SEASON 2 W'26 - STORY 2 More Than The Label
00:00:00 Welcome: Hi, I'm Melanie and this is UNfashioned. A podcast about unravelling what no longer fits and rewearing what was always real. I hope you are staying nice and cozy and warm. And in the last episode we talked about winter and what it means to dress for comfort and protection, choosing layers that hold you when life slows down. This episode stays in that quieter, inward place, but shifts its focus to something smaller, closer, and often overlooked. Lately, I've been noticing the brand labels inside my clothes, the name stitched into the inside of jackets and sweaters, the words you see before you even find out how something feels on your body. When I stand in my closet and really look. There are so many labels hanging there. Different brands, different sizes. Each one quietly suggesting something about me, the person who chose the garment and still has kept it in her closet. When I was younger, I never really cared much about labels. I wore, what I liked without worrying about labels. But often I found myself buying things because of their labels, like my friends did. My way of fitting in. And it's not hard to remember just how familiar that feels. Because we live inside labels too. We place them on ourselves and we are given them by others. Names, rules, categories and identities, words meant to simplify us, but that often reduces us instead. Over time, those labels can start to feel tight. They can limit how we move, how we see ourselves, and how much of ourselves we allow to be seen by others. This episode is about labels, the ones sewn into our clothes and the ones we wear without even realizing it. How they shape our perception, how they create belonging, and how they can quietly make us feel smaller than we really are. So today we're staying in that one part of the garment. The label.
00:02:33 What Brand Labels Promise: Brand labels begin telling a story before you even try something on. They suggest a trend, a category, a mood, and often a sense of belonging before the fabric even touches your skin. A name stitched in style, a garment can make you feel confident, polished, and relevant. Sometimes they suggest status like your cooler, more put together or more worthy because you're wearing a certain name. The label sets expectations long before the mirror does, shaping how you approach the garment and how you imagine yourself in it. What has always stayed with me is that I did not enter fashion caring about labels at all. When I arrived at fashion school, my focus was entirely on creating. I was there to design, to make an experiment and to turn ideas into something physical. I cared about construction and materials about the silhouette and the form. It felt closer to an art than anything else. The work itself was the point. What name might eventually be attached to it felt secondary, almost irrelevant. It was only after spending time inside that environment that I began to notice how much importance other people placed on labels. I watched how quickly a name could change the way something was perceived. The same garment could be admired or dismissed based on the label inside it. I started to understand that I was no longer just in a creative space. I was in fashion as an industry. An industry where design and commerce are inseparable, and where labels help tell people what something is worth before they have time to decide for themselves. That realization stayed with me, but it never fully changed how I felt about labels themselves. Because over time, what I kept noticing was that labels did not create style. They created a shorthand. They made things easier for us to recognize. The label helped people feel certain about the garment before they considered anything else about it. Some of the most stylish people I know are not the ones chasing names or trends. They are the ones who are comfortable in themselves. They know what they like, they trust their instincts. They build wardrobes filled with pieces they love wearing, pieces that they return to again and again, and pieces that feel personal and lived in. Through my work at Retro Kandy Vintage, I see this consistently. Style shows up most clearly when someone chooses what they genuinely love, not what a label suggests they should want. From my own experience, a label does not make a garment more meaningful. It does not make it more honest. It does not make it more you. It makes something easier to sell, easier to recognize, easier to place in a category, but it does not give its soul. That comes from how something is worn, how it is lived in, and how it becomes part of your life. Once I started seeing labels this way, it became harder to give them the power they so often possess. I began to pay more attention to how something felt on my body, how it moved with me, and whether it reflected who I actually was. The label became just one small detail, not the whole story itself.
00:06:37 Seeing Labels From The Inside: Working as a designer inside a major brand changed my relationship with labels in a very specific way. When you are inside the system, the mystique disappears, the name stops being inspirational and starts being operational. I saw how garments were developed, how decisions were made, how much intention went into maintaining a consistent identity. A Calvin Klein a label carried enormous weight, but also from inside, it felt less like magic and more like structure. The brand became a set of rules to design within a language, a point of view that had to remain recognizable no matter what. The label wasn't about self-expression anymore. It was about consistency. About restraint. About fitting into a very specific idea of what the brand was supposed to be season after season. That experience was clarifying. It taught me that labels are not neutral. They shape what is allowed. They decide what fits and what does not. They influence how much freedom exists before something stops belonging. From the outside, a label can feel expansive. But from the inside it can feel very narrow. What surprised me most was how much distance that created. The name on the inside of the garment no longer felt personal. It felt strategic. The label wasn't speaking to who I was, it was speaking to whoever the brand needed to keep its position in the business world. And once you see that, it becomes hard to believe that a label can honestly represent a person or a piece of clothing. That experience didn't make me reject labels outright. It just made me see them more clearly. A label is a framework, not a truth. It can describe a point of view, but it cannot hold the complexity of a person. And it certainly cannot define worth. Seeing labels from the inside taught me something important. If a name can be constructed, maintained and protected so carefully, then it can also be questioned. And if that is true for clothing, it is true for the labels we live inside as well.
00:09:22 When Labels Start To Press: At first, labels we live in can feel useful. But are they? They help you move through the world without having to explain yourself too much. The labels give people a shortcut to understanding you, or at least thinking they do. Think back to your school days. Were you labeled a geek because you were smart? Perhaps you wore the label of popular athlete, attractive, unattractive or something like that. Some of us accept the labels we are given. Some try to change them and some actually do because over time, something subtle happens. The label that once felt helpful starts to feel tight. You notice it in small moments when the word no longer fits the way it used to. When you feel yourself editing what you say or how you show up so you don't contradict the label that you've been living inside. When you realize you're being understood quickly, but not deeply. Labels were never meant to explain an entire person. Just like a brand on a garment was never meant to define style. Sometimes you see someone wearing something incredibly expensive, impeccably made, and even couture level, and yet it doesn't feel like them at all. The garment is wearing the person, instead of the other way around. The label is loud, but the identity underneath feels quiet and unclear. The same thing can happen in life. When a label starts leading instead of supporting, it can flatten complexity. It can reduce a whole person into something easier to recognize, but harder to truly know. Over time, that reduction begins to feel uncomfortable. A label you wear, or even one you give yourself, does not make you better than anyone else. It does not make you more valid or more complete. It just names something small and partial. Authenticity is what gives weight. Self-trust is what gives dimension. This is often where the unraveling begins. Not with rejection, but with awareness. With the realization that you are more than a name, more than a category, and more than what fits neatly on a tag. And once you feel that, it becomes difficult to go back to letting a label speak louder than you do.
00:12:19 Loosening The Label: Loosening a label does not mean tearing it out. It rarely comes with a big decision or a public shift. Most of the time, it begins internally when something that once felt right no longer does. In clothing, this can happen when everything looks correct. The label is respected. The piece makes sense on paper. But once you are wearing it, something feels off. You feel stiff. You feel like you are performing in the garment instead of living in it. The label says you should feel confident, but your body disagrees. Life and work can feel the same way. You can be inside the right role, the right title, and the right category and still feel disconnected. From the outside, it looks aligned. From the inside, It feels restrictive. You start moving according to the expectation instead of instinct. You begin shaping yourself to fit the label instead of letting the label adapt to who you are becoming. This is where unraveling shifts in season two. It's no longer about removing everything that came before. It's about loosening the grip on what no longer leads you well. Letting the label exist without letting it define the whole of you. Allowing yourself to be larger than the role, the name, or the category that you have been placed in. A label, whether in clothing or in life, was never meant to explain the entire experience. It was information, not truth. When you loosen its authority, you create space for intuition to return. You stop asking how something looks and start paying attention to how something feels. You stop performing what is expected and start living what is real. This kind of unraveling is subtle. It shows up as less explanation and more presence, less comparison and more self-trust. The label may still be there, but it no longer dictates how much room you are allowed to take up. That is not rejection of who you have been. It's a quiet return to yourself.
00:14:57 Listener Refelction: As you listen, take a moment to think about the last piece of clothing you bought. Ask yourself gently, did you choose it because of the label or because of how it actually felt to you? Did the name inside the garment offer a sense of confidence, trendiness, or belonging before you even tried it on? Sometimes a label can make us feel accepted, current, or part of something larger, like we've been led into a club. But labels work the same way in life. They can give us a quick sense of belonging, a shorthand for who we are or where we fit. And while that can feel comforting, it can also quietly place us in a box. A label can make it easier to recognize, but harder to truly know, even by ourselves. Listening to yourself is where that starts to shift. When you begin to quiet the pool of labels, you start to hear your own intuition more clearly. What feels right on your body. What feels honest in your life, what actually reflects you rather than what helps you blend in. This is where true style begins both externally and internally, not from fitting into a category, but from trusting yourself enough to step outside of one. You don't need to reject labels altogether. You only need to stop letting them hide who you really are.
00:16:43 Closing : As we move through this season of UNfashioned, we're slowing down and paying attention to the things we usually overlook. Not to judge them or to strip them away, but to understand how they shape us. This episode was about labels, in our clothes and in our lives, and what happens when we loosen their hold just enough to hear ourselves more clearly. If this story resonated with you, I'd love for you to leave a review or share the episode with somebody who might need it. Those small gestures help this podcast find people it's meant for, and that means more than you know. Story three will be released February fifth as part of our bi weekly rhythm, giving each story space to settle and time to live alongside it.
00:17:37 Closing : I'm Melanie and this is UNfashioned. Until next time. Ignore the labels and wear what feels true.