INTERVIEW #169 DR DION TERRELONGE

Name: Dr Dion Terrelonge

Occupation: Fashion Psychologist and practitioner

Based in: East London

Website:  www.styleandwellbeing.co.uk

Instagram: @thefashionpsychologist_

Hi Dr Dion! Welcome to A Sustainable Closet! Can you please tell us about yourself and the work that you do? 

Hi, thanks for having me on here! I'm Dion and in terms of the work I do, I do quite a few things but mainly I work to help companies and individuals understand the psychological link between what we wear and how we feel. Also, to understand the traps and lures of consumerism and its impact on people and the planet from a psychological perspective.

You are a psychologist, how come you ended up studying psychology?

In short, because I'm nosy, or more positively reframed, I'm curious about others. I had never considered being a psychologist until I spoke to a tutor during my first year of college who after I told them I was passionate about everyone having a right to education in part because once you have it, no one can ever take it away from you. Also, I liked trying to figure people and situations out, they suggested that I might be interested in educational psychology. After I looked it up I decided that was the route for me, so I began the very long journey to becoming an educational psychologist - with the selling point being that I could help to minimise barriers to education for others when education had been a saving grace and a sanctuary for me.

When did you get interested in fashion and how did these two topics (psychology and fashion) emerge into your speciality?

I've always been interested in fashion but less from a trend-lead perspective, so I’d say I've always been interested in clothing. My grandma sewed, my mum to an extent sewed, and I poorly made dresses for my dolls as a child. Growing up we didn't have much, but my mum instilled in me a sense of understanding the quality in clothing. So even if we were shopping in charity shops (before that was cool or called Thrifting here) she would show us how to check the hems of clothing to see if they had any allowance to be let out (lengthened) in the future, to check the stitching and overlocking, and quality of the fabric e.g. natural fibre or synthetic. Looking at clothing like this came more from a place of necessity because we couldn't afford the few clothes we bought to fall apart quickly. Also, from a relatively young age, I was aware that when I was wearing something that felt like it was just for me, that I had chosen and I liked, as opposed to a hand me down or something purely functional, that I felt more like me, more like Dion the individual, more visible, happier and more confident.

Fashion and psychology didn't explicitly come together for me until I was studying for my Doctorate and I noticed a few things. One was that I was using clothing myself to try to fit in and look as (based on what I saw around me) a psychologist should i.e. middle class and white rather than Black and from Council housing. So, I was using clothing to camouflage and a bit as a defence against my feelings of imposter syndrome. 

I also saw in friends that clothing could have a transformative power when it came to confidence and self-esteem, if only temporarily. I saw the difference a well-suited outfit could make to how friends saw and spoke about themselves when they had support with styling, yet when we talked about wellbeing on my course, clothing or access to clothing was never mentioned. 

The last straw came when finding out that young people attending a well-known gender identity clinic did not receive support in exploring their gender expression through clothing as part of their programme. They were pretty much left to figure it out by themselves; as if navigating dress wasn’t also important for identity. My thinking was that as practitioners we should also provide support in this area or at least think about the psychological task of potentially moving from dressing or being dressed by parents in gendered clothing that does not align with your identity to then having to figure it out alone. In our teens, we often shop with our friends and try out styles and looks that later we figure out were crimes against fashion, but at least we have the safety of a peer group who are going through the same experience at the same time. I understand this is not the experience of every trans or non-binary person, but for us practitioners to not consider this experience at all felt negligible. 

Later I then set up the Style and Wellbeing Consultancy, to provide support to those exploring their style during periods of change e.g. change of careers, relationship change, following a mastectomy etc – there are so many points in life where a psychological shift occurs and we want to reflect that in how we outwardly present. However, in more recent years as I’ve seen fast fashion and online shopping prevalence growing and growing like an unwieldy monster, my focus has been on overconsumption and highlighting the drivers of consumption and its impact on people and the planet.

What are some of the common psychological dilemmas we see in fashion affecting consumers?

Dispersed responsibility and attribution bias. That yes, the fashion industry is polluting, and people are being exploited in the supply chain BUT someone else is probably contributing to the problem more, someone else somewhere is probably sorting it out, and if people in the global south don’t work in garment factories then they’ll be without work and worse off. These are more cognitive errors and biases than dilemmas, but this kind of erroneous thinking is stopping so many people from consuming more sustainably.

Also, herd mentality – the tendency to unthinkingly follow the actions of others. We see this with the amount of people who so quickly follow micro-trends and it is a massive issue in the sustainability space because it’s this herd mentality that contributes to consumers continuing to buy fast and ultra-fast fashion, driven and sustained by the fact that we see so many others around us consuming the same way. If everyone else is doing it, it can’t be that bad right? Wrong. The dilemma of instant vs delayed gratification is a powerful one. We have online shopping, next-day deliveries, free returns, pay later providers – everything is perfectly set up for us to meet and encourage our want for instant gratification to the extent that it’s a real challenge for many to unlearn these habits and learn how to wait. Following micro-tends, buying fast fashion, and being driven by the need to have everything we wanted yesterday are leaving us out of pocket and still feeling like we have nothing to wear.

Why do we buy so many clothes?

I think we buy so many clothes simply because we can. They’re cheaper than ever and can be in our hands within the blink of an eye. Clothing has become so cheap in comparison to previous decades, that we can afford to buy it unthinkingly. We don’t have to save up or consider whether we can afford that dress this month, and because it costs so little, we don’t feel guilty or as though we have incurred a loss if we buy items and only wear them once. 

With the advent of online shopping and things like Klarna, shopping has become not only a hobby but a habit. So many of us unthinkingly scroll through fashion sites and add items to our baskets only for the item to turn up a head-spinningly fast 24 hours later and for us to have forgotten we even ordered them. It’s just too easy to have clothes at your door and in your hands in an instant – it almost feels like a game and detached from reality and companies know this, they’re banking on your addition and the little reward centre of your brain pinging and encouraging you to return to their site and buy more because it likes the buzz (dopamine) we get when we shop. It’s a vicious cycle because the buzz wears off as soon as those items are no longer new to you.

And why, do you think, we still feel like we have nothing to wear from our closets?

I think this is partially due to how people shop. There’s a tendency to shop in isolation rather than to buy new items in the context of your current wardrobe i.e. making sure that new items work with what you already own, otherwise you end up with a bunch of pieces that don’t work with each other. That fashion is easier to come by than ever before and people now treat clothing like single-use items means that we have also lost some of our creative styling skills. We don’t have to figure out how to make items work with each other to find something for a night out when we can order a new co-ord and have it by the next day.  

There’s also the fact that because we consume fashion at such a rate and often with so little thinking, we don’t give ourselves time to form relationships with our clothes or ascribe meaning. So, when we open our wardrobe doors, we are met with a bunch of items that provided feelings of pleasure when we acquired them, but now they are old news. This is known as habituation, where the pleasure we once got, or interest we once had in something decreases over time, and with clothing, this begins to kick in from the moment we pay. So, in summary, we often feel we have nothing to wear because we have a bunch of stuff that we have no attachment to, aren’t sure how to style differently, and now that the buzz has faded, we are bored of. The result is the craving for another hit, which our brain’s reward centre will tell us will come from another online shopping-swiping session. And so, the cycle continues.

How would you describe your relationship with clothes and style?

Now, it’s quite relaxed, I have fun with clothes and don’t put pressure on myself to keep up with trends, to look perfectly put together, or to tone down parts of my identity as I did before. In classic relationship attachment styles, it’s pretty secure with the occasional wobble. My relationship with clothes has changed a lot over the years. In my early 20s, I treated shopping like a hobby; I loved the experience of digging through rails, finding what I thought were gems and making them mine. I bought far too much and almost saw my ability to “have things” as a sign of success. Now I still love clothes and finding gems, but the rate at which I consume is far far slower, and when I do buy, 90% of the time it is pre-loved. 

When it comes to my style, I’m quite particular although it might not look like it to those who know me. I’m relaxed with fashion but putting on an outfit that fits my mood and emotional needs for the day is important. When I look in the mirror the outfit needs to say “This is who I feel like today” – and that message is to me; I seldom dress for other people. 

Best tips for those who want to have a more healthy relationship with themselves and their style?

That depends on what element of their relationship is unhealthy. Generally, my top tip would be to increase the connection between your style and yourself - the more personal and intrinsically driven, the better. I think we run into issues when we overly allow our style to be governed by the views and expectations of others, when we try to keep up with others through trends, or when we dress in a certain way for fear of negative comments or even being too visible.

Another tip to strengthen your relationship with style and therefore make it healthier is to take some time each day to dress mindfully. Before you pick out what to wear take a moment to tune into yourself, consider what your day will entail and what clothing will serve you best to meet your practical and emotional needs. Also taking this time whenever you can stop you from going on autopilot and putting on the same things that you always tend to put on, stop you from reaching for simply whatever is clean, and give you the creative cognitive capacity to consider new looks. Lastly, try to identify and challenge negative thoughts that stop you from having fun, experimenting, and dressing as you would like or that have you buying too much. I’ve heard so much negative and limiting talk over the years like, “I’ll wear X style once I lose weight”, “X style is only for younger people”, or “if I wear X, people will think I’m trying too hard” etc etc. Interrogate the thoughts by asking what the evidence is, if am I confusing thoughts for facts, and what are the effects of thinking like this.

Last, anything else you would like to share?

Caring about fashion isn’t vacuous or shallow. What we wear is an integral part of our lives. Clothing is with us each day and has the power to make us feel prepared, confident, comforted, and connected. Taking the time to curate your look and feel good in what you wear to present yourself to the world is a form of self-care and can do wonders to support your wellbeing.