I love blueberry milk nails! The Ugg Mini platform is really appealing. I’m thinking of taking ballet lessons this spring. New trend alert: Yakuza’s wife.
In this new era where fashion is so accessible and rapidly evolving, the question arises: What has become of personal style?
Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest have made fashion content easily available. In recent years, the popularity of fashion-related content has skyrocketed, especially after the stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Personal style and the clothes you wear are one of the biggest elements of self-expression, just like deciding where and how you spend your money. Dressing according to your style and what you want to wear makes a lot more sense than thinking you need to wear what everyone else is wearing.
Influencers, brand culture, and fast fashion have completely destroyed individualism and personal style. Once fashion companies large and small figured out how to take advantage of the clothing glut, it was all downhill from there.
If you’ve been on TikTok for a few years and are fashion conscious, you’ve probably seen “aesthetics” attached to buzzwords like “yakuza wife,” “coquette,” and “clean girl.” maybe. The app’s algorithms allow these almost costume-like “aesthetics” to go viral, while heavily sponsored influencers live the perfect life, and in some cases, one of these niche styles. He was also shown dressing up to fit perfectly. As the number of influencers in apps increases, it is no longer possible to escape marketing schemes.
TikTok has proven how easy it is to sell out viral products, and has repeatedly demonstrated its impact on many industries. For years, consumers have struggled to find products like viral makeup in stores because they’re always sold out. Brand influencers are paid thousands of dollars to tell young app users to “run, don’t walk” whenever they go into any store to buy the products they are paid to promote. .
Because of this, they created a monster called “TikTok Shop”. Here, users can scroll through endless pages of extremely cheap dropshipping products, goodies from small businesses, and junk that no one actually needs. With endless inventory, clothing and accessories are some of the most popular items on the TikTok Shop. This gives consumers the opportunity to buy cheap imitations of popular clothing items that are appearing in the algorithm that week.
Fast fashion works with social media to quench some consumers’ thirst for the latest and trendiest items. Giant companies like Shein, Temu, and Cider realized how much they could sell with such low production costs. According to GW method, more than 80 billion pieces of clothing are consumed each year, an increase of 400% over the past 20 years. When they started unethically mass producing inferior clothing to fit these niche aesthetics, this took over the minds of young consumers on social media.
Every week, new trends emerge with different catchy names. Younger consumers who use apps like TikTok may feel pressure to fit in and think they need to imitate one of these aesthetics in order to seem cool to their peers. I don’t know. . With endless new trends popping up every few days, some people think they can’t wear their clothes for more than a certain amount of time because they’re not in fashion right now.
Some argue that these aesthetics allow communities to form online. However, these communities don’t need to be fueled by fast fashion or the idea that clothing is disposable. The line between finding a community that shares your style and competing with other communities to look the coolest with that style is very thin.
The never-ending cycle of consuming content and products and abandoning them after a few weeks has made it impossible for anyone to develop their own style and take the time to find quality clothing that fits them.
However, I am hopeful about trends in the fashion industry. As recycling and second-hand purchases increase, consumers are recognizing the uniqueness of second-hand goods. Most of the time, there’s a certain quality and look that fast fashion giants can’t imitate. There is a lot of fashion culture outside of the internet. My biggest advice for people stuck in a fashion rut is to log out of apps that are focused on trying to sell you the next biggest trend.