Another year, another aggravating Halloween trend.
We all know Spirit Halloween as a one-stop shop for all things spooky. The haunted conglomerate has it all, be it trendy costumes, unearthly home decor or mainstream access to alternative clothes and accessories.
Well, actually, the seasonal retailer could have had it all. Alas, Spirit Halloween Superstores LLC rolled too far into the deep pockets of Spencer’s and gave up whatever cred the company might have established.
Spirit Halloween is deep in the throes of fast fashion, annually opening its stores with cheap plastic bits and bobs that can and will end up in a landfill for the rest of our earthly escapades.
Back in the old days, approximately 40 years ago, punk, goth and other music-based subcultures created their looks through DIY and community collaboration to customize themselves in ways that signaled identity, beliefs and rebellion against the status quo.
In the modern era, however, people curate a certain “aesthetic” to “romanticize” their lives through a set of characteristics or interests a certain “-core” may have.
Take the cottagecore stereotype. Cottagecore people love natural flowy fabrics like linen, have a knack for cooking and gardening and want to live out their days in a cute stone cottage.
Are the hallmarks of a cottagecore girlie really that enjoyable to all these people? Maybe, but more often than not, this type of aestheticism signifies a want to belong.
There’s no better way to belong than to buy everything that would make someone cottagecore, regardless of what that community actually believes.
That’s just it, actually. Instead of surrounding oneself with a community and forming hobbies, opinions and fashion ideals among them, people sit alone, likely in bed, staring at a little screen all day that tells them how they need to dress.
If they pick an alternative subculture to “associate with,” Spirit Halloween is the place to start, because is it true that alternative fashion typically has a stigma of gatekeeping and preclusion?
Yes.
But this is not that. This is a desperate plea for some consideration in where and who you purchase your clothes from.
Do you need to dress a certain way to be part of a subculture?
No.
The requirement of looking like a specific type of goth or emo is a scheme sold to you through certain “alt influencers” who won’t even acknowledge the variety of styles that have existed likely longer than any of us have been alive, see pastel or cyber goth influences.
A “Spirit Halloween gothic finds!!!” haul on TikTok isn’t worth breaking the backs of child laborers and littering millions of tons of textile waste onto the planet each year, don’t you think?
All this nonsense is just another attempt to differentiate humans and put them in little, capitalist boxes so corporations can suck not only every dime, but the life out of every baby bat who ever tried to fly.
Protip: Stomping fascists and looking like a normie bum are not mutually exclusive.
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