lol hi!! There’s so much ground to cover on the (hot girl) consumer response to Tariffs, based on current state signals + key economic parallels in American history. Instead of doing a big dump of info, I’m going to break this up over the next few weeks/months. Likely not as consecutive posts, but sprinkles of what’s happening and the deeper why (economic/systemic/perhaps subconscious) — especially as it relates to shifts in what we’re wearing & consuming lately.
I know everyone is familiar with discussing recession dressing (90s minimalism repackaged into whatever fuels U) & recession indicators (lipstick/hemline/et al index… or the price of eggs… or how str8 men used 2 go to war but now go to pilates — according to twitter)….. BUT — tariff dressing is fresh and dare I say uncommon for the zeitgeist.
Unlike inflation, which was felt GLOBALLY and was stoked by very real problems via supply chain x the pandemic… tariffs present an entirely different (politicized) problem for consumers: increased prices on imported goods/decreased access to imported goods based on suppliers who are pulling out early. Even though consumers are experiencing recession anxiety, I think it’s too simplistic to bucketize their response to tariffs as recession-wear. Instead, tariff dressing is like her chaotic fraternal twin — much more unpredictable, but they share the same source DNA. Here, recession energy served as a withdrawal (beige, qu*et luxury) and tariff dressing serves as an emotional reaction… a preemptive adaptation to the uncertainty of what’s next (and how it will actually impact your downstream).