Did micro-trends kill the trend cycle?

There’s a reason, for instance, that TikTok has declared not just a handful of but twenty-something aesthetics to be the next big thing in 2022: It’s because TikTok’s bread and butter is creating microtrends that flare up fast and die out faster. Whether or not they actually last (or exist in any meaningful way at all) is besides the point; as Kels... See more

(In The Death of Trends, Vox's Terry) Nguyen is examining a more abstract consequence of this rapid acceleration, which is that it saps trends of their subcultural context, reducing them to status symbols that represent status itself, like a trail of breadcrumbs leading to more breadcrumbs. Her piece is focused on fashion trends, or aesthetic ... See more

The pace of these microtrends now matches that of fast fashion, or what’s now known as “ultra-fast fashion,” where digital shopping platforms like Shein can design and produce new styles in a matter of days to reflect what’s trending online. When a certain style or product goes viral on TikTok, that item will often be sold out by the time the video... See more

The trend cycle has never been faster, but perhaps style is only becoming more familiar. 

There are five stages of a fashion trend. First there is introduction, then rise, then acceptance, then decline, then finally obsolescence. By the final stages a trend is “considered outdated and out-of-fashion by mainstream fashion wearers, who have moved on to newer trends in the introduction or increase stages.” Typically we don’t think of ideas... See more

I’ve been thinking a lot about what is (or is not) a trend . Merriam-Webster defines “trend” as “the general movement over time of a statistically detectable change.” If fashion publications are all eagerly covering a particular item or style, thus causing a “statistically detectable change” in how much coverage something is getting, does that make... See more

What is TikTok couture? It is a (sort of rude) way to describe the coalescence of trends that materialize on TikTok, whether from teenagers experimenting with clothes they’ve thrifted from their local charity shop, from older folks revisiting the subcultural styles of their youth, or from professional and amateur trend watchers combining aesthetic ... See more