Claire Wears started three years ago in my tiny Chicago apartment when I got tired of yelling at fashion media in my head and decided maybe I should just write down my opinions instead. I’m Claire, I work in marketing for a software company, and this whole thing began as me ranting into the void about how most fashion content was either absurdly expensive or completely impractical for real life.
The early days were just me writing whatever I felt like — calling out ridiculous trends, reviewing Target finds, complaining about how “affordable” in fashion magazines meant $300 jeans. I wasn’t trying to build something big, just needed an outlet for thoughts I’d been boring my friends with for years. Turns out other people had similar frustrations with fashion media, and the site actually started getting readers who weren’t just my mom pretending to be interested.
About a year in, I realized I was getting repetitive. My perspective — Chicago marketing coordinator, regular budget, shopping mostly at mid-range stores — was valid but limited. Fashion means different things to different people depending on where you live, what you do, what you can afford, what matters to you. If this site was going to be actually useful beyond my specific experience, I needed other voices.
So I started reaching out to people I’d connected with through the site and social media, asking if they wanted to contribute. Not looking for professional fashion writers or influencers — wanted real people with real perspectives who could write honestly about their actual relationship with fashion. Found five contributors who each bring something completely different to the site.
Madison lives in Portland, works as a graphic designer, and is broke in that specific millennial way where you have a decent job but still can’t afford much beyond rent and student loans. She grew up thrifting out of necessity in Eugene, went to art school, and now approaches fashion like a design problem with severe budget constraints. Everything she writes is shaped by having no money — how to make Target look expensive, which trends work on a budget, calling out when fashion content recommends “affordable” pieces that cost more than her monthly grocery budget. She’s gotten really good at that specific skill of making budget finds look intentional, and she’s honest about both the successes and the failures. Her content resonates with everyone trying to care about fashion while also being realistically broke.
Jasmine works in finance in Boston, comes from an upper-middle-class background in Atlanta, and has the budget to actually invest in quality pieces. But she writes about corporate fashion from a specific angle — being a Black woman in conservative industries where you can’t be too trendy or too casual, where you have to hit this exact balance of professional and stylish without giving people reasons to dismiss you. Her perspective on investment dressing, on navigating dress codes as a woman of color, on which expensive pieces are actually worth it — that’s not something I can write about from experience. She’s very aware that her approach isn’t accessible to everyone, and she’s honest about that privilege while also providing genuinely useful advice for people in similar corporate situations.
Then there’s Taylor, stay-at-home mom in suburban Minneapolis with two kids under seven, and her whole fashion journey is about trying to feel like a person again after becoming someone’s parent. She used to work in PR, had a wardrobe, cared about clothes, and then had kids and basically lived in leggings and oversized sweatshirts for years. Now she’s trying to rebuild some sense of personal style while dealing with the reality of sticky fingers and playground dirt and limited budget and postpartum body changes. Her content is for all the moms who feel lost in a sea of athleisure, wanting to look decent without pretending they have unlimited time or money. Very real, very relatable, very honest about the struggle of maintaining any sense of style when you’re just trying to keep tiny humans alive.
Brooklyn is 24, works part-time retail in Austin, and is trying to make content creation her full-time thing, which is the most Gen Z sentence possible. She dropped out of UT Austin after two years to pursue social media, and her parents think she’s wasting her life, but she’s committed to giving it a real shot. Everything she writes is shaped by social media — what trends on TikTok, what looks good in photos, how algorithms work, what’s actually popular among young people versus what fashion media thinks is popular. She’s very into trends in a way that makes older people judge her, but that’s literally her reality as someone trying to build a following. Her perspective on fast-moving social media fashion is something none of the rest of us fully understand, and she’s not apologetic about it.
Riley rounds out the group — 31, environmental consultant in Seattle, grew up in Boulder with hippie parents who were very into sustainability. She’s that person who feels guilty about every purchase, researches the ethics of every brand, shops almost exclusively secondhand or from certified ethical companies. Got really into sustainable fashion about five years ago when she realized the fashion industry’s impact on people and planet, and now she’s trying to prove you can care about fashion without destroying everything. But she’s not preachy about it, which is rare in sustainable fashion content. She acknowledges it’s complicated and expensive and often inaccessible, that privilege plays a huge role, that perfection is impossible. Her content is practical information about being more ethical with fashion without making people feel terrible for not being perfect.
Together we cover a pretty wide range of fashion perspectives — broke millennial designer, corporate professional with money, suburban mom, Gen Z content creator, sustainability advocate, and me as the founder still writing about accessible everyday fashion. We don’t always agree. Madison and Jasmine have very different approaches shaped by completely different budgets. Brooklyn and Riley have basically opposite philosophies about consumption. Taylor and I write about different stages of life with different priorities.
But that’s kind of the point. Fashion isn’t one thing. What works and what matters depends entirely on your life, your budget, your values, your circumstances. We’re not trying to tell everyone there’s one right way to approach fashion — we’re showing different ways real people with different lives actually deal with getting dressed.
None of us are fashion industry professionals. We don’t get PR packages or go to fashion week or have insider access to anything. We’re just six people who care about fashion enough to write about it honestly, from our actual experiences, without pretending we have it all figured out or that our way is the only valid way.
Claire Wears exists because I got tired of aspirational fashion content that wasn’t useful for regular life, and then I found other people who felt the same way about different aspects of fashion. We write what we actually know about, recommend things we actually use, admit when we mess up, acknowledge our different privileges and limitations.
So no, this isn’t some polished professional fashion site. It’s me and five contributors with day jobs and real lives, writing about fashion from genuinely different perspectives, trying to be useful instead of aspirational. If that sounds like what you’re looking for, welcome. If not, I’m sure there’s plenty of other fashion content out there that will work better for you.