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Validation and its effect on one’s personal style

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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Ashoka chapter.

Have you noticed yourself wearing the same necklace for over a week because someone complimented you? Or do you have the same three tops on repeat simply because they get you the most compliments while wearing them? It’s a pretty common occurrence; in fact, validation shapes the way our lives go.

An example of this is Regina’s tank top in Mean Girls. When Janis cuts holes in Regina’s top, she remains unfazed and confidently wears it. Despite its impracticality, it becomes a trend simply because it has been validated by the most popular girl at school. 

Some contemporary equivalents of this ‘Regina George’ effect are the instant trends created by celebrities and influencers alike. Emma Chamberlain’s viral coffee cup pose on TikTok stems from the way that she holds her coffee cup. This became so popular that she even managed to launch  her own coffee brand, Chamberlain Coffee. 

Similar to Chamberlain Coffee is Hailey Bieber’s brand Rhode Beauty. Her viral ‘glazed doughnut’ nail became a viral trend and even extended to ‘glazed doughnut’ skin and in this way, helped create a market for her to cater her products to.

This validation from popular figures also helps create new marketing strategies. The “sold out” phenomenon is one of them. This  refers to the situation  when celebrities wear or use certain items of clothing or accessories, their prices increase and a variety of fast fashion dupes spring up in the market. Jenna Ortega’s black sheer dress from ‘Wednesday’ is one of the best examples: after her dance scene  went viral, there was a rise in the number of sheer black dresses available at most fast fashion stores. The specific dress she wore from the brand Alaïa ended up getting sold out. This effect even extended to the specific black nail polish shade she was wearing. 

This phenomenon also taps into the strategy that scarcity creates more desire and waitlists tend to  become a symbol of one’s status –  the Birkin Waitlist is infamous for this. One cannot simply waltz into a store and buy a Birkin, you have to be “offered” the opportunity to buy one and this requires building a repertoire with the brand. The waitlist is rumoured to be as long as 3 years, and the worst part is that certain colours and materials have longer wait times than others.

Another way in which popular influencers create instant trends is through “Get Ready With Me” videos. A simple mention of a product can result in it selling out.  Most influencers also have their own affiliate links for buying products which make purchases instant and often provide their audience with small discounts. Plus, the repeated exposure to certain products over multiple videos helps create trust in the product.

An important factor to keep in mind here is the effect of social media. Returning to  the example of the Birkin waitlist,  many  videos titled ‘How I got my Birkin’ have gained a lot of traction across multiple platforms.  With unboxing becoming a new genre of content on the internet, the value of being on the waitlist is more of a prestige than the bag in itself.

Algorithms too tend to amplify the popularity of products; they  have the ability to show a product to millions of people within a few hours. With algorithms tailoring themselves to the users, they  tend  to group content showing similar items, creating trend clusters. Additionally, the ease with which a video can become viral by simply using trending audio’s  has not gone unnoticed by brands, both big and small, trying to market their products to a larger ‘global’ set of customers.

Along with social media, the easy availability of dupes in the market has made switching one’s style extremely convenient. Fast fashion brands and mass sellers like Amazon and AliExpress tend to mass produce viral items as soon as they can to earn  as much profit as possible. Several  influencers regularly make videos providing their viewers with dupes of viral products. In fact, at times the videos showcasing dupes of viral products get more views than those of the original products themselves  All in all, it seems like social media has given us excess amounts of validation and products to purchase in order to receive the sort of ‘feel good’ we crave in our lives and thus changed almost everyone’s sense of style in some way or the other.

Now, we often change our personal style because of subtle compliments made by people. This is our psyche responding to social validation and quietly reshaping our own style choices without us even registering it.

With influencers, the psychological impact becomes more clear. When someone perceived to be prestigious validates something our minds automatically view it as desirable, regardless of how impractical it is and whether we like it. It comes to the point where our minds absorb and replicate their mannerisms and style choices without making conscious decisions. 

Further, with social media marketing often soft launching certain products to test the markets for feedback our minds get primed with associating certain aesthetics as desirable and luxurious. In turn, we tend to internalise their style cues. Influencers’ affiliate links make us impulse purchase products before we’ve even had the time to register whether we really need the product.

Often, these limited-edition items are backed by various influencers playing into our subconscious need for exclusivity and validation. Making buying certain products an experience, i.e., buying into a narrative of worth and acceptance.

Whether we realise it or not, each like, comment, and share feeds into a complex web of psychological validation, subtly steering our style away from genuine self-expression and toward a collectively validated aesthetic. We’re not just changing what we wear; we’re rewiring how we think about personal style, often without realising the profound depth of this transformation.

I'm a first-year student majoring in Computer Science at Ashoka University. I fancy all things pink and cosy. When I'm not busy navigating the campus, you can find me curling up with a good book (because who doesn't love getting lost in a great story?), binge-watching rom-coms and exploring new hobbies.