Can We Stop Using the Terms “Cool Girl” and “It Girl” to Describe Clothes?
My brain is tired.
Why? Because they don’t mean anything.
I’d rather we describe clothing and brands using words like sculptural, maximalist, whimsical or tailored. Now I can picture what you’re talking about.
“It girl” and “Cool girl” aren’t style descriptions. Influencers and fashion media use them because “buy this” works better when it sounds like “become this.”
Honestly, I find these posts alienating because the slides that follow are almost always clothes I would never wear. So what is that supposed to mean?
Bold statement here: I consider myself cool. Not because I wear drapey, handkerchief-skirt sets to take pictures of myself at sunset. I’m cool because I know what I like and what I don’t like, and I don’t follow trends just because they’ve proliferated my Instagram. I’ve been shopping and dressing myself for a long time now and have developed my sense of style, one that actually fits my life.
“Cool girl” and “It girl” don’t really describe style at all. They describe a costume, one you can put on for an afternoon and take off by dinner. The people I think of as genuinely stylish don’t follow labels like that. They have a fingerprint. A palette they keep coming back to, a silhouette that shows up again and again because it suits them, not because it’s trending.
Style is something you build slowly, by figuring out what you like and what you don’t, and being confident enough to leave the rest to the trend seekers.
So maybe I’m not an “It girl”. I just know what I like. And maybe that deserves a better name.