Infinite Options, but We Keep Choosing Chanel, Dior and Hermès

Let me set the scene:

I was driving down the highway with the convertible top and windows down to maximize air chaos. The music was blasting, and my sweetheart, aka my 15-year-old daughter, was beside me playing DJ. Olivia Rodrigo’s heartbreak was wailing through the speakers when she suddenly switched the song to “Wonderwall.”

My daughter looked over and asked if I had ever heard of it. I raised an eyebrow. Yes. I was young in the ’90s, not the 1890s.

For the next few miles, we flew down the highway, hair whipping across our faces, shouting the lyrics into the wind.

It got me thinking: when nearly every song ever recorded is available to us, how do we still end up choosing the same ones? The same goes for books, movies, television and fashion. There’s more out there than anyone could consume in a lifetime.

We have access to more than ever before, and it has never been easier to create something new. A musician can record an album on a laptop. A writer can self-publish. A filmmaker can shoot something on an iPhone, an artist doesn’t need a gallery’s backing, and a designer can reach the fashion world without the validation of a department store. The barriers to creating and distributing have never been lower.

The paradox is that the abundance of choice makes the “safest choice” more valuable. There may be endless music, books, shows,art and fashion, but who wants to sort through it all? Spotify tells us what is popular. Netflix tells us what is trending. Bestseller lists, BookTok and celebrity book clubs tell us what to read. The truth is, we want to be told what is good.

That isn’t necessarily laziness. We don’t want to waste an evening on a terrible movie or thousands of dollars on a coat we may regret. Popularity becomes a stamp of approval. If enough people have already chosen something, choosing it ourselves feels less risky.

Maybe that is why fashion remains caught in a Chanel-Hermès-Dior cycle. The conversation adjusts, but it always returns to the same handful of houses. Buying from a heritage house feels less risky because, as a society, we have already reached a consensus about their value. We understand it and trust that it will hold over time. An unfamiliar designer asks you to trust your own taste without knowing if it will endure.

Perhaps our attraction to familiar things isn’t only a failure of curiosity. Shared culture gives us a way to recognize one another. The books everyone reads become the books everyone can discuss. The series everyone watches gives us something to talk about. A song can remain in circulation long enough to belong to a teenager and her mother at the same time.

Consensus may homogenize our tastes, but it also gives us something in common. In a culture that is supposedly becoming more fragmented by the day, perhaps these familiar things are where we still manage to find one another.

And find each other we did. When my daughter and I walked into Delicious Orchards, our local gourmet grocer, “Wonderwall” was playing. We laughed, and my daughter looked over at me and said, “I think this is our song.”