TikTok Fashion and the Rise of Micro-Trends

For much of the twentieth and early twenty-first century a trend cycle would last for roughly twenty to thirty years. This is why when we think of fashion from a certain time period, whether that be from the 1920s or the 1970s, we have a clear idea in our heads of how the people of that era dressed. However, nowadays, the trend cycle, largely due to the invention of social media, has become shorter and shorter. This is when we start to see the rise of ‘micro- trends’.

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How are Micro-Trends Created?:

According to Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production, or WRAP, “Before the rise of TikTok and Instagram influencer culture, we looked to models, movies, celebrities, and fashion magazines to set the trends [...]. This group of people was small, and our access to them was neatly curated.” This ultimately limited our exposure to potential new trends and kept fashion cycles slower. Yet, with the rise of social media, we have more access to celebrities now than we’ve ever had before, and because of this, celebrities have a stronger hold on our culture.

This is not lost on brands, which is why they hustle to get big celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Justin Bieber to wear their products, because they know that immediately after someone of their status posts a picture or video of them wearing the clothing item, it's most likely going to become a trend.

Just like always, we run to the stores to buy what they’re wearing or endlessly searching the internet for a fake. Now, rather than just showing up to a party wearing the latest trend, impressing people in our local community, we post a photo or video online. Because in today’s world, anyone can become an influencer: and to be an influencer, you have to be ahead. But of course, everyone has the same idea and everyone online is now posting the same dress, to the point where our feed is full of the same piece post after post. So, we decide the dress is no longer cool, you’re no longer cool for liking and wearing it, let’s trash it.

Obviously, if we’re experiencing extremely short trend cycles, the “buying to trashing pipeline” increases in frequency. Brand’s perpetuate this with their influencer marketing strategies. Brand’s will send out hundreds or thousands of PR (public relations) packages to macro and micro influencers all at the same time, so that when they all unbox and upload them at the same time, it feels like this trend is extremely oversaturated.

In a trend cycle, there are typically five stages: the introduction, the rise, the culmination, the decline, and finally, the obsolescence. However, with this marketing strategy, the introduction, rise and culmination all get turned into one step, severely shortening the length of the trend cycle.

The Contribution to Fast Fashion:

The people buying fast fashion because it’s all that they can afford are not the ones contributing to the dominance of fast fashion. Generally these people actually cherish their clothes, and they don’t have the disposable income to be buying new pieces every couple of days. But what about the people who buy $1,000 worth of Shein (the most popular fast fashion brand on TikTok), who throw out their clothes every two months, who take a dump on people for wearing outdated trends- how do we justify that?

It all becomes a vortex as people who genuinely love the trendy pieces that they get, because yes, that's possible, you can still love a trend even after it's long since died (the trend will come back anyway so don’t worry) will probably be shamed or pressured into throwing it away by tiktokers with a larger following.

For example, House of Sunny’s Hockney dress was the center of hate on TikTok a while ago because the dress became so trendy so fast, that it became old news just as quickly.

It is a genuine problem when people are buying whatever trendy pieces or whatever trendy dupe there is out there without thinking about whether or not they’re going to want to wear this piece months or years down the line. Or, sometimes, they’ll just buy into the trend to make one TikTok video about it so that they can get their fifteen seconds of fame and then the dress goes straight to the thrift shop. Some might even return the item back to the store where they bought the piece from, but because stores throw out their excess inventory, this solution just creates more waste.

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The Environmental Impacts:

The accelerated turnover rate (the time it takes for a product to go from the drawing board to live online or in-store) of fast fashion leads to overconsumption, and overconsumption leads to a negative environmental impact. To put it into perspective, the average American throws away about 81 pounds of clothing every year and the majority of fast fashion garments are not constructed to last. They are usually made of cheap synthetic fibers like polyester, which is essentially plastic. Synthetic fibers also shed microfibers, one of the main causes of ocean pollution. Polyester can take up to 200 years to decompose, which is especially bad because the industry produces over 100 billion tons of new garments every year. We’re basically living on one big pile of plastic.

Final Notes:

If there is one thing that I want people to take from this, it should be that we all need to work harder to become more thoughtful consumers. Now, no one is a saint. It is a lot to ask for someone to never buy anything new and to just live minimally - that’s not realistic. But, the act of consciously buying massive hauls or trendy pieces just for some social media clout, all while knowing that you’re going to throw it all out within the next two months… that should not sit right with any of us.

I don’t want this to seem like I’m hating TikTok, because I do recognize that there are great communities on TikTok. On the fashion side, there are accounts that do upcycling tutorials, (upcycling is basically a practice in which you alter your old clothes to make them newer and trendier), sewing tutorials and small businesses are able to promote their sustainable clothing. TikTok is also a great way to discover aesthetic communities such as cottagecore, regency core, and dark academia, all of which grew a lot because of the platform.

Aesthetics are great - not only do they create lovely little online communities for people who share the same interests, but they’re also a great way to sidestep micro-trends and overconsumption. If you’re really subscribed to one look, you’re obviously not going to chase whatever new trend the kardashians are wearing as it might not fit to the personal style and aesthetic that you’ve curated.

A wonderful thing about aesthetic communities is that while yes, there is a spending element to it, as there is with most things, at the end of the day aesthetics go beyond fashion. For cottagecore, the aesthetic extends to gardening, cooking, sewing and being out in nature. For dark academia, the aesthetic extends to reading books, learning new languages, visiting museums and making art. These are hobbies that don’t necessarily feed into a material desire.

I know fast fashion has always been a sore subject on social media because no one wants to be reminded of our own personal contributions to the problem. And while, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that corporations and the 1% are the ones who are creating 99% of the problems. We as individuals still have to follow some kind of personal moral compass, because if you don’t, we just end up breeding nihilism. If we ever want things to truly improve, we need to stay passionate and we need to stay bold.