In 2015, Kate Moss called an easyJet pilot a “basic bitch” and a catchy new insult meaning obvious and uncool hit the mainstream. Had it happened in 2026, Moss might have used the word “polyester”, reportedly gen Z’s new favorite diss, levied at cheap-looking videos on TikTok, and sometimes at other users’ taste. But its use as a figurative insult also echoes a literal backlash against polyester, now the most-produced synthetic fibre on the planet.
Young people are pushing back against polyester, many of them expressing concern about cheap-looking garments, sweaty-feeling fabrics and concern about what wearing polyester may be doing to their health (though the science is still developing, studies suggest that the dyes, flame retardant and “sweat-wicking” chemicals frequently used on synthetic fabrics can leach into sweaty skin, a particular concern for workout clothes.) In gyms, the pilates princess aesthetic with its synthetic matching sets is waning while 1990s-style exercise gear is becoming fashionable once more as many lionize exercise garments displaying visible sweat – think Sylvester Stallone in Rocky, or John Travolta being sweatily hypnotized by Jamie Lee Curtis’s rocking pelvis in the 1985 movie Perfect. Some of the pushback centres around polyester’s impact on the planet. Derived from fossil fuels, it does not biodegrade, and sheds microplastics when washed.
Many anti-polyester influencers, however, talk about giving up the fabric in the same way they might talk about giving up sugar, sharing content with hashtags such as #naturalfibers, #antipolyester and #nontoxicclothing while posting videos of large shopping hauls of cotton and linen from Zara. There is a Maha element too. The USDA recently launched a Plant Not Plastic initiative, attempting to revitalize American cotton, stating that US farmers have been “crushed by rising costs, unfair foreign competition, and a flood of cheap synthetic products” for too long.
RFK Jr shared campaign imagery – featuring blue jean-wearing, horse-riding outdoorsy types – in May, along with the strapline: “Real Americans wear cotton.” Much online backlash is about fakeness, a perception that fashion brands are catfishing their customers by selling good-looking garments online that look and feel nasty in real life, as was illustrated by a recent furore over a capsule collection inspired by Gap’s much-loved 1990s Happy Stripe sweaters. Part of its higher-end Gap Studio range, the garments, which that cost up to $128 sold out quickly online. But the backlash came when shoppers received their packages.
Many had assumed the items were knitted, but instead, they featured a printed photograph of a knit that one TikTok user described as “fake knitting! It just looks horrible!” And with the fabric being 80% polyester and 20% elastane, she continued, you would be “literally wrapped in a sheet of plastic” during “one of the hottest summers on record”. Though Shein’s appeal may be waning – it was valued at $100bn in 2022 but is now preparing to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange for a quarter of that, $27bn – that decline seems to have less to do with any lack of demand for cheap clothes produced dubiously, and more to do with the rise of similar “polyester” (gen Z meaning intended) offerings at Temu, Amazon and other Shein-esque challenger brands, as well as its struggle to keep prices quite as low owing to Donald Trump’s trade policies.
One byproduct of Shein’s recent ubiquity, however, is that it has made other fast fashion brands – the kind that charge, say, $79.90 for a dress, as opposed to Shein’s absurd $9.22 – look mid-market in the eyes of young customers. Some gen Z – usually defined as those born between 1997 and 2012 (the oldest of them will turn 30 next year) – are vocal about expecting better than Shein when paying higher than Shein prices. And one of the ways they judge whether an item’s quality is higher is by checking whether it contains polyester.
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