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Batten down your palates and gird your tastebuds: pumpkin spice season is here.

Never mind that we’re still deep in the sweltering depths of summer, the simple idea of woolen sweaters and scarves enough to give us hives. Or that a global pandemic is upending lives, ravaging the economy, and keeping people indoors. Even now, savvy as we have become about being gaslit or lied to, food purveyors are trying to convince us there is a distinct nip in the air and the soft crunch of foliage underfoot. 

And what better way to embrace sweater weather than by mainlining cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice?

Starbucks, the ur-purveyor of the Pumpkin Spice Latte, is dropping the seasonal offering today, almost a month before the official start of fall, embracing the “pumpkin creep” that has pushed the drink up the calendar with every permutation. 7-Eleven plans deploy its pumpkin-flavored coffee —“easily [its] most successful flavored hot beverage,” Jacob Barnes, its senior product director for proprietary beverages, said in a statement — as early as Sept. 2. Dunkin’ Donuts is already offering a full cornucopia of pumpkin-flavored coffee and espresso beverages, pumpkin-spiced drinks, pumpkin-infused bakery treats to bring Americans the “familiar and favorite flavors of the season…earlier than before,” it touted in a press release. 

Despite a pandemic, wild cultural shifts, a backlash to “Becky habits,” and an increase in negative press about Starbucks in the wake of Black Lives Matter, the PSL, as its aficionados refer to it, has maintained its relevance even after the upheaval of the past six months. The answer, it turns out, has everything to do with all the reasons the public should be over a drink that’s already enjoyed a 17-year position within the zeitgeist.

One of the faithful counting down the hours is Marshall Robin, 51, a game developer from Santa Monica, Calif., who starts throwing back PSLs as soon as Starbucks starts selling them. “Because it’s only offered around Thanksgiving, I associate it with that time of year,” he says. “I’m fond of that time of year, so naturally my good feelings about it rub off on the PSL. Also, it tastes good.” The pandemic is unlikely to alter his consumption. “We’ve definitely cut back on a lot of shopping, but we do go out and grab a Starbucks drink multiple times a week,” Robin says about his household. 

Others see pumpkin spice season as another indignity — engineered by food laboratories and honed by consumer focus groups — to be dealt with after five months of COVID-19 chaos, anti-racism backlash, and government incompetence. Take the flavor’s central promise: that it’s made with pumpkin. A lie! Pumpkin-spice products rarely contain actual pumpkin. In fact, until 2015, Starbucks’ PSL was completely pumpkin-free.

“I tend to think that if someone orders a pumpkin spice anything, there is a chance that they are either buying into the hype or following the herd, rather than choosing a flavor they actually like,” grouses Sharon Colchamiro, 59, a lawyer who lives in Tenafly, N.J. 

Of course, Starbucks didn’t invent the pumpkin spice flavor. McCormick first portioned and consolidated the spices used in pumpkin pie, aptly labeling the blend “pumpkin pie spice” in 1934, as a time saver for harried home bakers. (The company also sells “apple pie spice,” though it doesn’t appear to have caught on in the same way.) 

What Starbucks did in January 2003 was bounce pumpkin spice from baking to beverages.“It reinvented the use of the flavor,” says Suzy Badaracco, who runs the food forecasting think tank Culinary Tides. “Before [pumpkin spice] went into a product like coffee, nobody used it as a marketing term because it was a one-trick pony that you would use during the holidays to make a pie. But then it became part of a viral marketing campaign, and then — boom, it grew into an [annual] event.”

Once those traditional boundaries were breached, everything was up for grabs: dog biscuits, hummus, yogurt, energy bars, potato chips, even Spam. Starbucks clambered back onto its own bandwagon in 2019, introducing the Pumpkin Cream cold brew, perhaps in acknowledgement that not everyone is ready to break out their scarves when it’s pushing past 90 degrees in parts of the country. According to Nielsen data, annual sales of pumpkin spice-flavored products in 2019 totaled nearly $512 million. Among a lucrative cottage industry, Starbucks’ PSL remains the prized cash cow. The coffee behemoth has sold nearly 424 million PSLs since its debut, a phenomenon that’s been met with equal parts devotion and derision. 

More recently, the PSL is associated with a very specific stereotype: the so-called “basic” (read: mainstream and unoriginal) white girl who trots out phrases like “It’s fall, y’all” without irony. She lives, laughs, and loves with wild abandon (#blessed #grateful #thankgourditsfall).  

The PSL is one of those rare inventions — like athleisure, fast-casual dining, or rosé — to ascend the ranks from consumer trend to cultural touchstone, variously serving as a vehicle for brewing anxieties about class and geography. The backlash also carries more than a whiff of casual misogyny, as if anything coded feminine is worthy only of dismissal or withering disdain. 

Mary Landrum, 46, a children’s librarian from Lexington, Ky., shrugs off the mostly good-natured ribbing from family and friends. “If people are going to make fun of me for liking pumpkin spice lattes, that’s their business,” she says. “I’m a middle-class white woman. My life is pretty easy. If the worst thing somebody can do is mock me for drinking the PSL, I’ve had a pretty good day overall.”

For Landrum, a fall lover with a sweet tooth, the PSL can be a pick-me-up after a challenging day serving an under-resourced neighborhood. “We all need brain candy; we all need a respite,” she says. Starting at $4.95 for the Starbucks version, the PSL is an affordable luxury, like the issue of People she occasionally buys. “If I know today is going to be kind of challenging, I’m going to get a Pumpkin Spice Latte to pep up my mood and get me through it,” Landrum adds. With COVID-19 cases spiking in parts of the country, and the imminent threat of further lockdowns and quarantines, challenging has become our status quo.

Starbucks sells the PSL in 50 countries, but its almost obsessive popularity is unique to the United States, not only because of the American deep-seated tradition of worshipping  bright orange gourds when the weather turns crisp, but also because the combination of spices tickles the part of the brain where emotional memories linked to pumpkin picking, hay rides, and family gatherings are stored. 

“A lot of what we think of as flavor is actually odor perception,” says Jessica Gaby, an assistant professor of psychology at Middle Tennessee State University who also has a background in food science. “You’re triggering these past positive memories — the feeling of fall or sweaters, if you like sweaters — and so just picking up a drive-through latte might make you feel as though you’ve had a positive experience beyond drinking the coffee.”

And if there’s one thing people are craving right now, it’s to feel calm and grounded; pumpkin spice — familiar, reliable, and not overbearing — does exactly what you expect it do. Starbucks itself may be counting on the PSL to rescue its battered sales amid shuttered stores,  evaporated foot traffic, and shrinking discretionary spending. Last month, the coffee chain reported a third-quarter net loss of $678.4 million, nosediving from a net income of $1.37 billion the same time last year. Starbucks has also been dogged by allegations of worker abuse and discrimination of immigrant, trans, and Black baristas. A recent survey found that 45% of consumers are less likely to make a purchase at the retailer because of its initial decision — since recanted — that barred employees from wearing apparel that supports Black Lives Matter. Starbucks declined to comment on sales figures, though a spokeswoman wrote in an email that the company knows its customers are “looking for small moments of joy in their day, and [it looks] forward to bringing them [its] fall menu later this season.”

The outlook may not be as rosy as it hopes. While sales of the PSL at Starbucks grew 99% year over year in 2009, according to online research firm 1010data, the coffee giant has been steadily ceding ground as the market becomes more crowded. 

Indeed, in recent years, the PSL has become less of a draw for Starbucks aficionados. In 2018, unique visits to Starbucks were 2% lower for the 30 days after the drink’s release, compared with the 30 days prior, according to Gravy Analytics, which measures consumer foot traffic. In 2019, unique visits ticked up a mere 8%. “The data doesn’t lie. Visits to Starbucks over the past two years reveal consumer fatigue with the PSL,” says Jeff White, CEO of Gravy Analytics. “The iconic drink doesn’t move the needle for stores in a significant way, and that’s unlikely to change this year.”

Matthew Barry, beverage consultant for Euromonitor International, a market research firm, sees hope for the PSL yet. “What does fall in the United States mean? It means back to school, it means football, it means Halloween. And all of that just isn’t happening right now or it’s happening in a radically different way,” he says. “But what is still happening? The Pumpkin Spice Latte. It’s that one thing that still manages to thrive, untouched by the pandemic. A lot of things are going to be scary and uncertain this fall, but the pumpkin spice latte is going to be the same it’s always been.”

Starbucks is capitalizing the PSL’s feel-good connotations with a “PSL hotline” (1-833-GET-FALL), launched yesterday, that will bathe your ears in the soundscapes of fall. Options include “head out on a hayride,” “hear ‘flannel’ on repeat,” “lovely leaf-crunching stroll,” and “knit sweaters with Grandpa.” Delish describes it as “basically ASMR for PSL super-fans.”

One thing Kaitlyn Facista, 28, a podcaster and blogger from Indianapolis, would like to see less of this year, is snobbery over the PSL. “Can we all agree to simply let people enjoy their pumpkin spice this year even though you think it’s gross?” she posted on Twitter earlier this month to a response of 4.6K likes and 972 retweets. “2020 has been hard enough, man. Let the people have their flavor.”

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Jasmin Malik Chua, Khareem Sudlow

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Jenna Diioro is someone who lives to shop. 

A 28-year-old car-dealership manager who lives in South Jersey, Diioro used to spend hours cruising stores like Abercrombie & Fitch, Forever 21, H&M, and Hollister, where she’d spend upward of $200 each week, scooping up tops, dresses, jeans, and activewear. Just last month, she was preparing to shell out for a new wardrobe for an upcoming trip to Cancun with her boyfriend. 

All that changed once the coronavirus pandemic upended nearly every aspect of Diioro’s daily life. Since New Jersey governor Phil Murphy issued shelter-in-place orders on March 21, Diioro has hunkered down at home with her seven-year-old son. She browses clothing online more than she used to — mostly out of boredom — but aside from some yoga leggings, she hasn’t purchased much. And while a vacation in Cancun now feels like a distant dream, part of her still clings to the idea of eventually making it there. Diioro’s added the same tie-front romper to her cart multiple times, coming close, but never quite pulling the trigger. 

“Should I buy it? Should I not? Am I going to be even able to wear it anytime soon?” Diioro says. “My girlfriends have been saying the same thing. When are we even going to be able to wear these cute clothes out and about?”

COVID-19 has dealt a bruising blow to fashion retail. Confirmed cases of the disease have surged past 1.9 million globally, with more than 123,000 recorded deaths, according to the World Health Organization’s April 15 situation report. Shuttered storefronts, evaporated foot traffic, and a sharp decline in consumer confidence have caused sales to nosedive. Inditex, the parent company of Zara, flagged a 24. 1 percent decrease in sales in the first two weeks of March; H&M says it saw a 46 percent drop the same month. Panicked retailers such as C&A, Gap, Primark, and Topshop have scrambled to cancel purchase orders from their overseas suppliers, or refused to pay for product, in order to get ahead of their collapsing bottom lines. 

Even before the pandemic, fast fashion was undergoing major upheaval. News of Forever 21’s bankruptcy filing and H&M and Zara’s slumping revenues seemed to sound the death knell for the inexpensive, trend-driven retailers that populate malls around the globe — some of which are said to employ an overworked and underpaid workforce. 

But this wasn’t a sign of a social and environmental “tipping point” for consumers — far from it. In truth, the old guard of fast fashion had ceded ground to nimbler pure-play upstarts like Boohoo, Fashion Nova, and Missguided, which, unyoked by decades of debt, expensive real estate, and clunky supply chains, had conspired to make fast fashion cheaper and more shoppable through newfangled channels like Instagram. 

“They’ve cannily heavily capitalized on this new wave of consumer appetites, which are driven by a number of things, whether it’s social media or reality TV shows,” says Elizabeth Paton, a fashion reporter for the New York Times. “And I do think we need to put a lot more scrutiny on the business practices of these new-guard players because they’re very, very reluctant to release that information.”

Gen Z and younger millennials, goaded on by the influencers they follow, are driving this faster-fashion boom despite a reputation for being socially, politically, and environmentally “woker” than their forebears. 

“For every Greta Thunberg and school-skipping climate change protester, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of kids around the world, for whom their digital persona is an extension of themselves, how they’re perceived on social media is as important to them as how they’re seen in real life,” Paton says. “And they want as many different outfits as they can have, for as many posts as they do.”

What’s more, even the Greta Thunbergs of the world are limited by their incomes. 

“They’re really making, as much as they can, smart choices when it comes to things that feel like the right thing to do for the environment or the right thing to do considering climate change,” Melanie Shreffler, senior director of insights at Cassandra, a youth-focused business-intelligence firm, tells me. “But they also have to reconcile that with the fact they just don’t have a ton of money to spend on certain things.”

Much of this conversation is moot now. With rattled consumers shifting their expenditures from shoes and clothing to groceries and cleaning supplies, fashion retail as a whole is in a freefall. The bigger question for fast fashion is whether the model, which hinges on its prodigious volume to make the razor-thin margins work, will survive the pandemic. 

“One of the issues with fast fashion is a lot of it is impulse- and occasion-driven. Impulse-purchasing drops massively when consumers can’t visit stores,” says Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail. “And as people are going to fewer events and having fewer nights out, occasion-driven purchasing drops back, too.”

Saunders predicts the economic fallout from the pandemic will be worse than 9/11 and the 2008 recession. Already, more than a fifth of the UK’s fashion expenditure — $13.5 billion — is poised to go up in smoke. In the United States, clothing and footwear sales could plummet by $19.4 billion, he says.  

“The other issue for fast fashion is it’s highly seasonal,” Saunders adds. “While there will be some latent demand when things open back up, many of the lost purchases during this period won’t be repeated.”

E-commerce has been touted as the bright spot in this bleak landscape, but while some apparel spending is moving online as people batten down for comfort — globally, searches for sweatpants, hoodies, leggings, and Ugg slippers have ballooned, according to fashion search platform Lyst — it hasn’t given companies the bounce they’re craving. (Not to mention, stores like Next and Net-a-Porter have temporarily halted e-commerce over concerns for employee safety.) Online sales for fashion goods, according to McKinsey & Co, have fallen 5 percent to 20 percent across Europe, and 30 percent to 40 percent in the United States.

The hottest commodities right now aren’t Fenty slides or Off-White denim jackets, but toilet paper and Clorox wipes. 

Roughly two-thirds of consumers have pulled back spending as the pandemic deepens, according to a Coresight Research study based on data from the week of April 8. (The number is up from the half who said as much the previous week.)

Gen Z, which contributes some $830 billion to US retail sales each year, is also tightening purse strings. When Piper Sandler polled 5,200 teens in 41 states between Feb. 17 and March 24 — the latter weeks of which saw schools switch to e-learning to help combat the spread of infection — it found that their overall spending fell by 13 percent compared with last spring and 4 percent from fall to $2,300, resulting in the lowest level since autumn of 2011. 

Julia Ziegler, an otherwise fashion-obsessed college freshman who is riding out the pandemic in Portland, Ore., tells me she’s dropping her money on room decor, books, and sweatshirts. Even the siren call of clothing sales, which have ramped up in recent weeks as companies struggle to offload aging stock, hasn’t swayed her. 

“I’m not really inclined to buy anything for the future,” she says. “I’m 19; I don’t have a job right now, and there’s a lot of talk about the lockdown being extended.”

Achim Berg, senior partner at McKinsey & Co., and leader of its global apparel, fashion and luxury group, predicts that fast-fashion retailers, because of the vast quantities they traffic in, will have trouble purging existing inventory when stores reopen. In North America alone, 75 percent of apparel and fashion companies could face severe financial straits managing their debt, he says. 

“Which means it’s going to be unusually competitive, because everybody will use markdowns and promotions in order to get the stuff out of the door, and that will not make those brands even more attractive,” he says. “And, of course, the whole format lives on selling relevant, fashionable pieces at that moment in time. Which is difficult if your store is filled with all the old stuff.”

And that’s if people will be shopping like they used to. Even when COVID-19 is brought to heel, the global economy will feel its reverberations for a long time. More than 16 million Americans, representing around 11 percent of the domestic labor force, filed initial claims for unemployment benefits in the past three weeks. For context, two years of shed jobs from the 2008 recession generated less than half of that number.  

Orsola de Castro, who co-founded grassroots group Fashion Revolution in the wake of the deadly 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, says she worries that the fashion engine will double up production — and further squeeze already embattled garment workers — the second fetters are loose. (There’s even a term for it: “retaliatory pollution.”) People, too, will be champing at the bit for a return to normalcy. 

“We know that brands, particularly fashion brands, recover from moments of deep recession because there is a tendency to fall into excess after the restriction period,” she says. “My fear is we’re all going to go bonkers; I feel that once we get out of it, [consumption] might even be worse.”

Fast fashion got its name because of its lightning-fast supply chain, with production lead-times being a matter of weeks rather than months. (Zara, which has honed the model to a science, can turn sketches into garments in as little as two weeks.) Once brands have cast off old inventory, Berg says, they’ll be able to quickly source and stock relevant items with greater appeal. 

Their younger clientele are also less risk averse than their parents and grandparents, who will be more cautious venturing into stores, because they’re statistically more susceptible to the contagion. 

“If you look at who will start to shop and who will quickly forget the whole crisis, it’s going to be the young consumer,” Berg says. “That could be beneficial to the fast fashion players.”

Still, recovery will be far from a “V shape,” he continues. In the best-case scenario, it resembles a “U.” Consumer confidence will take time to recover, and with the possibility of a coronavirus rebound this fall, shopping may never be the same again. China, for instance, may have eased its months-long lockdown, but individuals and businesses are still subject to a raft of rules and regulations designed to prevent the contagion from regaining a foothold. 

“If you go to a Nike in Shanghai, they take your temperature before you’re allowed to enter the store; staff members [are] wearing masks; you have hand sanitizer everywhere,” he says. “They might be restricting the number of people entering a store. So, it’s going to be a mess. And it’s not going to be a fun fashion shopping environment.” 

Add the effects of a more-severe-than-normal recession, and we may have to reconfigure our idea of what’s “normal” for a long time — if we even get there at all. Some retailers that close, Berg says, may never reopen. As people become more price-focused, sustainability and ethics may also end up getting tabled.

“A deep recession in North America will not necessarily support sustainability because it won’t be a priority,” he says. “If you’re out of a job, if you’re waiting for the next paycheck, you’re less open to thinking about that topic than if you have an abundance of discretionary spend.”

Certainly there will always be ready supplicants for fast fashion’s prices, says Morgane Le Caer, fashion insights reporter at Lyst. 

“The low prices they offer are something that, especially in such uncertain economic times, will undoubtedly appeal to many customers,” she says. “I believe that, regardless of the situation the world finds itself in, there will always be a strong demand for fast fashion.”

Worst hit of all, however, will be the garment workers at the bottom of the fashion supply chain. 

“I would hope there is an opportunity to make sure that profit-making brands — because there’s still a lot of money in those brands — are forced to take more of their share of burden,” says Dominique Muller, director of policy at Labour Behind the Label, a UK-based workers’ rights group. “On the other hand, we might end up in a situation, possibly going backwards, where people are just basically going to be willing to accept more low-paid income as long as they’re getting income.” 

Fast fashion has established the fortunes of some of the planet’s richest people at the expense of its poorest. At press time, Amancio Ortega, who founded Zara, was worth $67 billion. Stefan Persson, chairman and leading shareholder of H&M, sits on a nest egg of $15.4 billion. Tadashi Yanai, founder of Fast Retailing, which operates Uniqlo, is Japan’s wealthiest man with a cool $22.9 billion. 

Not only does this money rarely trickle down, but workers in garment-producing hubs will also be especially vulnerable to exploitation, both by brands and by their governments. Factory trade groups in Bangladesh estimate that the South Asian country, the world’s second largest garment exporter after China, is on track to lose roughly $10 billion in export revenue this financial year because of mass cancellations from Western brands and retailers. 

“It might just say at the end of it, ‘Look, we welcome anyone who wants to invest to restart factories; we’re going to give you these tax breaks; you can pay minimum wage,’” Muller says. “Regulations might be suspended, for example, just to attract the investment back. So I think it’s it’s really important that organizations like us develop a longer-term strategy to make sure that we don’t go backward but instead we go forward.”

Indeed, the onus lies with brands, particularly as the pandemic throws inequality into greater relief, says Tansy Hoskins, author of Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion and Footwork: What Your Shoes Are Doing to the World. Buying sustainability or ethically has never been a “level playing field,” and the disparity will become even more stark with job losses, tightened belts, and the limits of empathy amid ongoing trauma.

“I don’t think that change is something that will come from a shift in shopping habits. For me, changes in the fashion industry will come with global binding legislation that has teeth, so that we can actually make corporations responsible for the products that they make and for how those products are made,” Hoskins says. “So rather than asking, ‘Why do people buy clothes that have been made is this dangerous factory in Bangladesh,’ I think the question should be, ‘Why are there any clothes on the market that have been made in these incredibly dangerous factories in Bangladesh?’”

Fast fashion will survive COVID-19, says Paton, because the dynamics driving fast fashion consumption are still there.

“It will be interesting to see whether consumers emerge from the peak of the virus with a renewed appetite to shop as they did before, after months of wanting to do anything but,” she says. “Will a reset button have been hit that makes them think again? Wallets will be tighter for sure, but my gut instinct is that it will.”

Fast fashion retailers, she adds, will be praying “young shoppers, in particular, will let the good times roll.”

Diiorio, the shopper from New Jersey, for one, agrees: “I think once everything’s back to normal, it might be time for a shopping spree.” 

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Jasmin Malik Chua, Khareem Sudlow