The Death of the Copy-Paste Girl

Why looking like yourself is cool

by Charly Dekle 

Somewhere along the way, everyone started looking suspiciously similar. Not in a conspiracy theory way, but more in a “wait, didn’t I just see this exact outfit?” kind of way.

The same leather jacket, sambas, the same slickback bun. The same matcha in the same glass from the same place. The same apartment that somehow has the exact same “vintage” chrome lamp.

For a while, it made sense. The internet has always had trends, but TikTok turned aesthetics into algorithms and suddenly, dressing well wasn’t about developing personal style. It was about identifying your category.

Clean girl, Tomato girl,  Office siren, Mob wife, Coastal grandmother. It’s like a personality quiz for every outfit. We all started looking like we got dressed from the same Pinterest board.

That is the downside of living online. The second something is declared chic, millions of people save it, buy it, and recreate it before the week is over. Individual taste gets replaced by consensus.

Quiet luxury was probably the peak of it, but the problem was never the cashmere sweater.

The Row’s Gala pants really are that good. The cut is just emphatically better. The fabric hangs differently. Their cashmere sweater looks and feels superior to the dupe, which is unfortunate for everyone’s bank account but still true.

The issue isn’t really with the price tag; it's when buying the “right” pieces replaces developing any personal taste.

Personal style used to form more organically. Your girlfriends influenced you in real time. The neighborhood you lived in changed what you wore. The bars, restaurants, music you listened to, the hobbies you had, and the people you spent time around slowly entered your wardrobe. Music scenes had uniforms, and those subcultures had visual codes, and there was less instant exposure without context. Clothes communicated something about where you went, what you listened to, and who you were becoming.

Now, an aesthetic can arrive fully assembled through an algorithm before you have even decided whether you genuinely like it. Convenient, yes, but it also skips the part where style becomes personal, and people are starting to have a little beef with that.

The coolest wardrobes do not come from rejecting every trend or pretending you are above anything popular. That is just another performance. They come from knowing which trends actually fit your taste and which ones will disappear from your closet the second the algorithm moves on. Maybe The Row’s Gala pants are worth it because you will wear them for five years and no dupe quite gets the cut right. Maybe the strange vintage jacket you picked out without your friend’s approval says more about you than anything currently being pushed through an affiliate link.

Taste develops by living. It comes from going out, paying attention, borrowing from your friends, discovering music, traveling, and noticing the people whose style stays with you. Eventually, all of those references become a signal.

We think that is cool.

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