From 90s low rise jeans to 60s gogo boots and florals, the past two years have seen a resurgence of pretty much every trend cycle since the 1950s. Considering the usual speed of the trend cycle is 20 years, this alarming acceleration since the pandemic has taken over the fashion industry, driving campaigns from climate activists against fast fashion and fuelling the newfound popularity of thrifting and second-hand markets.
This constant need for newness that has developed, most likely during and due to the 2020 lockdowns, has given rise to a new, particularly damaging area of fast fashion known as microtrends. These used to be easy to spot trends, becoming popular seemingly overnight and becoming unfashionable just as quickly, with the best examples being the clothing trends popularised in the summer of 2020, think cow print, patchwork tops and marble print. However, because of the sheer speed at which we seem to be moving through the trend cycle, many of these newer trends haven’t had time to go out of style and with the pace at which brands such as Shein are churning out new microtrends, it has become near impossible to discern what is here to stay and what will inevitably end up in landfills in a month. We seem to be moving past an era of strict time-based trend cycles, into a time in which everything is trending, and personal style is reigning supreme.
Whilst this initially seems to be a good thing, hopefully marking the beginning of the end of the detrimental effect the fast fashion industry has had on the climate, not to mention the incredibly immoral and most of the time illegal, treatment of their workers, could this implosion of the trend cycle as we know it just lead to the encouragement of overconsumption and consumerism? With such an insane amount of variation forming between styles it is still too early to tell whether people are in fact chasing a version of their own personal style, or just choosing a version of the vast array of different styles and aesthetics that are trending right now. Could this supposed death of the microtrend just lead to people forming their own personal trend cycles, switching between styles, and buying wardrobes full of clothes to fit into every possible trending aesthetic, or is this finally going to mark the collapse of nearly a century of clockwork like trend cycles?