TikToker Andrea Cheong says searching mindfully is great for psychological overall health
4 min read
Andrea Cheong, 30, has labored on numerous sides of the manner market. She’s been a journalist, worked in brand partnerships at British Vogue and held a position at a buyer traits company. These times, nevertheless, she spends much of her time educating her 187,000 TikTok followers how to shop mindfully. This involves showing them how to examine garments for symptoms of high quality and store much more sustainably, as properly as describing how the high-quality and sustainability of one’s dresses are linked. Right after all, when you are not chasing each and every new development, it is much easier to keep away from speedy vogue and shop for things that stand the test of time.
Cheong was publishing equivalent material on Instagram, in which she now has 73,000 followers, when another person from TikTok contacted her and told her that it would also do well on TikTok. When she commenced to submit on TikTok in 2020, the app subsequently boosted her articles. “I have a extremely difficult romance with social media platforms they are incredibly negative for your psychological wellbeing, but they can also do a whole lot of excellent. And TikTok was the a person platform exactly where I was like, ‘There are actual humans driving this,’” Cheong reported, referring to the actuality that TikTok workforce assisted her articles and her message access an audience.
In advance, she describes how she built a trend pursuing on the application and what advice she presents on TikTok.
The Conscious Monday edit
“[Teaching] the Aware Monday method [Cheong’s signature approach to shopping both mindfully and sustainably] began in 2019, and it started with Instagram Stories. A large amount of people today never fully grasp exactly what it is, for the reason that the TikTok video clips are fundamentally only measures 4 and 5 of the technique. There’s a great deal of qualifications operate that goes into fixing our romance with cash and style.
Our connection with fashion is super elaborate. It can get a big emotional and mental toll on us, not to point out a monetary [toll], as very well. And now that buyers are getting far more knowledgeable, we’re also adding the environmental components to consumers’ choices of what we ought to obtain and the place we should really purchase it. The Aware Monday Method is a filter, primarily, for each and every one person to be capable to have a healthier romantic relationship with shopping. It is so productive for breaking the routine of impulse browsing.”
Turning the wardrobe audit on its head
“A great deal of stylists love to chat about a wardrobe audit. What they in no way tell you to do is to appear at the apparel you really do not want anymore. For the reason that this is so revealing. Is there a prevalent retailer here? Is there a substance you evidently really do not like? … Because you should not go back again there, appropriate? We do that with exes and boyfriends, and individuals we have dated. Why really don’t we do that with our clothing?”
The psychological toll of expending
“The explanation I started out this approach is that I was shelling out an obscene volume of income every month — and I function in vogue, and we all know trend doesn’t pay back really properly. We have to have to check with ourselves, ‘What’s the driving aspect at the rear of the shopping?’ A good deal of folks say to me, ‘I impulsively shop and I compulsively shop, and then the relaxation of the thirty day period, I’m broke, and then I have absolutely nothing to put on.’ And so [I recommend a] spending budget work out, to encourage folks to consider about that. It’s not in a way that is like, ‘Oh, you’re irresponsible.’ But it is alternatively in a way to honor their mental well being. For me, my economic wellness is incredibly a lot tied to my psychological well being.”
Sustainability in apply
“We all know sustainability is a significant beast that certainly no a single has been ready to get their head all over. And I want to give people, prospects, most people a way to understand it for by themselves, so that they are not held to some imaginary ethical conventional, and so they know what functions for them and their way of life.
People today like to make [sustainability] into these kinds of a ethical problem, but I’m not a better man or woman than any individual just for the reason that I have not shopped at Zara for two years. If you in fact stick to my system, you will innately assistance the setting — even if it is really passive and even if you are not attempting to.
That is why supplies and good quality are so significant, mainly because fashion’s most important [sustainability] problem is prepared obsolescence [or garments that are not made to last, in terms of quality or trend]. If all people knew how to location good quality and understood what the expectation really should be, no matter of how significantly you’re spending, you’d comprehend there’s so a lot you should not acquire. This is not because it’s unethical, but it’s because it’s virtually such a squander of money. It need to under no circumstances have been produced. That is not a remark on who created it it’s not a comment on the personnel. It is a comment on mass output.”
