Since its launch in 2012, Pretty Little Thing has sold bright, body-hugging clothes meant to be sported in the club. Its bubblegum-pink webpage and unicorn-plastered packaging further solidified its identity as a brand. However, Pretty Little Thing recently took a complete U-turn: it overhauled its entire website, scrapped everything and abruptly waved in a quiet luxury aesthetic.
This new, minimalist business casual vibe could not be further from what PLT is known to sell. The company has dubbed its rebrand with the tagline “A Legacy In Progress,” and these clothes are marketed as high-end, an upgrade from their predecessors – but is the luxury an illusion? I sure am not buying it.
Pretty Little Thing was never an ethical brand. Like most fast-fashion sellers, its clothes are affordable, disposable and rapidly obsolete. According to Good On You, a sustainable fashion site, “Little of its supply chain is certified by labour standards which ensure worker health and safety, living wages or other labour rights. It received a score of 21-30% in the 2022 Fashion Transparency Index.” Additionally, in 2021, PLT faced heavy criticism for having a 100 percent off sale for Black Friday.
A brand cannot ethically produce clothing when it is given away for free. Pretty Little Thing also uses heavy amounts of polyester in its garments. This raw material has many negative environmental effects, including the fact that it takes hundreds of years to dissolve.
PLT can masquerade as a luxury brand all it wants, but it cannot outrun its unethical practices. Adding fancy fonts, lengthening dresses and expelling color are shams when the material and manufacturing processes remain the same. I visited the website, and the first item of clothing to appear was a “Deep Chocolate Gold Trim Cinched Waist Shirt.” Lo and behold, it was made with 100% polyester, yet now they are selling it for $55.00. Price multiplies while quality remains constant, and Pretty Little Thing attempts to disguise this with minimalism. Will it work? Time will tell, but it partly depends on the political atmosphere.
By making their clothes more modest and neutral, Pretty Little Thing caters to a more conservative audience of young women. These outfits are not meant for the club, but for the country club. The demand for such clothing is not an isolated instance: Ralph Lauren, American flag sweaters, long denim skirts and flowy dresses, clean girl minimalism, ozempic and the TikTok-famous “coastal granddaughter aesthetic.”
Recent fashion trends exude modesty, wealth, conformative femininity and thinness. These phenomena could be indicative of a potential shift toward conservatism among young women, which is not outlandish considering Trump’s election win.
In an article by the New York Post, content creator Elysia Berman claimed that “there is a value system associated with that aesthetic. We are returning to that aesthetic because we have returned to that value system.” Women dress more conservatively because they think more conservatively. This may seem like a far-fetched connection, but fashion has always been a way to send messages to others in a community.
According to fashion tech startup founder Danielle Vermeer, “For many people, fashion is a medium for self-expression, social signaling and alignment with different subcultures. Fashion is political, and it’s never just about the clothes.” An economic study called the hemline index, which states that skirt length is correlated with market conditions. Fashion trends are not cocooned occurrences but aggregate manifestations of many of societal factors.
The Pretty Little Thing rebrand could be a strategic attempt to profit from a shift in political climate, or it could be merely a blanket to cover their fast-fashion association that subconsciously appeals to the increased popularity of modest clothing. It may be a bit of both. Either way, the rebrand’s success depends on two factors.
- Whether the rise of conservatism among young women becomes more prominent during the coming years.
- Whether Pretty Little Thing can match their perceived quality to their prices or people are willing to don unethically fabricated luxury to be accepted by those around them (the extent to which this will occur also depends on society’s political state).
Pretty Little Thing’s rebrand is a gamble that hinges on shifting political undercurrents and the power of consumer perception. Whether this new identity will successfully erase its fast fashion past or simply expose the brand’s attempts at deception remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that fashion does not exist in a vacuum; it reflects and reinforces broader societal trends. If PLT’s transformation is to succeed, it likely won’t be because of improved quality or ethics but rather because consumers are willing to fall for the fantasy.