Is Personal Style Just Another Downloadable Template in 2025?

Individuality has left the chat—fashion today is just the same template, endlessly reposted

- Niraj Kakade

Fashion is best when it’s personal—or so we’ve been led to believe. Yet, step outside, and you’ll spot the same 5’7” guy in an oversized T-shirt, cargos, and Jordans deep in conversation with another 5’7” guy in an eerily similar fit, like an NPC bumping into his own reflection. It’s as if someone took every fashion-forward bloke, tossed them into a blender, and hit ‘copy-paste’ on the final result. At this point, the biggest designer in the world isn’t Prada or Saint Laurent—it’s the algorithm.

Take the recently held Sabyasachi show, for instance. While half of Bollywood dressed like they’d stepped straight out of the ’70s, somehow, they all managed to look indistinguishable from one another. It was as if their stylists had gone on a bulk thrift shopping spree together. This wasn’t the case in the good old days when someone like an Amitabh Bachchan exuded rugged suaveness with leather jackets and famously tight bell-bottom pants, while someone like a Shashi Kapoor, who’d probably be labelled the poster boy of “quiet luxury” by Gen Z today, was the epitome of elegance and dapper style with his suits.

Today’s Bollywood bigwigs feel like photocopies of each other, styled more for social media and the products they’re promoting than as per their own personal taste.

Sure, social media has democratised fashion. Back in the day, trends trickled down slowly—Paris runways to New York boutiques to a cousin’s hand-me-downs. Now? See a Prada look at 10 am, buy a fast-fashion knockoff by lunch, and regret it by dinner. But has this hyperaccessibility actually improved personal style, or are we all just shuffling through an endless carousel of regurgitated trends, like Instagram’s For You Page that just won’t stop?

Welcome to the Template Era