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The 'Nicheness' Epidemic: The Psychology of Dressing Different
Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend about music, where I was discussing a new rock band that I had discovered. I was fawning over how I loved the small details about their music: the nostalgic sound, the boldness of the lyrics, and the way that the bass guitar subtly wove its way through the entire song. Whilst I understand that this is not the most engaging and relatable conversation, I expected my friend to ask to hear one of their songs, share what they had been listening to at the moment or, at the very least, feign an interest in what I was saying and then politely change the topic of conversation. However, something far more unexpected happened. Her face scrunched up in what appeared to be a combination of confusion, envy and fiery intrigue, as she flatly muttered, ‘I’ve never heard of them. How many Spotify monthly listeners do they have?’. Prior to this conversation, the general popularity of the band I had discovered hadn’t occurred to me - I was so fixated on how the music made me feel that I hadn’t stopped to contemplate whether this feeling was something that had been experienced by others before me. After checking and pointing out that they had 1.2 million monthly listeners, my friend relaxed instantly, as if injected with a hard-core sedative. Smug and flippant, she remarked, ‘Well, I guess they aren’t that niche then’.
Here lies the inspiration for my series, 'The 'Nicheness’ Epidemic', where I will explore the recent rise of the excessive desire to be perceived as unique or distinct, focusing more on how this phenomenon redefines what we consider the role of fashion and personal style to be. I have separated this series into three distinct parts, each covering a vital perspective in understanding this phenomenon. This is the first, titled ‘The Psychology of Dressing Different’.
It is well-known in the field of psychology that humans have an innate desire to create a strong and distinct sense of identity; something that distinguishes them from others within most social contexts. This is commonly referred to as the Need for Uniqueness (NfU), coined by Snyder and Fromkin within their book ‘Uniqueness: The Human Pursuit of Difference’. This can be witnessed on a daily basis within the way that people style themselves, as it is an incredibly immediate and visual indicator of how that individual presents themselves to the world. However, their research also points to a very important caveat within this desire for distinctness. Although we often view complete assimilation with others as a rejection of individuality, we also find displeasure in being perceived as too different. As creatures that have evolutionarily learnt to thrive on belonging and connection within a social group, it is not surprising that absolute uniqueness would be distressing, triggering feelings of isolation and social rejection. Thus, Snyder and Fromkin concluded that we feel most comfortable when we are not too similar or different from others, instead yearning for a perfect medium.
However, this is where the conversation takes a paradoxical turn. If we are most content in the trade-off between belonging and individuality when it comes to self-expression, why is everyone seemingly prioritising the latter when it comes to personal style? Why have we seemingly abandoned this innate human balance as if finding a fashion ‘niche’ is something that we have become compelled to pursue, regardless of consequence? At what point do we question whether this pursuit of uniqueness is futile after all?
If everyone is trying to be different, doesn’t that mean that simply nobody is?
At this point in the article, I would like to point out that I do not think that our ability to seek authenticity is extinct. I do not believe that we are intrinsically lost and our attitudes towards fashion are guided aimlessly by our biological whims, as if incapable of making our own decisions or deciding our own identities. However, I do believe that we have been forced to abandon aspects of our innate authenticity in order to survive in this new and ever-changing world.
With the rise of the internet, social media and, more recently, artificial intelligence, we have become increasingly able to access information, connect with people and communicate faster than ever before. I am not going to turn this into a banal rant about how social media is ruining our lives, but I am going to talk about how it interacts with the way we curate our stylistic identities.
Historically, our fashion sense, or even interests, aesthetics and behaviours would have been influenced by our immediate environment; by the people who we happen to interact with organically on a daily basis. We would outwardly express traits that would give us that sense of belonging, whilst quietly holding onto our more obscure qualities that safely distinguished us from our peers. However, the introduction of social media platforms has granted us access to people that we would not have otherwise met, eliminating the geographical barriers of interaction entirely. Consequently, those interests that we would have once considered weird or unconventional in the context of our immediate environment are now widely accepted within large communities that we can connect with online. In finding belonging in these digital pockets through shared interests, aesthetics and cultural references, what once distinguished us from others has now become a tool of belonging within a specific in-group. This may appear to be largely positive at first, but it instead creates an interesting contradiction.
Although social media has made it easier than ever to find people who are just like us, we cannot forget that humans do not feel comfortable in complete conformity. It makes us feel mediocre, boring, unoriginal, inauthentic. We strive to distinguish ourselves creatively, to prove to the world that there is absolutely nobody like us but us.
And so we have begun to chase uniqueness, in any form that we can find it. This has become most pertinent in our yearning to establish individual style, whether this is through the establishment and consumption of fleeting micro-trends, or in asserting ‘hot fashion takes’ to promote idiosyncrasy whilst belittling those whose tastes are not merely as elite as ours.
One example that comes to mind is the steep trajectory of the ‘toe-separating-shoes’ epidemic. With origins in 15th century Japanese thong footwear, Maison Margiela released their iconic split-toe tabi shoes, which quickly made their way into mainstream fashion. As the initial exclusivity of these shoes slowly dwindled with the manufacturing of knock-offs and the style being re-purposed by other brands, the original ‘niche’ and exclusive element of these shoes was eradicated. Thus, the fashion world yearned for a new, more extreme fashion hyper-fixation to feast upon. This prompted the return of the Vibram FiveFingers to popular fashion culture, just under 20 years after the Italian brand first launched the shoe. Despite podiatrists warning against this stark transition from traditional shoes to minimalist footwear due to the risk of tissue damage and calf pain, their popularity continued to sky-rocket and is still considered a part of the 'cool girl' aesthetic to this day.
This feeds into the concept of fashion being a means of chasing absolute uniqueness, under the misguided assertion that if we are constantly reinventing ourselves through personal style, we will eventually be able to tap into an aesthetic or identity that nobody has discovered yet. We forget that fashion, art, and even music is supposed to be about how it makes us feel, and the memories and passions that it reignites in us, rather than popularity or status.
Overall, this desire to distinguish ourselves from others is not inherently problematic - it is simply part of our psychology and is an extremely useful tool in shaping our identities and trying to curate the person that we wish to become. However, it is the environment in which we exist that has evolved, with social media widening the parameters for who we can interact with and where we can establish the sense of belonging that we so crave. Thus, the ‘nicheness’ epidemic is not simply a consequence of us wishing to be different, but rather us tirelessly trying to find our place in an ever-changing and expanding world.
In the next article of this series, I will dive more deeply into how we navigate this challenge in the wider world - more specifically, how fashion, art and culture have become the very facets through which we construct and communicate our individual identities.
Sources used:
Snyder, C. R., & Fromkin, H. L. (1980). Uniqueness: The Human Pursuit of Difference. Plenum Press, New York.
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