You Don’t Hate the Outfit. You Just Hate Who’s Wearing It.

‘Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier.’ - Pierre Bourdieu

We’ve all seen it happen.

An outfit is written off as cheap, tacky, too much – only when it inevitably shows up months later on a thinner, wealthier, and likely whiter body, it is the pinnacle of fashion. 

There’s an uncomfortable truth sitting at the heart of a lot of the fashion content online: sometimes the outfit isn’t really the point. Take the ‘Is it a fit or is she just skinny?’ trend. For years, the fashion industry has quietly operated on the assumption that thinness is inherently stylish – that a slim body elevates whatever it’s put in, and that the clothes themselves are almost secondary. So when a look goes viral and everyone starts frantically scrambling for sold-out links and affordable dupes, it’s worth considering whether the desire is actually for the outfit, or for the body that makes it feel desirable in the first place. 

Think of Zendaya’s outfit at the most recent Spider-Man premiere: a second-hand eBay graphic tee that sent the internet into a frenzy, with resale prices spiking overnight and fashion media calling it one of her best looks yet. It’s tempting to dismiss this by saying, “It’s Zendaya!” and assuming that anything she wears would land the same way because of her celebrity status, but that completely misses the underlying point. The same outfit worn by a plus-size public figure would likely have been met with a very different reception, as seen through the long history of criticism faced by Gabourey Sibide, Ashley Graham, and others who have been subject to harsh tabloid headlines and internet trolls simply for existing in their natural bodies. 

Zendaya at the Spiderman movie premiere rockin’ a t-shirt.

So the real question then becomes: are we praising the styling of the outfit itself, or are we reacting to a body we’ve been conditioned to read as aspirational?

It’s also important to understand that this isn’t a new phenomenon. In the early 2000’s, “chav” became Britain’s favourite new slur for a very specific type of person - working-class, and visibly so. Tracksuits, big hoops, heavy jewellery, Burberry check. The word may have been a style critique, but moreover it was a verdict on an entire way of existing and the connotation was enough for Burberry to respond by quietly pulling the check from their collections entirely. 

Then, as these things often go, a switch flipped and people began embracing the aesthetic. An entire history of prejudice erased and rebranded with Y2K nostalgia reshot on picture perfect models, resold at Urban Outfitters, reposted as vintage inspo by the children of people who coined the slur.

And if that's how it plays out for white working-class aesthetics, it runs even deeper when race enters the equation.

Acrylic nails, bodycon silhouettes, and large jewellery – all aesthetics with deep cultural roots, emerging from Black and brown communities that have historically been excluded from mainstream fashion rather than celebrated by it. Large hoop earrings are often dismissed as “ghetto” in one context, then celebrated as “statement accessories” in another. Long, embellished nails are mocked as impractical; that is until they’re featured in a high-fashion editorial. Fashion media has always had the power to decide what gets taken seriously and what doesn’t;  so when the same publications that have spent years ignoring or mocking an aesthetic suddenly begin embracing it on white models, it’s easy to see what they consider the issue. 

We like to pretend that taste is instinctive, that we just know when something looks good or bad. But words like “trashy” reveal something else entirely. They aren’t neutral descriptors. They’re moral judgements disguised as aesthetic opinions. And more often than not, they’re directed at the same groups: working class people, black and brown communities, immigrants, plus-size bodies. What’s being rejected isn’t the outfit, but the person in it. The trend cycle only works if we keep mistaking prejudice for preference. So maybe the most radical thing you can do with your own taste is to stop letting it classify anyone at all.