Final 12 months the hashtag #NoBuy started to achieve traction on TikTok—a nascent anticonsumerist motion that inspired individuals to curb their spending. Extra just lately, bolstered by rising costs and a bleak financial outlook, the sentiment has snowballed into “No Purchase 2025,” each a pledge and a problem to combat again in opposition to overconsumption. It’s now not a distinct segment social-media concern: You’ll be able to examine it in every single place from CNN to Vogue, and customers even coordinated a one-day financial blackout final month. All indicators level to the potential for profound change in how youthful generations—primarily Gen Z and millennials—are buying and spending. A latest joint report from McKinsey and The Enterprise of Vogue declared, “2025 is prone to be a time of reckoning for a lot of manufacturers.”
Whereas “no-buy” (and its “low-buy” counterpart) carries a broad umbrella—from ditching impulse purchases to slicing again on all nonessential spending—a well-liked class the place members wish to pare again is clothes (an trade with a monitor report of exorbitant waste). Customers put up ideas like “buying” your individual closet to rediscover and deal with what you will have as an alternative of what you don’t, whereas some share their self-imposed “guidelines” for the upcoming 12 months. Others dish out extra actionable recommendation: unsubscribing from trend manufacturers’ advertising and marketing lists or blocking e-commerce web sites to keep away from temptation. It’s each a rebel in opposition to consumerist tradition and likewise, far more virtually, a strategy to save up cash.
To dive deeper into No Purchase 2025, GQ reached out to Alec Leach, a former trend editor turned writer and guide who writes the superb and well timed “Extraordinary Delusions” publication. His first e book, The World Is on Fireplace However We’re Nonetheless Shopping for Sneakers, is an inquisitive and clear-eyed exploration of up to date consumerism, exhibiting how navigating an curiosity in trend in immediately’s age is a path stuffed with twists and turns and smoke and mirrors. It’s a worthy learn for anybody curious about inspecting their very own relationship with garments and find out how to change into a extra acutely aware shopper.
Leach spoke to GQ about why the “no-buy” motion is discovering a bigger viewers, his personal 12 months of buying solely secondhand, and the way he believes actually private type is achieved by saying no extra instances than sure.
GQ: Why do you assume the “no-buy” motion has gained newer and extra appreciable traction as we’ve entered the brand new 12 months?
Alec Leach: The style trade, basically, has simply been sleepwalking into this actually uninspiring useless finish for some time now. For those who assume simply how commercialized the entire luxurious manufacturers grew to become, how ridiculous all of the collaborations acquired, how advertising and marketing has simply been seeping into each nook of tradition. There’s solely a lot that folks can take, particularly when the creativity behind it’s actually missing. I believe it’s inevitable that, sooner or later, persons are going to get actually, actually bored of all of it.
Folks have been pointing to ideas reminiscent of blocking e-commerce web sites or beginning with a “buy pause.” Can beginning small may be useful in shifting somebody’s bigger relationship with buying?
You positively discover that if you happen to consider shopping for one thing and form of put it on maintain for a few days, a whole lot of the time you simply don’t really feel as enthusiastic about it. There’s a actual form of momentary thrill to buying that always masks the truth that you’re purchasing for boredom or to keep away from troublesome emotions or simply as a behavior slightly than truly needing or wanting the product that you just’re . So placing one thing on pause for a bit is certainly a extremely great way of determining if you happen to truly need or want one thing.
I did a 12 months of solely shopping for secondhand. I didn’t do a 12 months of not shopping for something, however the 12 months of solely shopping for secondhand was actually not that onerous. The secondhand market is simply so nice. It’s not at all times simple for me, I usually want an additional giant and 34-inch size for trousers. However typically, if you’re right down to dig and know who has good curation, then you’ll be able to very simply simply utterly sidestep shopping for new issues.
What did you be taught from that 12 months of solely buying secondhand?
It positively grew to become much more about digging for one thing. You change into extra proactive about it, considering, “What’s it that I would like?” You’ll be able to’t go onto a web based store and simply casually scroll by it. It’s a must to be much more deliberate. I bear in mind considering, “I’d actually like [to have] a Carhartt jacket,” and I needed to actually dig for one which I wished, and I acquired it. It’s in all probability the hardest-working factor in my wardrobe, nonetheless. I put on it on a regular basis.
