Why Gen Z is buying less while “Underconsumption Core” feels so personal
From impulse spending to intentional buying, Gen Z is redefining ownership through the rise of the “underconsumption core”
Most people in Gen Z would not describe themselves as exhausted by consumerism. They would simply say they are tired of buying things that mean nothing: this is shopping fatigue. What has emerged online as “underconsumption core” is more than a passing minimalist trend. Across fashion and culture, more young consumers are moving away from endless scrolling, same-day delivery, social media-driven impulse spending and the pressure to constantly acquire more, and instead seeking a more intentional relationship with ownership and meaning in a market defined by endless availability. In this essay, Anvi Sharma—fashion writer, stylist and alumna of the Master’s in Fashion Promotion, Communication & Digital Media at Istituto Marangoni Milano—explores deconsumption as both a personal instinct and a social recalibration rooted in memory, identity and emotional permanence.
Culture is collapsing into content, and my wardrobe no longer feels like something I relate to anymore.
With summer here, and having absolutely nothing to wear—a deeply relatable micro-moment in all our lives—I realised how important intention is when consuming anything. And this hits right at the emotional core of modern consumer fatigue, in a world of endless consumerism that often no longer makes much sense.
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Why Shopping Fatigue Feels So Personal to Gen Z
There is a specific kind of exhaustion that sets in around your seventh impulse buy of any given season. It is not guilt exactly, but something flatter, more deflating. Which is funny, because if you ask the people actually experiencing it, most wouldn’t use a technical term, just “tired”—tired of owning objects that meant nothing.
Let me confess: most of us have, at some point, bought something we did not need, did not love and barely wore.
We did it simply because it was on sale, because the algorithm served it to us at exactly the right moment of weakness, or because a new season arrived and we felt like participating.
The impulse to buy, to belong and to keep up with the rhythm of novelty is not a moral failing.
The Rise of Intentional Buying and “Underconsumption Core”
This got me wondering whether there is something quietly radical about buying less in an industry that has spent decades telling us that buying more is normal and desirable. Not because it damages the industry—it might in the short term—but because it requires us actually to know what we want, and knowing that takes practice. It is as serious as meditation.
The word for this shift away from constant accumulation, impulsive purchasing and manufactured desire is deconsumption, better known online as “underconsumption core”.
It has been on my mind lately, and increasingly, it is becoming a phenomenon. It represents a defining cultural rebalancing away from high-frequency, low-attachment purchases towards things that actually earn their place in your life: things that are intentional and meant to stay. It is a recalibration of what ownership means.
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Why Buying Less Feels More Meaningful Now
This is not minimalism for aesthetics, nor austerity out of necessity, but, as WGSN frames it, a profound recalibration around cultural longevity and, perhaps most significantly, emotional resonance. It carries far more meaning than simply building a capsule wardrobe. It is a practice shaped by memory, tradition and reuse—entirely about provenance, history and selectivity.
You see, we want to own things that will still make sense to us in three years.
Deconsumption is not a trend; trends, by definition, pass. The so-called “underconsumption core” feels more like a structural renegotiation towards sharper, more considered choices. Intention, in all this, collapses the distance between want and need into something more useful, creating a movement that becomes a habit—quiet and genuinely transformative.
Deconsumption, Identity and the Things We Choose to Keep
It is about redirecting our perspective on desire, making it inherently thoughtful.
Our generation, Gen Z, is reaching backwards for things that feel real: vintage, handmade, inherited, or at least intentionally chosen.
These things make us happy because of what they mean to us. It is the significance of it all. For us, as we actively navigate the process of building an identity and figuring out what our style even is, there is a massive amount of noise to filter through.
But here is the thing about noise: we can become better at tuning it out simply by learning to distinguish between the things that feel genuinely right and the things that merely feel urgently available—two very different psychological spaces.
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What Happens When Ownership Becomes Intentional
So, back to my wardrobe. I think the solution is to let the space clear out until only context and ethos remain.
Surprisingly, deconsumption is not just going to apply to my wardrobe, but to everything I aim to make intentional, personal and more reflective of myself—and that should be very interesting.