Olivia Galli, a New York photographer and influencer, has a closet that her nearly 200,000 TikTok followers would beg to borrow or steal. Yet by the end of 2023, she had grown attached to her wardrobe. Then came the new year, and after about three months of hard work, Gali was hooked on her clothes again. She became especially enamored with the vintage shelves she inherited from her grandmother. The Twist To make her closet glamorous again, she didn't have to buy designer handbags like the Holy Grail or embrace runway trends verbatim.

Ms. Gali was one of hundreds of people who participated in the 75 Hard Style Challenge over the past few weeks, a fashion riff on a rigorous New Year's fitness routine aimed at starting a healthier lifestyle in 75 days. Launched on TikTok by Brooklyn-based trend forecaster and creative Mandy Lee, known by the handle @oldloserinbrooklyn, the 75 Hard Style Challenge begins with a pledge to stop shopping for about three months. Instead, participants develop their own style by documenting all the clothes they wear for 75 days, using clothes they already own. [The 75 Hard Style Challenge was an unusual proposition on TikTok, a platform where users' persuasive reviews make items as varied as an oversized plaid wool scarf from Acne Studios or a flimsy satin dress from Zara go viral and sell out. was an unusual proposition on TikTok. The platform's emphasis on a truly personal style made up of clothing combinations that only one person can own stands in contrast to the cut-and-paste aesthetic trends that create duplicate outfits and overwhelming "coords" on social media.

Perhaps the challenge has caught on because TikTok has made fashion so homogenized. The call for a pause in spending was met with sympathy: over 21,000 posts on TikTok were tagged with the #75hardstylechallenge, and 14,300 shared the same tag on Instagram.

For those who tried to participate in the first wave, which ended on March 15, it was something of a personal style wake-up call.

"The challenge not only helped me fall back in love with my closet, but also made me more mindful when shopping," says Galli. A self-confessed "impulse buyer," she found that the more she tried to style her own collection of coats and accessories, hand-me-downs from her grandmother, the less she wanted new ones. She says, "Ninety-five percent of the time, I found myself forgetting about clothes I thought I couldn't part with."

The framework of the 75 Hard Style Challenge was not just about limits: while refraining from new purchases for 75 days, participants documented every outfit they created with items they already owned. The point of the challenge is to get the most out of the clothes you already have and to feel more confident when you wear them," Lee said in the kick-off video, which received more than 40,000 likes. in the kick-off video, which garnered more than 40,000 likes. (Montreal-based artist Marie Foxall spent 75 days with little to no purchases.

The exercise helped Foxall find a new community by sharing her outfits online. Says she, "It's easy to forget how uplifting it can be to dress in fun outfits."

Not everyone who took on this challenge wanted to keep at it. Saanya Ali, CEO of Soirée, a hosting and entertainment platform, felt herself "satisfied" with her personal style before taking on the challenge. She documented her look for 32 days before taking a month off.

"I was dressing, taking videos, and doing the 'right' things, but no longer for the right reasons," she explains. "Waking up early and posting videos of me getting dressed online felt more like a stress and chore than something creative, fun, and exciting like it did in the beginning."

The fact that Ali tried almost to the halfway point affected how I viewed my style anyway." She says, "The comfort I found in new closet staples that felt 'me' kept me going, even though I wasn't recording every day."

Mary Grace Scully, head of marketing for social shopping platform Locker, initially considered the challenge before deciding not to participate altogether. She was interested in a framework that would help her experiment with what she already owned, but the strict limits on spending put her off. "For a shopaholic, being told 'don't buy' made her want to buy more," she says.

If style is truly personal, no one viral framework works for everyone. Even those who have tried it have found that they don't have to go through all 75 days to rediscover their wardrobe. Lee, who calls herself a "mother," stopped posting about her children on TikTok after day 34.

Writer and literary consultant Mackenzie Newcombe passed the 70-day mark before giving in to buy a white T-shirt and a striped sweater. Whether she intended to stop shopping or not, her existing wardrobe wasn't enough for her changing body as a new mom.

"I fell a little short of finishing, but I'm still proud of myself," she says. "What I've learned is that it's much easier not to shop around when you consistently tell yourself, 'It's not for me.' Once you start doing it, it's hard to stop."