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Witherwill.- the longing to be free of responsibility.
John Koenig establishes the term witherwill in his book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
Koenig explains that being an adult is knowing that you’ll have to pay for whatever silly little things you do, even though the cost is rarely clear ahead of time. “It’s like shopping in a store without price tags.”
The little things we do are the decisions we make, the jobs we accept or refuse to apply to, the good and bad relationships we keep in our lives, and the small actions we take every day or stop doing day after day until they shape our beliefs and the way we live our lives.
Over the last few decades, we have seen a lot of studies about the impact of our small actions on the everyday life basis. From journaling and meditating, to eating nutritious food and doing exercise. It is a snowball that started with things that are nice to have and it later became things that you must do in order to: be happy, be healthy, be wealthy, be successful, and the list goes on and on.
And then this list got interwoven with responsibility. Responsibility is a value, it is something that we have been taught to have since we are little. You break it, you pay for it. You buy it, you pay for it. You lost it, you buy a replacement. You pay for it.
Moreover, championing workaholism and admiring productivity translates into to-do lists that are not only present in the workplace. We can find to-do lists of morning workouts, books to read over the summer, vegetables and proteins to eat or stop eating, and so on and so forth. It becomes a responsibility to check all the boxes of eating healthy, doing exercise, being great at work, being present for your beloved ones and having consistent time for spiritual and mindfulness activities. But instead of seeing healthy, athletic, happy mindful responsible workers, we are seeing historical record numbers of adults facing anxiety and depression.
So what is witherwill?
Witherwill is about letting go off the urge to feel responsible. It is very different from being irresponsible. It is about taken the burden off the shoulders of people and having expectations fade away as half of the Avengers were gone with the wind on Infinity War.
Witherwill is about feeling free from responsibilities and not feeling the burden of them. Yes, there are bills to pay, meals to cook, homework to make and chores to complete, but how can we let go of that pressure? How can we adapt an easy-going mindstyle with fewer to do lists and less guilt or retribution if some of the tasks we don’t complete are not being solved.
It is okay to not have it all figured out every day.
It is okay to navigate life with unanswered questions.
It is okay to answer these questions in life and then, after a few years, broken hearts and self-help books change the answer to these questions one more time.
Witherwill is a response that comes from the sense of being overwhelmed with responsibility.
How does witherwill looks like in fashion?
As an art, fashion is subject to multiple interpretations. Let’s go over a few paths that fashion can take considering the feeling of witherwill in the mass consumer.
Elevated loungewear.
Skims, Lululemon and Alo Yoga are key examples of how they are blending comfort with sophistication on many of the products they are presenting. These consumers want to be comfortable, but they may not want to feel guilty, or accused of wearing loungewear outside of the house or the gym.
Elevated loungewear offers a blend of the comfort and witherwill that consumers are feeling, with the glam, fashion forwardness, and aspirational beauty that brands are selling.
Reimagining the rules
Decades ago, there were a series of rules in fashion that everyone followed in order to be on the side of the ‘well-dressed’: Only gold or silver jewelry should be worn in an outfit, sequins only at night, leather belt and shoes must match, light colors in the day and dark colors at night.
Time passed and we saw how consumers were eager to explore dressing outside of the status quo and now we have matte sequins to wear during the day, and jewelry that is already gold, silver and rose gold, intentionally challenging the previous rigid norms of jewelry in fashion.
Witherwill in fashion will reimagine many more of these pre-established rules, thinking about the meaning that we have been giving to clothes. We may see combinations of textiles in one piece that we haven't seen before: denim and chiffon? jersey knits and silk charmeusse? The limit is the sky when it comes to reimagining clothes and we let go off the fear of getting it wrong or 'not understanding the assignment'.
Intentionally Irresponsible
When consumers gravitate toward loungewear and deliberately casual/informal looks. They're often expressing a desire to opt out of the performance that formal dress codes demand. The popularity of brands like Outdoor Voices, with their "Doing Things" anti-athleticism, or the rise of "dad sneakers" among fashion-forward consumers, speaks to a collective exhaustion with the responsibility of appearing put-together.
This psychological underpinning manifests in what we might call "irresponsible dressing"—choices that signal a rejection of conventional expectations while maintaining enough cultural capital to avoid genuine social consequences. The carefully curated "I woke up like this" aesthetic requires significant time, money, and thought to achieve, creating a paradox where the performance of non-performance becomes its own form of responsibility.
Witherwill and demographics
Different consumer segments express witherwill through distinct fashion choices, creating various market opportunities. High-earning millennials, burdened by career responsibilities and economic uncertainty, drive demand for luxury comfort—cashmere loungewear from brands like Naadam or technical fabrics from Outdoor Voices that justify their price points through performance benefits.
Gen X consumers, facing sandwich generation pressures, gravitate toward "investment dressing" that promises longevity and versatility. Brands like Everlane or COS capitalize on this demographic's desire to reduce decision fatigue while maintaining professional appearance standards.
Gen Z's relationship with witherwill is complicated by social media's constant documentation demands. Their fashion choices often reflect a desire to opt out of traditional markers of adulthood while maintaining visual interest for digital consumption. This has driven growth in vintage and thrift markets, where the responsibility of supporting fast fashion can be abdicated while maintaining individual style.
Witherwill and technology
Emerging technologies may further commodify witherwill through AI styling services that remove choice paralysis, subscription models that eliminate shopping responsibility, and virtual try-on technologies that reduce the social risks of fashion experimentation. The challenge for brands will be authentically serving witherwill impulses without creating new forms of performance anxiety around appearing effortless.
Fashion can be fun, creative and an incredible opportunity of self-expression for ourselves when we let go off the urge to feel and be responsible. But there comes a moment in time when we have to stop carrying responsibilities and expectations that we didn't sign up to carry and only take those that make the most sense to us –the responsibilities, the expectations and desires for ourselves and our lives that match best our personality, our identity and the person that we want to become.
