Remember Lookbook.nu? Before people started taking ’fit pics for Instagram and ’fit check videos for TikTok, millennials were sharing their best outfits on the youth culture community website. Posting a photo of a nice outfit isn’t new, but the content economy and the algorithm-ification of personal style have led to a transformation of the outfit selfie—be that by way of a mirror or a self-timer—in 2023. The ’fit pic today is underproduced, is formatted to be posted in groups rather than solo, and has become the preferred form of fashion content on social media over glam shots and “cheugy” unboxing videos. This year was all about friendly Get Ready With Me videos, off-the-cuff ’fit check clips, and throwaway selfies. Welcome to the age of the lo-fi ’fit pic.
“There’s a pattern in which what consumers like and engage with quickly becomes commodified on social media,” says Chloe King, a ’fit pic savant with a career in luxury retail in New York City. The arrival of Instagram turned street style into its own mini-industry at the shows, where celebrities and influencers (and more than an editor or two) get paid to wear full looks by brands. Get Ready With Me videos, which rose in 2022 as TikTok’s answer to Instagram’s manicured fashion imagery, but they too turned into sponsored content before long. “Maybe people are fatigued from feeling constantly marketed to, and therefore drawn to something really straightforward,” says King, “something that feels human-to-human when they need ideas on how to get dressed.”
Gen Z repackaged the mirror selfie in 2023. The images that we used to take to privately commemorate a good outfit or to text friends in response to “what are you wearing tonight” prompts are now leading the charge when it comes to fashion #content across TikTok, Instagram, and X. Influencers, stylists, celebrities, and fashionphiles (including designers—we see you, Marc Jacobs and Stefano Pilati) are taking formatted images of their every outfit, sometimes as serious archival documentation, other times as innocent demonstrations of their sartorial dexterity, but almost always to post them. The consistency of having the same set and pose is part of the appeal, it makes the image about the clothes and lets followers judge the outfit independent of context, but there’s more to it that meets the eye.
Alexander Roth, a ’fit pic maverick who works as an influencer and creative director, says he started taking mirror pictures of his outfits back in 2018. “But I didn’t start documenting every ’fit until 2022,” he explains, “not until I started taking TikTok seriously.” These images are a way for Roth to diversify his content between Instagram, where his presence is more editorial, and TikTok and X, where he lets his hair down. Roth currently has over 300 photos of different outfits in his camera roll, all in the same pose in front of the same mirror. How does he know all of this? He keeps them all in a folder in his camera roll. It’s nothing short of a diary, a 2023 fashion equivalent of those daily photo aging projects that were popular a decade or so ago.
King recently bought a full length mirror and started posting ’fit pics. She likes the idea of “challenging the assumption that fashion people just dress performatively during fashion week,” she says. Some people dress up for real life, not just for the grid or for Phil Oh slideshows. It’s also about posting these images in groups. “You see the whole puzzle of a person’s style and not just one outfit,” King says, “the whole painting instead of the brush strokes of an individual look. When the photo style and location don’t change, it really becomes all about the clothes.”
The rise of the ’fit pic in its current form is a reaction to the endless proliferation of fashion content (you have to diversify to stand out!), utility turned into an obvious content opportunity (you already have the images, might as well just post them), and our human instinct to archive and organize. Another friend saves their ’fit pics in their iPhone’s Notes app as a sort of dressing guide for when they travel. Keeping track of outfits can be a balm for sartorial anxiety—think of it as Cher Horowtiz’s computerized closet in Clueless.
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“It’s also the fact that this year, everyone became a critic,” says Roth of the way talking about fashion today has become almost as popular as fashion itself. “We like to look at what others wear and think how we would have done it differently,” he said. While Roth doesn’t look back at his images to replicate outfits—he never re-wears his looks—he takes ’fit pics to track the evolution of his style. The reality is that the Age of the ’Fit Pic has made space for competition. Whose outfits are better? Which kind of ’fits conquer the algorithm and stand out on your followers’ feeds? It’s like the Outfit Olympics over here, and everyone’s looking to take this to the next level.
Consultant Amanda Murray, aka @londongirlinnyc on Instagram, rounds up her outfits on her feed under the caption “Recently.” The routine eventually turned into a business strategy; these days she posts her every look to a shoppable website where she links each piece or an alternative. It’s never been easier to “shop the look.” Kendall Jenner’s outings and ’fit pics in Bottega Veneta resulted in a campaign in which the Italian brand cracked the celebrity-style-as-content code. Jenner wears the thing, a site (like this one) reports on it, the brand gets attention, the article gets clicks, Jenner gets sartorial clout (and presumably a paycheck), and everyone’s a winner—all because of a quick shot of a good outfit.
Today people simultaneously operate as both consumers and creators of content. It’s only natural that the things we know best—an outfit pic, a mirror selfie—mutate and take new shape as we get bored of their initial iterations. The ’fit pic is here to stay, and today its formatted, utilitarian, and deliciously consumable content, but things change. Roth takes the same image every day in the hallway of his apartment building. What happens if he moves? “Then it’s the end of an era like the one before this one,” he said. “I’ll find another mirror, it’s never that serious.”
