There are currently 47 million Americans in therapy. Another 200 million probably should be. The rest are microdosing something they bought from a guy named Trevor who has a Substack about consciousness. Everyone is working on themselves. Nobody is okay. And the outfit you wore to brunch last Sunday told the whole story before you even sat down and ordered that twelve-dollar matcha you pretend to enjoy.

Clothes don't lie. You do — constantly, fluently, to everyone including yourself — but your clothes don't. That hoodie you've worn four days straight isn't "cozy." It's a cry for help with a drawstring. Those sweatpants at the grocery store aren't "athleisure." You haven't been to a gym since the Obama administration. And that one nice jacket you throw on when you need people to think you've got it together? Everyone knows it's doing all the work. Everyone.

DECLINE is not here to fix you. We're here to dress the version of you that's given up on pretending.

The Five Stages of Getting Dressed (in This Economy)

Denial. You open your closet. It's full of fast fashion you bought during a 2 AM doom spiral. You tell yourself you have nothing to wear. You are technically surrounded by clothes. This is the first lie of the day and it's 7:43 AM.

Anger. You try on the jeans. The jeans don't fit. Not because your body changed — your body is fine, your body is a miracle of biology currently running on four hours of sleep and a fistful of gummy vitamins — but because the brand vanity-sized their medium and then un-vanity-sized it the next season because they hate you specifically.

Bargaining. You Google "capsule wardrobe" for the ninth time this year. You save a Pinterest board. You watch a YouTube video by a man in a linen shirt standing in a white room who tells you that you only need 33 pieces. You currently own 33 pieces that are just slightly different black t-shirts. You close the tab.

Depression. You put the hoodie back on.

Acceptance. You find DECLINE.

Emotional Support Garments

Let's be honest about what clothes are in 2026. They're not "self-expression." That's what people said in 2014 when they were still optimistic enough to have a personal brand. Clothes in 2026 are emotional infrastructure. They're the difference between "I can face the world" and "I'm going to pretend the delivery driver didn't see me through the Ring camera wearing yesterday's shirt inside out."

The wellness industry sold you a story: fix your insides and the outside will follow. Meditate. Journal. Do the cold plunge that every podcaster with a net worth over ten million dollars swears rewired their entire nervous system. And sure, maybe that works. But you know what also works? Putting on something that makes you feel like you could walk into any room on earth and belong there, even if the room is on fire, which — given the state of things — it probably is.

DECLINE makes emotional support garments. Not in a corny way. We don't put affirmations on the lining. We don't sew little notes that say "you got this bestie ✨" inside the collar. We make clothes that look so good they do the emotional heavy-lifting for you. Armor for people whose battlefield is the group chat, the comments section, the open-plan office where someone is always "just circling back."

The Lie of "Effortless"

Every fashion brand wants you to believe their clothes look "effortless." This is the greatest scam in the history of textiles. Nothing is effortless. Getting out of bed requires effort. Maintaining a skincare routine requires effort. Pretending to be happy at a friend's gender reveal party for a baby that will be born into a world where rent is 97% of the average income requires monumental effort.

DECLINE doesn't do effortless. We do calculated. We do "I spent exactly the right amount of time on this and it shows but not in a desperate way." We do "yes I thought about this outfit and no I'm not embarrassed about that because we're all going to be dead in eighty years and I'd rather be well-dressed for the time I have left."

Effortless is a lie told by people who were born into wealth and had a stylist by age nineteen. Effort is human. Effort is beautiful. Effort in the face of everything being objectively terrible is the most punk thing you can do in 2026.

Dress Like You've Read the Terms and Conditions

You know what nobody talks about? The specific flavor of exhaustion that comes from being aware. Not activist-aware. Not protest-sign-aware. Just... aware. You read the privacy policy once, by accident, and now you can't stop thinking about it. You know your phone is listening. You know the algorithm has a more accurate model of your personality than your own mother. You know that the "suggested for you" ads are hitting a little too close to home lately and it's genuinely unsettling.

This is the DECLINE customer. Not a doomer. Not a nihilist. Just someone who is profoundly, irreversibly aware of the gap between how things are presented and how things actually are. Someone who has seen behind the curtain and found that there is no wizard — just a private equity firm and a very aggressive PR team.

You can't unknow what you know. But you can get dressed like someone who knows it and isn't afraid. Someone who walks into a room and the room doesn't know whether to be intimidated or concerned. That's the sweet spot. That's DECLINE.

In Conclusion: Seek Help. Also, Check the New Drop.

We're not anti-therapy. Therapy is great. Go to therapy. Tell your therapist the truth for once. Cry about your dad. Do the EMDR. Process the thing from middle school that you've been carrying around like a brick in your chest for fifteen years.

But also, when you're done, when you've said "I think we made really good progress today" and you both know you just talked about your coworker for fifty minutes — go home and get dressed properly. Because healing is a journey, but looking good is a destination. And DECLINE is the slightly unhinged GPS that gets you there while playing a podcast about how the financial system is a collective hallucination.

We're cooked. Might as well look good.

DECLINE — Because self-care and self-awareness are not the same thing, and we're leaning into the second one.