The situation will be familiar to many. The closet is full of clothes, but without even thinking about it, you just added that cashmere sweater from your favorite brand to your online shopping cart. While the transaction is completed, convince yourself of the purchase and counter the reproaches your brain throws at you with arguments difficult to refute: it is a wardrobe investment, it is at a very good price, you will wear it non-stop… However, the guilt of purchasing something you don’t really need overshadows any shred of happiness you might feel when you receive the email confirming your purchase. The phenomenon is not new, nor is it limited to the sphere of shopping (eg see ecoculpa or shame at not doing enough to protect the environment).
In Sweden, they even coined a term to define this behavior of feeling very guilty after buying clothes. With the name kopskam, the Swedes allude to the feeling of shame when buying unnecessary clothing. The concept has started to gain popularity in recent years in a country where climate activism has run strong, thanks to figures like Greta Thunberg, who is originally from Stockholm and has declared on more than one occasion that she doesn’t buy new clothes. It is not the first time this type of phenomenon has been conceptualized. In 2018, media around the world repeated the neologism flysgkam (feeling guilty about flying by plane), a term that also appeared in Sweden and spawned a counter-movement called tagskyrt, pride in traveling by train, a less polluting one Mode of Transport.
In addition to concern for the environment, the phenomenon is also linked to the need to explore other forms of consumption. It could therefore be defined as a response to the rampant consumption that has fueled the textile industry since the 1990s. As garment factories moved to countries where workers’ rights were non-existent and labor was cheap, clothing became very affordable and production exploded, with tens of thousands of new garments being launched every day. We quickly got used to buying clothes for ten euros and T-shirts for five. The success of ultra-fast fashion giants among younger generations shows how entrenched this form of fast-paced consumption is today. But compared to those who continue to go for “throw away” fashion, there are shoppers who have developed some awareness and there is a guilt about consuming in the midst of a consumer society.
Then how to avoid or learn to deal with this shame or Kopskam, as they say in Sweden? dr Núria Aragay Vicente, psychology specialist at the Brain 360 Institute, points out the importance of recognizing and combating this feeling of guilt and points to some tools “to be able to make purchases for pleasure, but which do not make us feel of lack of control or negative consequences”. . Among them, he suggests planning “every month a maximum of pleasure products that we want to buy” or switch purchases via the Internet to physical stores “where we can see the object, try it on, analyze it at leisure whether things are going well, etc.,” he points out to the experts.
On-screen purchases
Although some studies suggest that more impulse purchases are made in physical stores (this was the finding of a 2019 report produced by data and geolocation specialist Geoblink), the digital medium’s personalized advertising still makes the task more difficult for those who want to reduce their spending on fashion. E-commerce has made our life a lot easier, simplifying every process to a minimum, so that currently 47.43% of Spaniards make monthly and repeated online purchases, according to the annual survey of Spaniards’ confidence in buying fashion online Showroomprive and the Confianza Online portal.
If you’re among the percentage that expands their wardrobes monthly, you know that you really don’t need the vast majority of the clothes you buy. The digital universe doesn’t help much and promotes this consumption unchecked. But little by little, social networks like TikTok Challenges are piling up, where people are asked not to shop for several months and to practice the so-called mode fasting (something like “fashion fasting”). “Seven weeks into my challenge of not buying clothes for six months,” reads one of the videos included in the trend, in which tiktoker @ru_pitman shares several lessons from her experience of not buying clothes and points out that it , once you get used to it, it’s not that difficult to adapt to this new routine.
On the other hand, the famous clothing and cosmetics continue to capture a significant volume of views, videos in which a content creator reveals on camera everything they bought in a particular store, usually from a fast fashion chain . , like Shein, preferred among centenarians.
The guilt of buying clothes we don’t need isn’t solely motivated by environmental concerns. There are other factors, as varied as each individual’s personality, that influence this sociological phenomenon. Inma Brea, coach and human behavior expert, notes that “the guilt some people feel when they buy something they don’t need stems in large part from their values and beliefs about money, their financial literacy and their financial education depends on the influence of their environment. The blame may lie in spending more than we can afford, the environmental and social impacts of overproduction and consumption of material goods. The expert finds similarities between the so-called kopskam and the relationship some people develop with food, noting that when clothes are bought to “cover up other deficiencies or to soothe emotions, it can resemble the guilt we experience.” when we eat out of drive or reluctance.
Second hand and repair, alternative to new clothes
It is no coincidence that the rise of vintage fashion today coincides with the development of greater environmental awareness in society. The shift in mentality in Spain towards second-hand clothing, a habit more common in big cities but isolated elsewhere, is reflected in the numbers. According to the non-profit organization Humana, sales of second-hand clothing increased by 22% in 2022. The same brands that are driving this “shop-to-shop” dynamic have been able to see the potential of used clothing and have begun offering related services. But there are more options if you don’t want to invest in new clothes. Repairing old or damaged clothing, an ancient practice that is regaining its luster, is posited as another way to advocate for sustainable consumption. Granted, the practice hasn’t gone unnoticed on the radar of marketers behind the big brands either, many of whom have launched free repair services.
Any of these alternatives could ease that shame of buying too many clothes, but the truth is that the Kopskam phenomenon has not yet affected the textile sector, a business that is going well in Spain in terms of sales. A study conducted by Kantar for Modacc found that billing in 2022 was up 14.9% year-on-year. That means we’re buying more and more, so there will be Kopskam for a while.
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