There is nothing more human than good taste, since there’s no way to define it. It’s mysterious. But you know it when you see it.

You probably won’t find it at the clothing company Edikted, a hit among teenagers. Edikted relies on algorithms to design its products: It monitors customers’ social media activity and internet searches, factors in Hailey Bieber’s latest outfits and spits out 300 styles a month made cheaply in China. After it reached US$460 million (S$589 million) in sales in 2025, one of its founders boasted to The Wall Street Journal, “We’re more like a data company than a fashion company.”

This model has proved so potent for the fast-fashion giant Shein, which aims to go public this fall at a valuation of over US$40 billion, that it recently gobbled up the popular millennial brand Everlane. Fast fashion and mall brands used to look to the runways for inspiration. Now, much of their output has been slopified by back-end data and internet searches.

The rise of the algorithm-designer and the fall of independent brands represent the latest stage of the financialisation of fashion, the triumph of money over art and craft. We may wear skinny jeans one decade and wide ones the next, but the elevation of corporations over designers has been the industry overarching trend over the past 40 years, and it has gradually killed creative design at all price points. Fashion slop is the logical next step in the evolution of ready-to-wear clothing.

Decades ago, the world of fashion was smaller and feistier, dominated by eccentric, visionary designers trying to express themselves. Sure, they wanted to make money, but many were also trying to change the world by changing how people dressed. The idea was to create something all new and excitingly “now.”

These were not marketing-department drones. They were characters. Halston partied at Studio 54 until 4 or 5am then arrived at his office around noon to start work. In Paris, Karl Lagerfeld was locked in a feud with Yves Saint Laurent over their shared love interest, the French socialite Jacques de Bascher, but also over their differing ideas of design. 

Saint Laurent approached fashion as a high form of art, wh...