“Comment ‘reset’ and i’ll [sic] send you the self-care program,” reads the caption on a video from Alex Visions. He appears to be on a podcast, outlining how to “unchain” yourself from social media, though it’s unclear whether anyone’s actually sitting across from him. He’s wearing a linen robe with nothing underneath. Alex is just 17, but after dropping out of school and taking ayahuasca over 22 times, he’s become a kind of self-styled spiritual guide. 

It wasn’t always this way. Two years back, Alex wasn’t a quasi-shaman, but a professor. Scroll far enough down his TikTok, and you’ll see he covered everything from “biohacking” to AI through formulaic, short-form video content. Dressed in a navy polo and glasses, he’d tell his invisible audience about the power of ChatGPT, occasionally scribbling on a whiteboard. His podcast appearances weren’t lit by flickering candles, but the purple-hued LEDs popular with the #motivational crowd. Everything was maximalist, from the text to the spliced-together stock footage. Linen did make an appearance, but that’s to be expected when holidaying in Monaco. 

Then the switch. In November of last year, Alex slipped into a white linen two-piece, stacked his wrists with beaded bracelets and painted his face with vaguely indigenous patterns. And if he gets a bit chilly? He’ll throw an Aztec print poncho over top. He might have had an ego-death, but he’s certainly had a rebrand. 

Why the sudden aesthetic switch-up? Because spiritual enlightenment has a look. And if you know the dress code, you can have a go at selling it. By donning white linen and beads, Alex is drawing on a Western image of enlightenment that’s been around for decades. In the late 1960s, after trips to India and experimentations with psychedelics and transcendental meditation, The Beatles swapped their clean-cut Pierre Cardin suits and moptops for a look built around their take on Eastern spirituality: kurtas, grown-out hair and plenty of paisley.

That aesthetic, in all its abstracted forms, became shorthand for a countercultural movement stressing detachment from material possessions and attaining a higher consciousness. Linen was part of the uniform, worn by figures like Allen Ginsberg who’d also been drawn to Eastern philosophies. The fabric carries its own symbolic weight: Ancient Egyptians believed gods wore linen, and Plutarch praised it as “plain and cleanly clothing” that “springs from the earth, which is immortal.” 

The irony? That aesthetic is now a commodity. By the late 1990s, Eastern influence was everywhere. Madonna performed at the VMAs adorned with Hindu facial markings. Yoga became aspirational, endorsed by celebs and magazine spreads leading to athleisure wear brands like Lululemon. Eat Pray Love packaged spirituality as aspirational, kaftan-clad tourism, while Russell Brand started dressing like the Maharishi after discovering meditation. It all paved the way for today’s wellness industrial complex, where possessing what scholar Patsy Duncan dubbed “the glowy” – the look of “an optimised state of physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing” – became its own form of enlightenment, stripped of religion but draped in its aesthetics. 

So, why does the look do so much of the heavy lifting? Because wellness is inherently vague. “There is no agreed-upon definition of what ‘well’ is,” writes Rina Raphael in her book The Gospel of Wellness. “Wellness can mean almost anything.” Credibility isn’t earned, but signalled, and those signals have to be watertight. “People make an assumption about someone in, like, two seconds on TikTok,” says beauty journalist Nessa Humayun. “If someone looks the part and is adhering to those tropes of spirituality, that sells this idea of authority and trust.” Dr Sevil Yesiloglu, a senior lecturer in digital marketing, calls it the “visual language of the wellness space”: soft colours, serene backgrounds, minimalistic typography. It all signals calmness, purity and authenticity. 

Take creators like Christian Gallo Delgado and Rhys Menzel, purveyors of “Bioalchemy™ Infused” wellness gummies and “conscious activewear” respectively. Both Delgado and Menzel favour the lush jungles of Indonesia as their backdrop, posing shirtless in loose-fitting linen. Ripped and covered in tribal tattoos abstracted from their indigenous origins, their bodies and appearances do the persuading: take their supplements, wear their clothes, and you could look like them too. As Dr Yesiloglu notes, “the product they sell is access to a lifestyle and identity.” “It’s almost like the tech bro who’s become more spiritual,” observes beauty journalist Nessa Humayun. “He’s pivoted because enlightenment makes him more money.”

The problem is that these social media wellness figures, like Delgado and Menzel, have stripped everything of its religious context. Scroll through their feeds and you’ll see Sanskrit-inspired inks and meditation poses, but no mention of the Hindu and Buddhist teachings behind them. Alex will flog nail boards, touting their potential for “emotional release”, but their Sadhu origins are scrubbed from the narrative. It becomes a costume, donned to sell an idea of enlightenment and spirituality completely divorced from its roots and culture. 

But the tide seems to be turning. For some people, it’s ditching the look that signals you’ve reached a higher plane. “That point of spiritual awakening where you start wearing normal clothes again,” reads the text on a video from Dani Gutierrez. He’s sporting a t-shirt, fitted cargos and a Nike cap. “No cloaks, no burning man outfits… No points to prove,” he writes in the caption. For Claire Anstey, a London-based Kambo practitioner, it’s also not about donning a costume. “I don’t bang a drum. I don’t sing you a song. I don’t pretend that I am from a tribe,” she says. “I do a safe and inspiring session where we honour the medicine, but we do it in a modern way.”

When Alex sends you his “self-care programme”, it comes in the form of a link to a Telegram group. There, he updates you on the off-grid community he and his family are building in Portugal. If he is just a poser, he’s certainly going to great lengths. That’s the tricky thing: when enlightenment can be put on like an Aztec print poncho, you never know where the smoke and mirrors end.