Around a year ago, I downloaded Instagram – incredibly late to the party, I know. Don’t get me wrong, I’d dabbled in the app before but never felt the need to post on what was essentially a site for showing off photoshopped bikini pics, fabulous-looking friends and flawless-skinned selfies.

While that may sound high and mighty, it wasn’t because I was ‘above’ this kind of behaviour, but because my innate desire to be liked would feed off of the little hearts and followers like a pack of hungry lions going in for a kill on the Discovery Channel. So, it was best for everyone involved that I stayed clear – until the time came when I needed it for work.

But, what started as an image-led portfolio, solely focused on sharing fashion and beauty writing clippings, quickly started seeping into my everyday life. 

It all began with a cream AllSaints dress, a simple slip that worked for any occasion, whether teamed with trainers to traipse around town or heeled sandals for more swanky dos. Neutral New Balance trainers followed, then a beige Jacquemus shirt, a cream bag, white linen shirts, almond flip flops, black dresses and taupe trousers. Before I knew it, I was staring into a wardrobe that looked more like a skin tone chart than clothes.

Looking around, I wasn’t the only one bowing down to brown. Sarah-Rose Harrison, celebrity fashion stylist, echoed my experience: “It wasn’t until recently I realised everything in my life (my rescue pup included) slotted into a perfectly muted beige palette,” she tells Stylist. 

The problem behind this new neutral wardrobe, as Harrison nodded to, is that it made us feel muted. While she stresses that it has its pros: “It’s easier to put looks together and build a capsule wardrobe around a pared-back palette,” she is also quick to add that “It’s easy to blend in after a while and can feel a little uninspired.”

The culprit behind our desert walker dressing? Instagram, with heavily curated squares of neutrals filling our phones with the aspirational aesthetic that cuts out colour. But unlike copying styles from the catwalk, this trend seemed much less like a conscious choice.

“Social media is hugely, negatively impacting our lives,” Dr Aurore Bardey, the leader of the London College of Fashion’s Psychology of Fashion BSc course stresses. “As human beings, we are social animals, which means we need to live as part of a group.” Instagram is allowing us to connect and socialise with like-minded people who follow similar accounts, hashtags or celebrities. But, to remain part of these groups and cement ourselves within them, we need to follow the unspoken rules: how they celebrate special occasions, connect with each other, present themselves and countless other small ways of life that become regular routines in how we act. Bardey nods to concerning claims of increased social media usage decreasing our cognitive attentivity and intelligence – although she does stress the definition for intelligence is blurred – and increasing the risk of disordered eating, anxiety, depression and stress.

But when it comes to fashion, Instagram’s impact tells us more about ourselves and our character than those who are leading the taupe troop. And, of course, this doesn’t just pertain to the neutral aesthetic but any other type of trend on the platform too.

“Instagram can affect our fashion choices because we want to follow the rules of the groups we want to fit in. For Instagram, those who are impacted by the fashion choices of influencers are the ones to follow the rules of trendy people. If you want to look cool, if you want to look trendy, if you want to look so fabulous – as fabulous, as trendy, as cool as this influencer – you will follow the fashion choices of that person or several people,” adds Dr Bardey.

Suddenly, I feel like I’m back at school. As much as I have always believed that I feel confident within myself and who I am as a person on a day-to-day basis, it’s clear that I’ve become a chameleon, changing parts of myself to fit in with the ‘cool crew’. But this time, that wasn’t just a group who all sat at one table for lunch; it felt like it was the whole (virtual) world.

Dr Bardey’s remedy? “Use social media to speak up about serious issues because this is the very important positive impact; otherwise don’t use it and find yourself. Find your own self, your own sense of fashion, who you are. And then, if green is the colour of 2022 but it doesn’t fit your style, your soul, your self – forget about green.” 

Whether I will actually part with the platform still seems unlikely. Harrison has been a member of the platform since 2013, and has now amassed a following of 11,400 on Instagram alone; she originally joined to keep in touch with people from work and see what others were up to in a similar field, which is also my main reasoning for having it. And, ultimately, it’s a hugely important tool for connecting with friends, colleagues and others in your industry.

But, where Harrison is now taking advantage of the app to modify her moodboard, having “a reshuffle of who I was following and adding some much-needed vibrance – girls who live as boldly as the looks they wear”, I won’t be shopping until I have a more solid version of myself. Breaking the chains of my chameleon character to truly, once and for all understand who I am as a person who doesn’t need to be popular. And certainly, one who no longer wears white jeans to ride a horse, cream dresses to climb mountains and any other instagrammable yet impractical outfit that screams stupidity over style. 

Images: Getty; writer’s own