Why do all the girls dress the same?

When Fashion Goes Quiet
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how quiet fashion has gotten. Not the industry itself but the way we dress. Scroll through any feed and it’s the same silhouettes, the same palettes, the same “perfect” beauty templates on repeat. Individuality is disappearing in real time. And when I look closer at why, two forces are doing the most damage: the algorithm and the loss of subculture. Both push us toward clothes that feel approved instead of imagined, safe instead of expressive. And honestly, it’s time to ask what we are losing when we stop dressing for ourselves.

The Algorithm is killing creativity
Scroll culture has flattened creativity. Everywhere you look online, people are chasing the same hair, the same fit, the same three “approved” colors. Fast fashion feeds it. The algorithm rewards it. And somewhere along the way, imagination went missing.

I’ve realized that when I need real inspiration, I have to get offline. I have to leave the feed, leave the trends, leave the mood boards. Creativity doesn’t come from what’s already curated. It comes from observing the world, experimenting, playing with what hasn’t been approved yet.

We used to play with clothes. Kate Spade said dressing up starts at five and never stops but I don’t think that’s true anymore. Somewhere between trends and timelines, play became performance. Experimentation doesn’t get engagement so people stopped trying. But it should. It used to.

Subculture was our voice
ubcultures used to be the heartbeat of fashion. They were built by people living on the margins, dressing for themselves or their community, not for mass approval. Clothes weren’t costumes. They were language, survival, identity made visible. You didn’t need to speak. You could walk into a room and everyone would know who you belonged to. Pride, creativity, freedom. That is what fashion used to feel like.

For Black women, subcultures have always been about creating space and claiming visibility. Think of the Harlem Renaissance-inspired street styles of the 1920s and 30s, where zoot suits and bold hats were more than fashion—they were pride in Black identity and resistance to invisibility. Think of 90s hip hop and R&B style, where oversized jeans, bucket hats, and bold colors were a uniform of self-expression and cultural power. Ballroom culture in the 80s and 90s gave us voguing, dramatic silhouettes, and performance-ready looks that celebrated gender, creativity, and community. Even street style today, from sneaker culture to Afrofuturist fashion, carries the same DNA while being bold, inventive, and unapologetically Black.

The beauty of subculture was that it valued originality over approval. It rewarded risk, experimentation, and personal storytelling. You could borrow, remix, and invent, and the community would understand the language of your choices. Clothes were political, playful, and deeply personal. They were a way to exist fully in your own skin without asking for permission. The Overdressed Black Girl celebrates that spirit: dressing boldly, refusing to blend in, and using fashion as a tool of identity and empowerment.

Aesthetics replaced creativity
Then the internet came and flattened everything into categories. Instead of communities, we got mood boards. Clean Girl. Cottagecore. Old Money. We stopped dressing to express ourselves and started dressing to fit a template someone else made viral. Take the Clean Girl aesthetic. Soft, quiet, safe. Not a look but a mandate. Algorithm-approved, risk-free, emotionally sanitized.

When fashion becomes assimilation
And honestly, it feels like assimilation. Dressing the same, speaking the same visual language, following the same rules. That is survival, not self-expression. We want to belong. We want validation. We want to avoid the scrutiny that comes with standing out. So we fold ourselves into trends. Standing out online feels dangerous. The Clean Girl aesthetic is not beauty. It is conformity. It teaches that the safest way to exist is to look like everyone else. For Black women whose visibility is always policed, this quiet assimilation is even more layered and complicated.

Creativity is Waiting
I miss when fashion meant imagination. Courage. Dreaming on purpose. But creativity does not disappear. It waits. Waiting for someone brave enough to bring it back.

Time to Dress for Ourselves Again
Maybe this is not a decline but an invitation. An invitation to return to curiosity, to color, to subcultures, to dressing for no reason but joy. To resist aesthetics and pick what feels like you. Fashion has always belonged to the bold, the imaginative, the people creating what does not exist yet. And if the algorithm has taught us anything, it is that originality still shocks, still turns heads, still matters. The Overdressed Black Girl knows that fashion is a playground, a statement, and a rebellion all in one. The real question is not where creativity went. It is when each of us will bring it back.