Why are trends dying so quickly and need to be saved?

Hello fashionista! Your dedicated fashion editor is in touch and today I want to talk about trends. More specifically, how they died. A little depressing for the end of the year? Still, the topic is interesting and definitely deserves your five-minute attention.

I want to start my first writer’s column with the one rule I never break in the context of fashion – I don’t wear what everyone else wears. So I didn’t have my Jacquemus Le Chiquito bag, the nylon Prada Re-Edition 2000, my impressive Diesel logo belt and Adidas Samba sneakers (though to be honest I really love them). Of course, my bank card has its own version of what is happening, but I suggest that you take the word for the author of this material, since he can not speak.

“How can a fashion editor not imagine the trendiest products of recent years?” – you ask. And as paradoxical as it may sound, I will answer that the problem lies in the word “trend”. As soon as an unpleasant scam begins to follow a certain thing, the desire to buy it instantly evaporates. But do not think that such thoughts only visit me. If the trend reaches the general public, growth turns into stagnation and interest in the product dwindles exponentially. And that’s how he dies. In principle, this conclusion could have ended, but I decided to dig deeper and follow how a trend is born, becomes popular, and then goes to the archive. Shall we begin?

I agree that trends are tough. Some ask them, the second follows them, and the third does not keep up with them at all. But the worst part is that some (including you and me) confuse the concepts. Now I will try to explain. In the modern world, there are global trends and there are so-called fads (that is, the quirks or whims of the people). For example, flats are a trend, while Miu Miu is a fad. And I must say, there is much more attention to the latter. But this is not good. One of the characteristics of fads is that after a sharp rise in popularity, there is an equally sharp decline in popularity.

By the way, there are many studies on this subject. A few years ago, two students at Stanford University looked at how people’s preferences for baby names have changed over the past 100 years. It turns out that the longer a name takes to become popular, the longer it stays in the trend. And vice versa – the faster the popularity of the name grew, the faster it faded. This is because people supposedly don’t want to be a flock, and this applies not only to names, but also to musical preferences, social networks (hello, Clubhouse) and of course fashion. And here is a simple example: Mentally, we are moving forward to 2017, where every second dreams of Balenciaga Tripple S sneakers. A year later, the popularity of the extravagant model has not only waned, it has evaporated. It has become bad form to wear such sneakers. This once again proves the thesis that rapid success from the above-mentioned study is not always a good indicator. As they say, the morning stars fade quickly.

Despite the fact that trends have always existed, the concept itself only came into use in the 1960s. In the next half century the use of cognate words (just a minute!) increased by 500%, and in the 2000s The New York Times ran an article with a great headline: “Trends are a new trend.” But all this pales and pales in comparison to what is happening now. With the advent of the Internet and social networks, the number of trends has changed a lot. If previously they were only required by designers, movie stars and the music scene, now the entire galaxy has been joined by bloggers, influencers and teenagers from TikTok alone. Thanks to them, micro-trends appear that absorb everything that comes their way with extraordinary speed.

Now let’s look at trends through the economic prism. Who benefits from such a conveyor? The answer won’t surprise you much because it’s useful for almost all brands, from small to large. Imagine what would happen to luxury and mass markets if trends changed four times slower. What to sell people? How to earn money? Therefore, once a season, big players in the fashion industry give us new products that we want to spend our entire salary on. It turns out that trends harm not only our individuality and financial situation, but also the environment.

But back to the subject. We’ve already figured out how trends are born and how they become popular, now it’s time to figure out when to bury them. The cycle of their lives is organized by the following principle (think of the Balenciaga Tripple S sneaker example mentioned earlier): first the brand sends a mailing list to influencers to get attention, then a hype model emerges among microbloggers, then city fashionistas start thinking about buying a pair and only then does the information reach the general public, the general public and the Chinese counterfeit market. As a result, social media feeds and the streets of major metropolitan areas are filled with people proudly walking in the same sneakers. And here it is necessary to look back in time and understand the scale of the tragedy. The more often you see something trending in the knowledge space, the faster the “anti” sign will be drawn.

But sooner or later everyone falls into the trap of trends without even realizing it. The paradox is that we want to be unique and inimitable, but at the same time we follow the same trends, listen to the same music and wear the same cargo pants (conditionally, of course). Why? The answer lies on the surface. Unfortunately or fortunately, trends fulfill one of the basic human needs – a sense of belonging to a particular human environment. Therefore, they will disappear from our lives for a very long time.

The lesson from the story is this: Don’t mindlessly pick up on all the current trends, and always keep in mind your mother’s words: “And if everyone does stupid things like that, would you do it too?”