The Sameness Problem

Everything looks the same and I have thoughts

We are seeing it everywhere right now: in fashion, in branding, in the way people showcase their “personal brand” online. Everything is starting to look like everything else. So today I want to talk about it specifically in activewear, because it’s the category where I’m feeling it the most acutely :)

Walk through any activewear brand’s website right now and tell me what you see… Minimal logo, neutral palette, seamless fabric, a double-layered bra. Remember the first time you saw that bra? It felt genuinely innovative!! Now I cannot name a brand that hasn’t done their own rendition of it. The thing that made something special becomes the thing everyone does until it means nothing at all, and then we start the whole cycle over again.

We’re even seeing it with vintage. The original appeal of buying vintage activewear was that it felt different, the colors were bolder, the branding was not so darn minimal, the whole thing had a personality that modern activewear had edited out. Now brands are copying that too, the copies of the copies are coming for the antidote to the copies.

TikTok made this so much worse, specifically for the fitness space. There’s a specific feeling of walking into your own class and being able to clock exactly what everyone had been watching that week just by looking around the room. A colorway, a silhouette, a specific bra style and you just know. That’s not personal style, that’s an algorithm wearing clothes. The “pilates princess” era told an entire generation of women that they needed to look a certain way to belong in a group fitness class, and every activewear brand with a marketing budget was ready and waiting with an email telling you they had exactly what you needed for the aesthetic. You don’t need any of it. Wear what you actually love, the pink matching set and scrunchie if that’s you, the gray vintage cotton tee and track pants if that’s you.