May
In a world where every outfit, every “I don’t care” pose, and every deliberately messy morning is instantly readable as a signal, what’s left that truly belongs to you?
In this new episode of her podcast, Alla Davies explores the quiet revolution happening beneath the surface of style, self-presentation, and modern life. From clean-girl aesthetics to ironic exhaustion, from quiet luxury to loud refusal, everything has become a message designed for the outside gaze. But what happens when we reclaim the space that doesn’t need an audience?
Alla takes you on a thought-provoking journey from the exhaustion of constant legibility to the rarest luxury of all: a personal code that works only for you. No performance. No explanation. No marketplace of the gaze. Just something worn, held, or chosen — not for them, but for yourself.
Signal. Not Self. Because when almost everything pushes outward, the most radical act is to keep something unclaimed by the public.
Almost everything now has become a signal. And the problem is not even that people want to communicate something about themselves. People have always done that. The problem is something else. Everything is a signal now. Not just polished beauty. Not just expensive taste. Messiness is a signal too. Tiredness is a signal. “I didn’t even try” is a signal. Even not wanting to be seen turns very quickly into a style people know how to read.
That’s what makes it interesting.
Because at least before, you could still tell where the display window was. Now the display window is everything. Clean girl. Office siren. Quiet luxury. The whole “I just threw this on” look. Deliberate exhaustion. Deliberate disorder. Even the refusal to play the game already looks like a perfectly legible move inside the game. That’s what gets tiring.
The structure is always the same. It doesn’t matter whether someone looks polished, expensive, dishevelled, ironic, detached, or exhausted. If the whole thing is built to be read from the outside, then the mechanism hasn’t changed. It is still a signal. The costume changes. The mechanism stays the same.
That’s why I get less and less interested in fashion in the ordinary sense. Something else is more interesting now. What, if anything, is left that does not exist for the outside gaze? What is left that is not made to be decoded, admired, classified, understood in three seconds?
That is where I start thinking about T-shirts.
Not as style. Not as performance. Definitely not as irony. Irony mostly bores me. Too often it is just aggression in good packaging. A socially acceptable way to bite the world and pretend it is intelligence.
That’s not what I want.
What matters to me is whether something works on me, not on them. That is the difference. I do not need a shirt to explain me to the public. I do not need anybody to read it correctly, admire it, fear it, or mentally applaud it. I want the words to go inward. Even if nobody sees them. Even if there are twenty-five layers on top. It changes nothing. I know what is there. I feel it. It works on me. That is not a signal. That is a code.
And that, to me, is the line that has almost disappeared.
A signal is made for the outside. A code can exist without an audience. A signal asks to be read. A code does not ask for anything. It just does its work.
That is why this bothers me. Not because I am anti-fashion. Not because I think the old days were somehow purer. Nothing so sentimental. It bothers me because too much now is made to be instantly legible. And anything that becomes legible too quickly becomes marketable too quickly. A style. A type. A category. A product. One more easy way to explain a person without ever getting near them.
And this goes way beyond clothes. Clothes are just the easiest example. The mechanism is larger than that. More and more often people are not exactly living, they are managing the impression of themselves. Even when they pretend they are not controlling anything. Even when the whole posture is built around “I’m not playing this game.” That too has already become part of the game. It is just a different genre.
There is something darkly funny about it. Someone says, “I don’t care,” and that “I don’t care” is instantly readable. Someone wants to look like they are outside the system, and the system already knows exactly how to package that, sell it, and send it back as another aesthetic type.
Everything gets caught. Everything gets translated. Everything can become signal.
So the real question, for me, is no longer who is well dressed and who is not. The real question is what, in a world where almost everything has become message, can still remain code.
Not a slogan. Not a role. Not ironic armour. Not a well-staged “look who I am.” Something quieter than that. Something personal. Something not designed for the room.
At that point it stops being about fashion.
It becomes about scarcity.
Because what is rare now is not originality. There is plenty of that. It is not boldness either. There is plenty of that too. What is rare is anything that does not need a viewer. Anything that does not need to be understood immediately. Anything that does not turn itself into explanation.
And honestly, that is what feels luxurious now. Not visibility. Not a stronger image. Not a sharper signal. But the thing you keep for yourself.
Almost everything now pushes outward. Fast. Readable. Presentable. Beautiful, or deliberately unbeautiful, which often amounts to the same thing. Against that backdrop, anything that refuses the marketplace of the gaze starts to feel rare.
That is why the idea of a personal code interests me so much. Not a message. Not a performance. Not a small war against the world. A thing that does not need explaining. A thing that does not need to be read. A thing that exists between a person and themselves.
That is what interests me now.
Not how to look.
Not how to signal.
Not how to be understood.
But what can still be worn, held, chosen — not for them, but for yourself.
Because when almost everything has become signal, the rarest thing is no longer visibility.
The rarest thing is to leave something unclaimed by the public.