“Turns out toast is kinda chic.”
“Kinda chic to eat a pizza.”
“Kinda chic wearing 20 different colors in one outfit.”
“Kinda chic to ignore trend cycles.”
The irony of that last statement should not go unnoticed.
We exist in an era of buzzwords. I hear and see them absolutely everywhere: trends, Instagram captions, politics, speeches, other articles, the New York Times Connections, the professor who thinks he’s being “hip with the kids.”
In particular, the word chic… (according to Merriam Webster)
CHIC (noun)
1 : smart elegance and sophistication especially of dress or manner : style
2 : a distinctive mode of dress or manner associated with a fashionable lifestyle, ideology, or pursuit
3 : a faddishly popular quality or appeal
also : something (such as a practice or interest) having such appeal
CHIC (adjective)
chicer; chicest
1 : cleverly stylish : smart
2 : currently fashionable
…has been exhausted on every platform by every influencer or microinfluencer. The repetitive use of the word defeats the entire point of chic as a concept, even if the word and the style itself have become more accessible than it historically was.
The origin of the word, according to Etymology Explorer and despite popular belief, comes from Middle High German, which is the language period right before what we recognize as modern German. Schicken, or “to outfit oneself, fit in, or arrange appropriately,” led to the modern German word schick, which directly translates to chic.
The French then borrowed schick, and the word became what we hear it as today: “elegant” or “considerate.”
When defined as considerate, the French were referring to the style of dress — the intentionality that was necessary to be deemed chic in the upper, wealthy classes. When chic began to circulate France in the 17th century, anything that was approved by King Louis XIV fit the bill. It was all luxury and decadence, the highest quality materials and the largest amount of it you could afford. If you were a French aristocrat, why wouldn’t you listen to the king who built Versailles regarding what was chic?
I would argue that considerate is still a fitting definition of chic — at least in the way people are using it on TikTok. The “kinda chic” trend pulls normal activities from everyday life and highlights them in a way that makes them feel less boring. For example, the idea of eating toast being chic accentuates the simplicity of it. Toast is plain and unexciting, but call it “chic” and the perspective shifts to make toast “minimalistic” instead of banal. The trend wants creators and consumers to consider the parts of the life they go through on autopilot.
Unfortunately, the more things we notice, the more we’re objectively and consistently thinking about them. What companies have done is used “chic” to their advantage, perpetuating the already prominent cycle of overconsumption among the teens and young adults participating in the trend.
History repeats itself, as the concept of chicness also implanted the desire for more, and more, and more into the minds of the French in the mid-1670s. One of the first fashion journalists in France inspired both men and women to buy new clothes in new styles for each season, according to Penn Today. Our current fashion trends do follow seasons, especially for designer brands, but we follow incredibly short, irregular cycles of fashion that helped produce fast fashion and, again, overconsumption.
The French people’s obsession with trends fueled capitalist values, as does our current obsession. Americans buy from fast-fashion brands that produce and ship globally, like SHEIN, for incredibly low prices that persuade customers to hit the purchase button without a real need to purchase anything. Louis XIV made a different move economically; when Chinese silk was of the highest fashion, he outlawed any importation of the material and insisted that any silk bought and worn in France be made in France. Economically, these policies in action are on opposite ends of a spectrum, but they still preserve harmful factors of capitalism.
“Chic” made it a trend to not follow trends. At face value, I agree that we should be recognizing normalcy as a way to appreciate the things we do currently have. Call it chic to take a walk, call it chic to dress in accordance with your closet and not with your algorithm, call it chic to use a pen and paper instead of a laptop. It is not cute or chic, however, to blindly follow trends. In the sense of the trend, if everyone is chic, no one is chic; then, at least, we are all ourselves. Start finding yourself chic.