Hot Takes #6: The TikToking Nature of Fashion Trends
Will the TikTok trend machine continue to dominate fashion?
Hot Takes is a place where I explore and analyse what's going on in the realm of fashion in a relatable way, basically my bullet point thoughts on fashion's hottest issues. These posts get to the heart of why people are talking about what they’re talking about, what this means and where this could go next.
Think: what direction is fashion heading in? What’s new, innovative and exciting? What's going on in fashion that's really pissing people off?
Hot Takes ties fashion topics to a wider cultural and social context, and digs into why these topics are important and the often more significant meanings behind them. I hope they give you a little more food for thought.
So sit back, relax and let's get into it. Here’s Hot Takes #6.
Trends come, trends go. And the idea of things being fashionable one minute and out of style the next is a tale as old as time. But where people go to spot trends is what's changed, and the dominance of TikTok in fashion has engineered the trend machine into a whole new beast. You’ve probably heard of coastal grandmother, Y2K, cottagecore and dark academia, but have you heard of coconut girl, fairycore, mall goth and mermaidcore?
Well, if you hadn’t heard of these trends, now they are very much on your radar - you’re welcome. Unexpected aesthetics and unusual trends are now hyper-visible thanks to TikTok, and as 39% of Gen Zers were influenced to buy a product after seeing it on TikTok the evolution of the trend cycle shows no signs of slowing down. But as TikTok trends rise and fall in a matter of weeks, can the breakneck speed stay par for the course?
Social media’s speedy trend cycle
Keeping up with TikTok trends is intense. Impossible even. A trend can be ‘in’ one minute in the northern hemisphere, but ‘out’ the next in the southern hemisphere. Some trends become a permanent fixture on the fashion scene, such as the prevalence of Y2K which is still lingering around, but others disappear with a simple swipe. As we battle against big tech in the attention economy and submit ourselves to endless scrolling, we give fuel to the fire and allow social media trends to continue to move at a record pace.
Niche subcultures become mainstream
“TikTok is tribe mentality and when you’re attached to a [subsculture] that’s niche, it has massive consumer power,” Benji Park, a TikTok forecaster and brand consultant, told the Business of Fashion. And Park has a point. Niche subcultures on TikTok can take on a life of their own as they connect people with common interests and allow such communities to drive trends, but there's a danger of moving these trends away from the people that give them value and meaning instead making them all about the aesthetics and profit potential.
Virality over lasting fashion
Microtrends have a fleeting shelf life and feed into fashion that's viral over fashion that has a long and lasting impact, blink and you may miss them. The ever-evolving nature of trend cycles on TikTok doesn’t allow people enough time to properly delve into trends or incorporate them into their wardrobes in a way that works with their personal style and identity, and as fashion trends succumb to the clickbait nature of social media it seems as if its viral material for the win - make of that what you will.
My two cents.
After Instagram, TikTok quickly established itself as the main platform that changed the way fashion is consumed. And it’s caused the industry to undergo somewhat of a reckoning. Every couple of months (or weeks) a new trend sweeps the app, but they are such fast-moving obstacles of the fashion machine that by the time you jump on board a certain trend it’s probably already fallen out of the spotlight. It’s kind of comical when you think about it.
So, to really understand the fleeting nature of TikTok trends, you’ve got to dig into the consumer psyche and understand what makes people flock to such trends in the first place. Is it the level of personal expression that these trends offer? Is it cultural significance and community recognition? Or is it that people just want to have fun with fashion and experiment? It could be all of these reasons or none of them, but understanding their nuance is key.
What do you think of these kick-starter thoughts that I hope will encourage you to think a little more deeply about this topic? Let me know in the comments, I want to chat about it.