If your social media feeds feel like an endless scroll of the same outfits, Amy Odell thinks that's no accident. In a New York Times opinion piece, Odell argues that fashion's center of gravity has shifted from designers with strong points of view to algorithms trained on whatever's trending. She points to brands like Edikted and Shein, which vacuum up data from online searches, social media, and celebrity looks to churn out hundreds of cheap styles a month made in China—an approach that one Edikted founder flatly described as being "more like a data company than a fashion company." "The rise of the algorithm-designer and the fall of independent brands represent the latest stage of the financialization of fashion, the triumph of money over art and craft," Odell laments.
She frames this as part of a broader story: decades of consolidation, private equity takeovers, and the prioritizing of scale and margins over creativity. Once-distinct labels like Everlane, APC, Versace, and Rag & Bone, Odell writes, have blurred under corporate ownership, losing the singular vision that once defined them. The result is what she dubs "fashion slop": clothes that are efficient, optimized, and oddly interchangeable. "As fashion becomes more consolidated and homogenized ... it hasn't seemed to figure out how to provoke and shake up aesthetics and culture, creating crazes that people open their wallets to be part of," Odell writes. For her full case on how finance and algorithms reshaped your closet—and what's been lost along the way—read her essay in full here.
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