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As of earlier this month, TikTok users can purchase Amazon products advertised on the social media platform without leaving the app. It’s a move the partners say will “create a frictionless shopping experience” for TikTokers to “discover, browse and buy”. Several other new media-retail tie-ups have been announced in the weeks since, designed to make it easier to shop: YouTube creators can now leverage affiliate links with an expanded brand network via Shopify, and viewers of the Netflix show Emily in Paris can purchase the main character’s notoriously outlandish outfits via Google Lens.
These partnerships are testament to fashion’s new reality, says Simar Deol, foresight analyst at strategic consultancy The Future Laboratory, and they’re only the beginning. “Consumers have expectations for instantaneous retail opportunities from gaming to social media,” she explains.
But sustainability advocates are concerned that such partnerships — like many other forces, particularly on social media, that are already in play — are going to push consumer behaviour further in the wrong direction. Not only do they participate in enabling overconsumption, they almost incentivise it, critics say.
Fashion has gotten really good at making us want more. It’s core to the climate crisis, recent research argues.
“Social media has reduced the friction to overconsumption,” says Dr Barry Schwartz, professor emeritus of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of The Paradox of Choice. But friction, he explains, isn’t just what slows things down; it’s a necessary level of inefficiency that serves as an “insurance policy” against unintended consequences and unexpected events.
Friction can also be a safeguard against impulse purchases, which experts say contribute to overconsumption — those items that people buy on a whim but will never actually wear, or thought would fit into and don’t. “When you remove barriers to purchasing — such as purchasing in-app or with a single click — you remove the cooling-off period that might stop people from acting on these impulses,” says Dr Regina Frei, professor of sustainable and circular systems within the Fashion, Textiles and Technology Institute at University of the Arts London (UAL).
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The e-commerce companies involved reject the notion of a link between their partnerships and overconsumption. Shopify says its YouTube deal is intended to help merchants connect with consumers in places they are already shopping. Likewise, Amazon says its partnership with TikTok is designed to provide customers with an opportunity to discover new brands and products, and make purchases in a way that’s convenient for them — “just as retailers have done for many years by placing ads for popular products on TV, in newspapers and online.” (Netflix, Google and YouTube did not respond to requests for comment, and TikTok declined to comment.)
These partnerships thrive by meeting consumers where they are, identifying existing impulses and making them easier to indulge. Can sustainability do the same thing, but in the opposite direction?
Understanding consumer behaviour
First, we need to understand why people overconsume. Joseph Merz, chairman of ecological overshoot research lab the Merz Institute, and senior fellow at the Global Evergreening Alliance, says it helps to frame it not as an environmental crisis but a crisis of human behaviour. We are spurred by evolutionary impulses to signal status, defend our territories and acquire resources. “Late-stage capitalism has contextualised these impulses with huge houses, private jets and shiny cars. We like to show that we can afford these things, that we have enough resources to do so, which in turn makes us more attractive to other people.”
He believes that creating “social guardrails” around overconsumption — making it as taboo as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol or committing a crime — could be the answer to curbing it. Fashion could use its potential to influence culture and societal norms to help drive this; something that the UN Environment Programme has already called on fashion to do through its guidance encouraging fashion communicators to lend their skills to defining and glamourising what it calls a “1.5-degree lifestyle”.
More proactive efforts are needed, too. If the mainstream industry can intervene in the market to encourage consumption, those in the sustainability sphere can intervene to reduce it.
Content creator Abigail Roe created ‘deliberation station’ and ‘think tank’ worksheets to guide people through purchasing decisions and decluttering by asking targeted questions such as: where will this item be in five years? Is this the best way for me to obtain it? Does it solve a problem that I have genuinely noticed? Operating under the moniker Downsize Upgrade, Roe says her process is designed to help people slow down their decision-making, and untangle impulse purchases based on manufactured wants from thoughtful purchases based on genuine needs.
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It prompts strong emotions from social media users. “It should be completely normal to think about a purchasing decision for a couple of minutes, or even a couple of weeks,” she says. “The deliberation station has 12 questions, and my videos are often less than 90 seconds, but I get hundreds of comments calling it extreme — it’s very telling that people think that.”
Roe has a copy of the worksheet taped to her credit card, and refuses to store her card details online, meaning that she has to pull out her physical card and consult the worksheet every time she makes a purchase. There is potential for a higher-tech version of her analogue system, she says. What if the deliberation station was a mandatory pop-up quiz that all consumers had to complete before confirming their online purchases?
Pop-ups that slow down the purchasing journey and prompt consumers to rethink their decisions could have further potential. What if digital wardrobe apps were integrated into the e-commerce checkout process, so attempts to buy yet another white T-shirt would be met with a reminder that you already own three, and perhaps you could style them with X or Y item before considering buying a new one? AI styling platform Style DNA, founded in 2019, is trying to make this a reality, having developed technology that advises consumers on new purchases based on the colours and shapes that suit them, as well as the items already in their wardrobes.
Circular services like repair could also be integrated at checkout, offering consumers the option to repair or alter the item they’re looking to replace, perhaps with accompanying inspiration photos from Pinterest or Instagram, or even DIY tutorials from TikTok. Rental and resale options could also be integrated into the checkout process, rather than siloed, to more seamlessly displace new products (UK startup Zoa is already working on this).
UAL’s Frei also proposes a mandatory “cooling-off period” for new purchases, whereby shoppers have to confirm their intention to buy after 24 hours, before their order is dispatched, as a way to curb impulse purchases. “The instantaneous buying and shipping is where many problems occur,” she explains. As a further incentive to people to only buy what they need, those who turn down the purchase after a cooling-off period might be offered some kind of “green credit” or reward. “I’m not sure who would fund or create this, but it would reward people who make more responsible purchasing decisions. It’s not enough for people to know they did the right thing, they need to be recognised or gain something for acting in this way, to reinforce those positive behaviours.”
Ida Petersson, former Browns buying director and co-founder of brand strategy and creative agency Good Eggs, suggests limits on the sale and advertising of fashion products. However, it’s not an easy model to sustain financially for those at the middle to lower end of the pyramid. “You could put limits on social media advertising too,” adds Petersson. “Perhaps influencers and brands could only advertise 10 items per year, so they would be more selective and individual.”
If retailers are finding success by meeting consumers where they are, perhaps those looking to slam the brakes on overconsumption should do the same. Last year, non-profit The Or Foundation sent a textile waste “zombie” around high street stores to highlight fashion’s overproduction and overconsumption crisis, shoehorning a complex critique into Instagram-worthy images. Earlier this year, secondhand platform Vinted took a similar approach with its ‘Too Many’ campaign, confronting viewers with their overconsumption by showing people wearing, for example, five pairs of sunglasses or nine hats at once.
When resale platform Ebay replaced ultra-fast fashion sponsors on reality dating show Love Island, its UK arm saw searches for “pre-loved clothes” rise by 1,600 per cent in the first six months. Vestiaire Collective is hoping for similar results after appearing in a recent episode of Netflix’s Emily in Paris. Interventions like this, which act as a Trojan horse for sustainability, might have a better chance of success, says Schwartz. “It’s much harder to instil a less-is-better attitude in people than a more-is-better attitude — you’re going against the grain.”
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