Why I’m Having an Existential Crisis About Getting Dressed Every Morning

Last Thursday morning, I’m rushing to catch the elevator in my building when my neighbor slides in right before the doors close. This is Sarah from the fourth floor – we do that polite neighbor small talk thing maybe once a month. Anyway, she’s wearing this whole situation: wide-leg cargo pants, cropped tank, chunky boots that probably cost more than my monthly T pass, and enough silver rings to set off airport security. Very much giving off that effortless cool-girl energy that I can never quite nail without looking like I’m trying too hard.

We’re chatting about how brutal the humidity has been, normal elevator conversation stuff. The next morning, same routine, same elevator, same Sarah – except she looks like a completely different person. Now she’s in this prairie-style midi dress with puff sleeves, ballet flats, and an actual ribbon in her hair. I’m talking full Little House on the Prairie vibes, like she’s about to churn butter instead of heading to her marketing job downtown.

I couldn’t help myself. “That’s quite the style switch from yesterday.”

She laughed, totally unbothered. “Oh yeah, yesterday was my alt moment. Today I’m feeling more coquette. Tomorrow I’ll probably go full coastal grandmother because I’m having lunch with my actual grandmother and she finds it hilarious when I dress like her.”

Here’s the thing though – this isn’t Sarah the fashion chameleon who’s always been experimental with clothes. This is Sarah from 4B who, up until maybe a year ago, lived in the same rotation of Everlane basics and white sneakers. The kind of consistent, safe wardrobe that I honestly envied because at least she never had to think about it. Now suddenly she’s got a different fully-formed aesthetic for every day of the week.

I’ve been thinking about that elevator encounter way too much lately because it perfectly captures something I’ve been noticing everywhere – we’re all having some kind of collective fashion identity crisis. Or maybe the whole concept of having a consistent personal style is just… dead? Replaced by this mood-based, aesthetic-switching approach that would’ve seemed completely insane ten years ago.

“I don’t really have a signature look anymore,” my friend Kate told me over drinks last month. This is coming from someone who spent her entire twenties building this very specific minimalist wardrobe – everything black, white, or camel, very architectural, very intentional. I used to be slightly intimidated by how put-together and consistent she always looked. “Some days I want to dress like I own an art gallery in SoHo. Other days I want to look like I teach pottery classes in Vermont. It just depends on what I wake up feeling like.”

When I asked if this made getting dressed more complicated, she looked at me like I was speaking another language. “It’s actually way easier. Instead of trying to figure out who I am through my clothes, I just decide who I want to be today.”

This shift away from having a consistent style isn’t happening in isolation. It’s been building for years, and honestly, it makes sense when you think about how differently we consume fashion now compared to even five years ago.

I called up Dr. Mina Chen, who teaches fashion psychology at Parsons, because I needed someone smarter than me to explain what’s happening. “We’re seeing aesthetic fragmentation at scale,” she told me. “Previous generations built more singular style identities because they got their fashion inspiration from unified sources – magazines, TV, movies – that promoted consistent trends. Today’s consumers are absorbing thousands of micro-trends and aesthetic tribes simultaneously through social media, giving them this much broader visual vocabulary to pull from daily.”

The numbers back this up too. Research from StyleScan shows that the average person in 2025 is regularly buying items across six different aesthetic categories, compared to just two or three a decade ago. Fast fashion retailers are saying that cohesive collections are basically dead – now they’re throwing together random assortments spanning multiple aesthetics because that’s what people actually want to buy.

“Nobody’s ordering a complete ‘look’ anymore,” a buyer at a major retail chain told me (they asked me not to use their name, which tells you something about how dramatic this shift has been). “They’re mixing one coastal grandma piece with something balletcore, maybe a ’90s reference, and something clean girl – all in the same cart. The old rules about building a cohesive wardrobe are completely out the window.”

On TikTok, this aesthetic-hopping has basically become its own content category. Those “different aesthetics for different days” videos get millions of views. I spent way too much time last week going down a rabbit hole of creators showing their dramatic day-to-day style transformations. The hashtag #aesthetichopping has over 340 million views, which is frankly insane when you think about it.

“I have seven different mood boards saved on my phone,” explained Lily, a 24-year-old creator with 350,000 followers who I found through this research spiral. “When I wake up, I check in with myself about what energy I’m feeling, then I look at the corresponding mood board for inspiration. Yesterday was dark academia, today is sport-luxe, tomorrow might be balletcore depending on my vibe.”

What’s really interesting is that this isn’t just a Gen Z thing. I’m seeing it across all age groups, even people who you’d think would be more set in their style ways.

“My mom now has different jewelry personalities for different days,” my colleague Amanda told me. “She’ll text me photos like ‘Today I’m channeling Stevie Nicks’ or ‘Going for minimalist Scandinavian energy.’ This is a woman who wore the same pearl earrings every single day for thirty years.”

The economics of this make it possible in a way it wouldn’t have been before. Rental services, resale platforms, ultra-fast fashion – you can now access pretty much any aesthetic at any price point. Why commit to one style identity when you can rent a coastal grandma outfit for the weekend, flip a balletcore phase on Vestiaire, or try out indie sleaze for twenty bucks at Shein?

“The financial barriers to constant aesthetic switching have basically disappeared,” retail analyst Jordan Kim explained when I called to get some industry perspective. “Consumers can now access the full spectrum of style expression at every price point. The traditional approach of investing in signature pieces that define your look feels outdated when you can continuously refresh your identity for less than what a designer handbag used to cost.”

For brands, this is creating some serious challenges. Companies that built their identity around one consistent aesthetic are struggling to keep up with customers who might want to shop like them one day and completely differently the next.

“We’re having to completely rethink everything,” the creative director of a contemporary brand told me (again, anonymously – apparently admitting your brand strategy is broken is still sensitive). “The assumption that customers are loyal to our aesthetic doesn’t hold anymore. Even our most dedicated shoppers are mixing our pieces with completely different vibes from day to day.”

Some brands are responding by intentionally creating more aesthetic diversity in their collections. Others are doubling down on their niche, hoping to capture people on the specific days they’re channeling that vibe. Both approaches represent a pretty fundamental shift from how fashion has traditionally worked.

But what I find most fascinating about this whole thing is what it says about how we think about identity now. Why are we suddenly so comfortable with being stylistically inconsistent?

“In previous decades, consistent personal style was seen as a marker of authenticity and integrity,” Dr. Chen explained. “The idea was that your true self should be expressed consistently through your clothing. Today, authenticity is increasingly defined by emotional honesty rather than consistency. It’s considered more genuine to dress according to your fluctuating emotional state than to maintain a consistent aesthetic that might not reflect your internal reality.”

This mirrors bigger cultural shifts too – from gender fluidity to career changes, the idea that you should pick one identity and stick with it is being rejected everywhere. Fashion is just the most visible way this plays out.

“I think it’s actually more honest,” Kate said when I brought this up. “The idea that I’m exactly the same person every day is the real fiction. Some days I wake up feeling bold and edgy, other days I’m craving comfort and nostalgia. Why shouldn’t my clothes reflect that reality instead of forcing myself into some artificial consistency?”

There’s definitely something liberating about this perspective. The pressure to develop and maintain a signature style – that elusive French girl effortlessness or perfect minimalism that fashion magazines have always pushed as the ultimate goal – has been intense. The freedom to wake up and completely reinvent yourself visually without judgment represents a pretty significant cultural shift.

But not everyone’s celebrating this new flexibility. Some industry people see it as symptomatic of something deeper and more concerning.

“This isn’t fashion freedom, it’s fashion ADD,” argued Diane, a stylist who’s worked in the industry for over thirty years. “Real personal style develops slowly through this dialogue between who you are and how you present yourself to the world. This constant aesthetic jumping doesn’t allow for that depth to develop. It’s like swiping through dating profiles without ever actually getting to know anyone.”

There’s also the environmental aspect, which honestly keeps me up at night sometimes. While rental and resale help, the sheer volume of stuff you need to maintain multiple aesthetic identities is concerning, especially when fast fashion is often the enabler.

“I worry we’re using ‘mood-based dressing’ as an excuse for constant consumption,” sustainable fashion advocate Maria Torres told me. “You can absolutely have a wardrobe that adapts to different moods without buying new things all the time. The risk is that ‘different aesthetic every day’ becomes justification for endless shopping.”

Like most cultural shifts, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Maybe we’re just moving toward a more flexible understanding of personal style – one that allows for variation while still maintaining some thread of individual expression.

“The most interesting dressers have always had range,” the anonymous retail buyer pointed out. “Look at Rihanna or David Bowie. They never locked themselves into one aesthetic, but there was still something recognizably them in every look. Maybe we’re just seeing that flexibility become democratized.”

I’ve noticed my own approach changing over the past couple years. While I still have core pieces that feel fundamentally me, I’m more willing to experiment with dramatically different looks depending on my mood or what I’m doing. Last week alone, I wore a hyper-minimalist all-black outfit to an art opening, a bright printed dress to dinner with friends, and slouchy jeans with an oversized sweater to the office – three looks that would’ve seemed like total style whiplash to my younger self.

As for Sarah from the elevator, I ran into her again yesterday. She was in sleek leggings, a technical jacket, and trail runners – full outdoorsy mode.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Today you’re feeling sporty?”

She grinned. “Actually, I’m literally going hiking after work. Sometimes clothes are just clothes, you know?”

And maybe that’s the real insight here. In our rush to categorize every outfit as part of some aesthetic tribe, we might be overthinking what used to be a simpler process. Maybe the real fashion freedom isn’t the ability to embody a different aesthetic every day, but the freedom to stop analyzing our clothing choices quite so intensely.

Or maybe not. Maybe this anxious self-awareness about our style choices – this tendency to think “I’m doing coastal grandmother today” instead of just putting on a linen shirt – is its own form of identity expression. Fashion has always been both instinctive and intellectual, personal and performative.

All I know for sure is that tomorrow morning, I’ll stand in front of my closet and ask myself a question that would’ve made zero sense to my mother’s generation: “What aesthetic am I feeling today?” And somehow, that feels like both progress and a very specific type of modern anxiety.