IELTS Essay # 103 - Nowadays people are influenced by fashion, in particular when choosing their clothes and hairstyle. Is this a positive or a negative development? Give reasons for your answer and include examples from your own experience.

Essay # 103

Nowadays people are influenced by fashion, in particular when choosing their clothes and hairstyle. Is this a positive or a negative development? Give reasons for your answer and include examples from your own experience.

Clothing and hairstyle are such aspects of the fashion industry that influence almost everyone. Although this cannot be completely avoided, excessive influence of these things is a negative development.

The first reason why excessive fashion influences are a negative development is that they distract you from the more important things in your life. Let’s consider the example of the teenage population that largely follows fashion trends. In their age, they are also supposed to focus on a number of other important things. Examples of this are academics, sports, co-curricular, character building, personality development, and other such factors that define one’s life and lifestyle. Fashion does play a fairly good role in one’s life, but good taste in fashion can be developed at a later age; the other skills (mentioned above) may or may not develop nicely, later on.

The second reason why following fashion outrageously is bad for you, is because people have been known to be unable to define themselves without fashion. By this, I mean that some people’s lives revolve around fashion trends in such a way, that they are unable to associate their personality with anything else. These people tend to judge others who do not match up to the latest fashion ideas – this, in my opinion, is not a very healthy mentality. In addition, such ‘fashionistas’ take upon them a huge amount of stress in order to stay in vogue all the time. This, I feel, makes them ignore the finer things that may be happening in their lives.

To conclude, when the influence of fashion on you makes you critical of others, and deflects your attention too much towards itself, it is safe to think of it as a negative influence.

(286 words)