Diderot's Dressing Gown: The Answer To the Question, "Why Am I Like This?"

For a long time, one of my greatest frustrations has been this ridiculous way of thinking I have, whereby my style, appearance, wardrobe, preferences and identity are all tied up in one enormous, oddly-shaped, possibly ticking parcel, onto which I become desperate to stick a label.

 "Ah..." says my brain. "I see you are admiring those patterned harem pants. This means you must be a HIPPY. Come now, cast aside your former identity as a non-hippy, put on this patchouli and go out and buy some bangles forthwith."

However, on the way to the bangle shop (bear with me, kids), I am tempted by a velvet cloak and some mugwort tea.

 "Ah..." says brain. " I was mistaken before. You are in fact a PAGAN. Come now, cast aside those harem pants and let us seek some altar statues and medieval gowns."

On the way to the medieval tailor I stop to admire a pair of combat boots.

 "Ah..." says brain. "It appears you are a GOTH..."

And so on. You get the picture. I have this whole mishmash of things I'm into, but my brain would really rather it not be a mishmash, and instead be a nicely defined category with a set of convenient searchable keywords. Whatever new item I'm most in love with suddenly becomes The! Defining! Piece!, and I immediately want a completely new wardrobe (personality/bookshelf/living space) that channels the same vibe. Given that in my time I have run the gamut from dreadlocked hippy to befanged goth chick and back again via a brief dalliance with pink velour tracksuits and furry moon boots (what can I say, I'm changeable), this gets very old. And tiring. And confusing. Not to mention expensive.

Turns out there's a name for this kind of thinking, and it's not actually uncommon, although my brain's fetish for alternative lifestyle niches that may or may not exist ('granny punk' was a descriptor I once briefly used, for example) may not be typical. 

Allow me to Wikipedia at you: "The Diderot effect is a social phenomenon related to consumer goods. It is based on two ideas. The first idea is that goods purchased by consumers will align with their sense of identity, and, as a result, will complement one another. The second idea states that the introduction of a new possession that deviates from the consumer's current complementary goods can result in a process of spiraling consumption."

Boom.

You can actually see the Diderot effect working on me in the second half of this post I wrote in April. The term comes from this dude Diderot, a French philosopher, who several hundred years ago was given a new dressing gown. In comparison to this new item, the rest of his stuff started to seem lacklustre, inelegant, tacky. Diderot replaced his straw armchair with a newer, swankier model in Moroccan leather. Then he got a new writing table to replace his old desk. And so on, and so on... until he ended up in debt.

"I was absolute master of my old dressing gown," Diderot lamented, "but I have become a slave to my new one."

Grant McCracken, who coined the term 'Diderot effect', also spoke about 'Diderot unities'. This is similar to the way my brain clumps consumer goods together under basic labels: goth stuff, hippie stuff and so on. Most of your stuff will quite possibly represent your preferred Diderot unity - this is what you might think of as 'your style'. 

"A Diderot unity is a group of objects that are considered to be culturally complementary, in relation to one another. We as consumers, strive towards unity in appearance and representation of one’s self-image and social role. However, it can also mean that if a beautiful object deviant from the preferred Diderot unity is acquired, it may have the effect of causing us to start subscribing to a completely different Diderot unity," says this article. This sounds rather similar indeed to my bewildered bouncing from style to style over the last decade and a half.

Happily, the above-linked article also has some suggestions on how to defeat the Diderot effect - most of which are markedly similar to those I have blundered into through trial and error throughout my shopping ban attempts, including:

- Unsubscribe from marketing emails

- If you need to buy something, e.g. new clothing, make sure it works with your existing stuff

- Don't browse shopping websites

- Hang out with your friends somewhere that is not a shopping centre

For myself, I'm hopeful that just knowing the Diderot effect is at work, and being able to recognise it, will help to negate its power.

So there you have it. Learn from my mistakes, and those of a French philosopher in the 1700s: don't be a slave to your dressing gown.