Emma Chamberlain Isn’t the Only Influencer Cleaning Out Her Closet (2025)

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images

Emma Chamberlain swears she’s done dressing for the algorithm. “Part of the reason why I ended up with such a ridiculous amount of clothing was because I wanted to keep up with the internet,” she confesses in a new hour-long video explaining why she recently donated 95 percent of her closet. The video opens with a supercut of the many hauls she’s documented over her seven years on the internet. Before modeling every single piece she decided to keep, Chamberlain explains why she once felt she had to own as much clothing as possible. “It’s all about always wearing a new outfit, experimenting in hopes of starting new trends, following existing trends, posting shopping hauls,” she says. “There’s a fashion hamster wheel on the internet, and I was on that hamster wheel … I felt like a gluttonous pig.” After cleaning out her closet, Chamberlain admits she “still has a lot of stuff.” But to her credit, she never mentions a single brand name in this video — well, except that of her own lucrative businesses, her podcast, and her coffee company.

She isn’t the only YouTuber to recently document a dramatic closet purge to end up with simple — we dare say boring — capsule wardrobes that are mostly devoid of luxury logos, bright colors, prints, and patterns. The internet is already filled with “deinfluencing” content and decluttering influencers who tap into our anxieties about our overstuffed closets. Celebrities are feeling the glut, too: the Kardashians have their own resale site, for example, and in recent years, everyone from Chloë Sevigny to Jenna Lyons has hosted her own closet sale, drawing hundreds of fans. There’s something deeply relatable about watching stylish women describe how they’ve struggled to put together an outfit or reckon with their role in feeding the fashion consumption cycle. But if all this sounds like influencers are pushing yet another trendy way of dressing, or another way to sell us stuff, you’re not wrong to be suspicious.

What remains after Chamberlain’s deep purge? Mostly vintage-looking separates in muted neutrals, “black, white, cream, gray, olive green, maroon, blue, a little bit of brown,” with rare pops of bright red and green. Almost no logos; almost no patterns. Nothing screams luxury except for a few of her designer handbags from Prada, Bottega Veneta, and Miu Miu. (She also kept the Loewe cracked-eggshell stilettos, which are more of an “if you know, you know” thing.) A few oversize pieces, but mostly well-fitted tops and trousers. Some have interesting details, but overall, these are uncomplicated garments that someone much older or more conservative than Chamberlain would be comfortable wearing. She has several versions of essentially the same items, like cream tank tops and fitted blue sweaters. “Just watched someone wear 37,000 different variations of the same shirt and was thoroughly entertained,” writes one commenter. “The wardrobe is Korean grandma 1980s and some modern twists,” says another.

Chamberlain explains her previously jam-packed closet didn’t just overwhelm her shelves but also prevented her from understanding her true identity through fashion. “The more you have, the less personal style you’ll have,” she says.

Nothing is more sought-after in the fashion-influencer world at the moment than personal style. But what even is personal style? In a recent video, Mina Le explores this topic, explaining how she realized that “having great personal style doesn’t come down to individual pieces that you buy, but the essence of how you wear something, which is usually rooted in your own self-confidence.” Le once had an eccentric, theatrical, vintage-inspired approach to dressing, made more striking by her bleached eyebrows and the finger waves in her hair. Now, while she still wears a lot of vintage, “I don’t gravitate toward statement pieces as often as I used to,” she says.

A few months ago, Le says, she was inspired by Joan Didion’s super-simple travel packing list and challenged herself to spend ten days wearing only two simple outfits: a black T-shirt and black skirt and a white T-shirt and white skirt. “And honestly, this is probably the most freeing I’ve felt in a really long time,” she says, finally understanding Steve Jobs’s famous love of turtlenecks and jeans. Le cites a wide range of recent articles and thinkpieces exploring similar ideas around the commercialization of influencers, street style, and social-media trends — including my colleague Brooke LaMantia’s recent essay on her not-so-original personal style. In the end, Le concludes that personal style is misunderstood. It’s not about dressing in a distinctive way that someone else could replicate as a Halloween costume, she says.

“Personal style is not literally dead, but the sentiment holds that originality and authenticity are hanging on by a thread in the face of algorithms and Pinterest boards shepherding us all into wearing the same regurgitated microtrends,” she says. When young people try to keep up with microtrends by buying a cottage-core piece here and a Barbie-pink piece there, “the whole outfit looks more like an overconsumption spree rather than like an authentic attempt at dressing eclectically.” Meaning that despite our efforts to dress distinctively, we still often end up all looking a little bit the same. But Le argues that’s not necessarily a bad thing — or really all that different from taking great pains to dress eccentrically, as she once did. “Both people are looking for external validation based on the way that they present themselves.” Le says she now prefers to invest her creative energy into acting and writing instead of getting dressed. She still loves fashion, she says, but expresses it more in her research for longform videos like this one (which was sponsored not by a fashion brand but by Squarespace).

Another influencer who waged war with her closet this year is Niki Sky, whose most popular videos from the past include “Fashion Hacks” and “How to Dress Like a Rich Girl.” She went so far as to apologize to her audience for influencing them to fall “into the same trap of consumerism “ during her career as a YouTuber and fashion influencer. In her closet purge, she especially targeted “loud” luxury logos that once dominated her many handbags and shoes, getting rid of most of her collection, especially high heels. (Instead of selling a pair of Celine high-top sneakers that were covered with the brand’s name, she allowed her young daughter to scribble all over them with markers, and now she displays them in her closet as a sentimental piece.) Like Chamberlain’s, Sky’s wardrobe is now mostly full of neutral colors — black, white, gray, and brown. There are a lot of blazers, jeans, black and white T-shirts, and trousers.

“Recently, I have had a profound awakening of how toxic the whole fashion industry is and how it is negatively impacting us as individuals,” she says in a follow-up video. “Instead of making us feel empowered and confident in our own skin, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others and feeling bad about ourselves if we don’t keep up.”

After some of her followers accused her of cleaning out her closet only because “luxury is no longer trendy,” and to garner more likes and subscriptions on her YouTube channel, Sky released another video clarifying her new view on fashion. “I don’t want to be part of this toxic culture that is encouraging out-of-control spending sprees for external validation,” she says. “As for the future of this channel, my intention is truly just to empower as many people as I can to step into their most authentic selves, find their unique personal style, and always question everything.”

Since then, Sky has posted mostly videos about how “luxury brands are keeping you broke and unstylish” and tips for becoming “the most stylish person in the room,” which include developing self-confidence, not comparing yourself to others on social media, and finding a “style uniform” that isn’t influenced by the latest trends. Part of Sky’s style uniform, she says in one video, is her “ear game,” which segues nicely into a segment sponsored by a jewelry brand — a reminder that professional influencing and consumerism go hand in hand.

Tags:

• 2024 year in review
• style
• youtube
• influencers
• emma chamberlain
• best of fashion
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