The Overconsumption of Microtrends is Out of Style
Image Courtesy: Seventeen
Clothing has always served as a personal trademark for members of our society. What someone is wearing can mean more than you might think, considering it's the first impression you make on others. Especially within younger communities, the clothes we wear help us find a sense of identity and belonging. While such clothing holds cultural value from the past, it has been recycled and tainted by our current cycle of ephemeral, fast fashion. Shopping today means so much more than simply purchasing a top. When you purchase a mass-produced $3 crop top from Shein, it might serve to give you some clout for your night out; however, you are enabling and condoning unsustainable fashion practices in the process.
Image Courtesy: The Business of Fashion
Fashion trends have continually operated in cycles and seasons. The five stages of a fashion cycle are as follows: introduction, rise in popularity, the peak of popularity, decline in popularity, and rejection. As microtrends plateau rapidly within the ever-changing fashion cycle, fast fashion brands are overproducing and expediting manufacturing to keep up with the demand. The problem arises when consumers buy into the notion that today’s trend will become obsolete tomorrow, prompting brands to keep up with an insatiable cycle.
Social media has only exacerbated this culture of overconsumption through microtrends. Since influencers from Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok rely on routine shopping hauls to promote their accounts and earn monetization, they constantly advertise new products and leave the old ones in the fashion cycle dust. This makes the general population cycle through new clothing too quickly. Clothing production is one of the main culprits of climate change and environmental degradation, and the culture of how we treat textiles is only making it worse.
These cheap garments are not made to last and will inevitably end up in your local landfill or Goodwill once the novelty fades. Everyone’s summer patchwork shirts, claw clips, and tennis skirts were purchased at the expense of the environment and underpaid laborers, and we are already clearing our closets for the new fall wardrobe.
Image Courtesy: Nylon
Microtrends can become very frustrating when shopping for apparel because an item that you choose can plummet in the next few weeks in terms of popularity. Thrifting is a cost-efficient and sustainable alternative that incorporates clothing of different fashion cycles, offering an inventory of unique pieces that are no longer popularized and mass-produced. Another idea is to change the way you might participate in a trend, even if it is to a small degree. Personally, I adored the tennis skirt trend with a sweater on top. While I think the look is cute, I feel as though each rendition is far too similar to the next. One way I changed it up to stand out from the crowd was switching up the tennis skirt to a mini skort. I also picked a sweater that had a funky pattern on it rather than one with one solid color. The outfit still fits the trendy silhouette of the tennis skirt, but it achieves the look differently. It’s not a matter of how drastic the change is but rather how small changes can make all of the difference.
Strike Out,
Writer: Isabella Botero
Editors: Noelle Knowlton & Lexi Fernandez
Graphics: Maddy Sloan
Tallahassee
