ingredients are there -- even in the account above there was a way she was styling her gym socks that I found totally delightful and heck, I don't have to go buy socks I can just do it with the socks I have!

I follow this artist Isa Toledo and I feel like looking at her account is a tiny glimpse of what could be. It feels more like a piece of art or film to look at than this amorphous catch-all of "inspo inspo inspo." I find her painfully stylish and cool, her work fascinating, she's got a great sense of humor, good politics, and an undeniable artist's eye. We see her outfits, which are often covetable, but her feed does not make me want to go buy the shirt she's wearing. It makes me want to throw my phone out the window and smoke a cigarette (I don't smoke, I don't even know if she does) while I have a cup of coffee in a cluttered little cozy kitchen with the week's newspapers scattered on the table. I don't know.

I want inspiration that flips my brain inside out more than it flips my wallet inside out. I want to look at something and sigh and wish I'd thought of it and then be relieved that it's okay to be inspired by it instead and put my own spin on it with glee. I want to see someone post a little torn piece of flower or the remnants of a delicious meal and feel the romanticized little life they're living, and hopefully to feel compelled to look up from my fucking phone and notice the beauty in my actual life instead of coveting the pretty picture someone made of theirs.