Are we still following trends?

Trends have always been a great way of expressing your personality and being part of a larger culture and community. But where a trend used to define a decade, now they can barely last the year. Fashion isn’t the same as it was just 10 years ago, a lot of that is due to social media and the rise of thrifting.

Tiktok and Insta have made it so much easier for a trend to spread. Something can happen on a runway in London and it’s all over the world within hours. That type of spread of information used to take months. The trending item would debut on a runway, then it would be shot for magazines, the magazine would have to be published and distributed, and that’s when the real conversation about that trend would start. But now you can see what was on the runway almost immediately with streamed shows and Vogue Runway (an app that catalogues every designer show throughout the year). So because people get it faster, people are getting bored of it faster too and looking for something else to scratch that itch.

So people are turning to thrift styles or aesthetic styles. Think about how every generation has some subcultures; preppy, jock, goth, and all the others you can think of. Well people have been creating more and more of these subgroups and then more subsubgroups after that. So ‘goth’ becomes ‘whimsy goth’ becomes ‘cottagecore’ becomes ‘goblin core’ and on and on. It’s individualism gone wild but it’s a lot of fun to look at all the styles that come from it.

Essentially, while trends are still followed and some still stick around for a few years, people are far more interested in how their clothing can tell people who they are. In the world of ‘get ready with me’ videos and where anyone can become an influencer with little effort, individuality has never been more important.