Connor is sprawled in abject distress on a beanbag outside of the Love Island villa, surrounded by a group of fellow male contestants. These are fragrant, neroli-doused men, in muscle-fit polos, skinny black denim, extra-long plaid shirts and bare ankles. A cicada rubs its legs together, a jittering mating call. Connor, wearing a cream military vest over a black long-sleeved t-shirt – his veneered teeth glinting menacingly – reveals the reason for his misery. “I feel like he’s snaked me out, yeah.” The others nod and murmur. Connaugh, a recent addition to the house, had outmanoeuvred his almost-namesake and claimed Sophie for his own.
"He’s a snake,” Connor says to camera, his face a glum admission of defeat. "He stole my bird."
Over the course of a 52-second clip we are dragged back into the sun-bleached panopticon that is the Love Island villa, only this time it’s in winter, in South Africa. There are the tight jeans, the perfect teeth, the matching short and shirt sets and the polyester crumple and whiff of Boohoo. The birds and the snakes; the cracking on and the re-coupling.
The clothes are bad, because of course they are. Sisyphus with a waxed chest and a v-neck t-shirt pushes his stone up, up the hill in the hopes of a provincial nightclub run and an ITV3 daytime slot. Love Island is now a two-season spectacle (not including the American, Australian, German, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Belgian, Polish, French and Hungarian versions) meaning twice as many ripped jeans, oversized beige hoodies and carefully engineered sexual tension. Has it killed the printed camp collar shirt, the biggest men's summer style hit of the last three years? Maybe.
In the summer of 2019, the fast fashion retailer I Saw It First saw off “heavy competition” to become the official clothing sponsor of Love Island. On the show’s app, users can shop for looks immediately after they’re worn by contestants. The denim jacket with detachable borg collar worn by both Mike and Connaugh: £40. Swim shorts with piping at side seams in light pink as worn by Nas: £10. Chinos in charcoal, first seen on Connor: £22.50. Everything is 50 per cent off, with 99p shipping. Mike struts around the pool, resplendent in his tan baroque/animal shirt: £22.50.
In the wake of the announcement, Leanne Holmes, brand director of I Saw it First, said, “Our audience can see a look on the show and make it theirs the very next day. This is exactly what I Saw It First strives for: delivering affordable, high fashion, fast.” Nearly 250,000 new customers shopped on the site immediately after the first summer episode aired, the kind of reach that makes marketing wonks see god. The winner from 2019, Amber Gill, signed a reported £1m deal with MissPap, which was bought last year by Boohoo, which also owns PrettyLittleThing. Ovie Soko released a collaboration with ASOS and Curtis Pritchard with Debenhams.
More than 100bn new garments are introduced to the UK market each year. Love Island and warp speed fast fashion are inextricably tied, barnacles clinging to the bottom of a whale. Boohoo is now worth £3.2bn, 30 per cent more than its nearest rival, ASOS. Zara produces 24 collections a year, up from an average of two in the year 2000. A 2019 EU report connected this vast production increase across fast fashion retailers to clothes being regarded as “nearly disposable” goods. Fifty million single-use outfits were bought last summer alone. A third of young consumers consider an outfit worn three times to be "old".
To clarify my own moral position, if someone paid me six figures I would wear I Saw It First until I was old and then dead, with a stipulation that all in attendance had to wear the brand to my funeral. Polyester mourning suit: £45. Black mourning tie: £12.50. I'd even chuck in a banner at the back for the continued support. Thank you I Saw It First. Shop now, pay later with Klarna. Rest In Plastic.
The look on winter Love Island is tan, tight, pastel, a bit military. Denim, fake shearling, roll necks, matching, matching, matching. Camp collar shirts and shorts in low-res animal print and pastels. These are the clothes that pop-up on your Instagram feed every day, made by internet-only labels that are likely part of a godless monolith based out of a Manchester retail park; fashion design as a search engine tool. Affordable clothes, of course, have their place (thank you Uniqlo), but this amalgamation of all the trends and Google prompts of the last five years? These temples of tat? A polyester gumbo of bland taste, poured down our gullets like we're fashion-obsessed geese. It would be better if the clothes were gaudy or at least a bit ridiculous, but you can't even say that. This is clothing at its most depressing. The £1 bikini, the £15 tracksuit. In the future, brands won't even need to toe the line of plagiarism, there'll be an algorithm (the technology already exists) that will seamlessly churn out designs that are both new enough and familiar enough. Soma for the season. Navy raginald panelled shirt, worn by Callum: £25.
I recently met an infamous former contestant of Love Island who turned out to be quite nice. He was told by producers that he had "no chance of winning" the show, but he could go far if he became the "villain", so he did. He was told what to say, he was told what to wear. He was told that it might make his life "difficult" when he inevitably landed back home. At one point he did 90 consecutive days of night club appearances, revellers arriving in droves to get a photo and call him a dickhead. Love Island had made him rich. It had also made him hated. "People will believe whatever they see on TV," he said. They'll also buy it.
Was he wearing spray-on skinny jeans and a muscle-fit long-sleeved polo shirt?
Yes, of course he was.
