“Just look at the return of indie sleaze,” she says. “This gauche aesthetic is a symptom of our cultural transition from taste to tastelessness. Where pre-pandemic style was defined by the careful curation of cool, young people are now pushing back against refinement by reclaiming the carelessness that comes with being chaotic, tacky and anarchic.”

(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