The 2020s will be known as the decade "trending" died

Sunday, July 14th, 2024, 13:24

Mood: Sore

(Acknowledging that I have not posted in two weeks, the Republican frontrunner for President just survived an assassination attempt, and there is lots more to talk about, I will be either producing more content on here in the coming weeks or making more public excuses for not.)

As I am wont to do, I decided to totally revamp my style again. (How long did it take me this time? Oh, right, about a month, just as predicted.) This time, I'm returning to a distinctly 2000s era, amalgamating and incorporating elements of scene, McBling, indie sleaze, and mall goth. I'm in my 30s now and this is very embarrassing. What's more embarrassing than someone who peaked in high school? Someone who didn't peak in high school and isn't gonna peak now. I fucking emblazoned my last name in Olde English with Hotfix rhinestones across a Juicy velour jacket. I even bought one of those stupid toy digital cameras off the TikTok shop so that I could take mirror pics and selfies from The Angle™.

Erica has blue bangs, black hair in pigtails, medium skin, a black Juicy velour jacket, black sport shorts, and black Crocs with spikes studded on them. She is in a mirror selfie

I will probably elaborate upon these two decisions--the TikTok shop camera and the style revamp--in future posts. In the meantime, don't I look cute?! (Nope. I don't and I am completely aware of that.) Anyway.

The problem is, and this isn't a factor at all in my decision-making (obviously) but it was a point of curiosity for me, I had been seeing a lot of content on TikTok about how the 2010s are "coming back". Actually, I have been seeing that content now for the past two or three years. When I had COVID in January 2022 trend forecaster ModernGurlz predicted the return of Lita boots, statement leggings, and Peter Pan collars, less than a full decade after these staples started trending in the first place. During this time, as well, a TikTok trend consisting of showing off your 2010s Tumblr and Instagram photos to She & Him's "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" went viral. (After all, who could be more 2010s than Zooey Deschanel herself?) Even IU's own Indiana Student Daily got in on the fun.

When you start posting to Instagram like it's the 2010s again TikTok with a light-skinned brown-haired trend forecaster A pale blonde TikToker with '2010s fashion trends that need to come back' captioned in front of an influencer covering her face and wearing a pair of black Docs with a patterned skirt, in prototypical 2010s fashion 'Girls adding this to every outfit in the early 2010s' captioned beside a pale 2010s influencer type wearing a mustard colored beanie and, yes, the fucking owl necklace that every girl in the 2010s had

But wait, hadn't ModernGurlz also predicted in August 2020 that numerous Y2K fashion trends were about to make a comeback? Aren't we supposed to be bracing for a wave of whale tails, animal print, rhinestones, and gaudy brand names?! Okay, fine, the trend cycle is a little accelerated. Maybe in 2020 we were infatuated with a Y2K revival, but it only took us two years to get sick of it. If you're the Associated Press, though, Y2K is still "back".

Smarter than the AP or any YouTube-based trend forecaster, though, are the most savvy consumers on the market: tween girls, and I so happen to live with one of those. On one of her recent trips to our hallway, The Country Brat asked me if I would buy her a pair of cargo pants to go with her pastel t-shirts, since the 2000s were "in" for the alternative kids at her school. With great pleasure! But even with the approval of my cooler-than-me progeny, I couldn't shake the feeling that... all of this stuff about what is and isn't "trending" is total bullshit and completely irrelevant in a post-covid world.

And I'm fucking right. Cosmo insists that the '90s are coming back, yet Rolling Stone predicted an '80s revival mere weeks before the release of my beloved Lisa Frankenstein. Marie Claire offered tips this year on how to freshen up one's look with some '70s staples, but then--dear God--the motherfucking Guardian demonstrated how Chanel's Métiers d’Art collection signaled a '60s resurgence.

What does this mean? To me--someone who has literally never been cool and took up fashion as a special interest from a young age primarily to mask what were, in retrospect, very obvious signs of autism--this means that "trending" isn't relevant anymore. For any of us. All of us are cool and all of us are uncool. Simultaneously everything and nothing is trending all at once. We all get to just wear whatever the fuck we want and look awesome and like shit at the same time and nobody can stop us.

How did we get here? I have my theories.

The COVID-19 pandemic sequestered us all in our homes, and the resulting increased corporate greed--which I refuse to call "inflation" because that makes it sound like it wasn't done on purpose to make rich people richer--left us poorer for the wear. We sat around for a year or two baking bread, learning to crochet and, of course, watching a lot of TikTok. In 2021, TikTok hit the one billion user milestone, and their North American users nearly doubled between 2019 and 2020. Our newfound handiness and addiction to 60-second content delivery services empowered us with a newfound sense of independence, influencing our fashion choices towards a more DIY ethos. Every time there is a COVID wave, whether in the summer or winter, interest in learning how to crochet increases in the United States.

Part of me wonders if this is wishful thinking. As someone who has made, mended, and altered my own clothes from a young age, I've always secretly wanted everyone else to join in on the fun. My folks didn't spend a ton of money on clothes, and I was ostracized from the kids whose folks could ship them off to Aeropostale or Hot Topic (all depending) and pick up the Latest. If everyone else had to go to Goodwill and knit and crochet their own shit too, then I wouldn't look like such a freak, and I am starting to wonder if that's what's happening.

But, wait, it's not like we were all sitting around crocheting in the 2000s. Paris and Nicole would've never. That was more of a 1960s-70s thing, wasn't it? But here's the thing: since we were all being inundated constantly on TikTok with content, "anything that brain of yours can think of can be found", simultaneously everything could trend. Former scene kids were reuniting and getting new platforms, but so were the Tumblr girls--who I guess we call "twee" now? (We called them "indie" and "hipsters" back in my day.) Suddenly, we could all decide that we didn't have to abandon things we once liked just because they were off trend. We could simply leave everything on trend and not have to give up anything we loved.

I predict that fashion historians will therefore designate the 2020s as the decade that killed trends. I'm not sure if the toothpaste can be put back into the tube at this point. I believe it would take us a mass logging off to get back to where certain things are "on trend" again, thanks to how little time we actually spend consuming and interacting with individual pieces of content. And y'know what? That works out real good for me, because I have always had trouble sticking to just one "aesthetic". Here in about another month, I'm probably going to get sick of looking the way I do now, and I'm going to move onto something else. Finally, it's not going to be held against me that whatever I choose is or isn't "on trend"--whatever the fuck that meant in the first place.