We’ll Never Go Out of Style: the Dangers of Microtrends

The death of personal style

Mob wife, clean girl, coastal grandma, office siren, rockstar girlfriend, old money, coconut girl. While these might seem like an endless supply of buzzwords, to TikTok they are just a few of the latest fashion aesthetics.

Right now the coquette style of bows and pink as well as the “basic” style of sambas, puffy lettered hoodies and UGGs are the latest. But if this sounds a bit too familiar, you’d be right. Who could forget the sweater vests, teddy jackets and bucket hats of 2020, where microtrends most prominently began out of the boredom of the pandemic.

But what’s the difference now? Well, the creation of the modern influencer. An influencer is someone who will advise you on what’s trending and what looks good. They mean you avoid having to experiment with your personal style in case you’re judged as out of the norm. Having an ever-changing trend cycle means you don’t have to think too hard about what you like to wear on your own. You can just fit in one of the boxes created – clean girl or messy girl, you’re covered. And even better, there’s something new every week.

Influencers lead to microtrends

With younger and younger children being given access to the internet, a new more impressionable market is being created. While television and magazines heavily carried the trends of the 90s they are nothing compared to the fast-moving wide spread of social media. Available to almost everyone at any time, trends are able to circulate faster than ever – but more importantly, die out faster than ever. According to the Australia Institute, Australians are now the world’s biggest fashion consumers, surpassing the US and buying 56 clothing items per year. While the cycle may have started slowly, trends are coming about and going out of fashion faster than you can click ‘add to cart’. Hence the creation of the microtrend. A microtrend is a trend that quickly rises to popularity but consequently dies just as quickly. They don’t exist long enough to qualify as a generationally impactful trend. Now microtrends might seem harmless but they cause more damage than you would ever know about.

Microtrends lead to landfill and child labour

If these trends are going by in a matter of weeks, companies are going to have to keep up. But there’s no time to create good quality products in time for the trend hype, so it becomes easier and more profitable to pay children and those living in poverty in sweatshops overseas, to create clothes that are cheap and time efficient. The Textile Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia estimates that 50-70% of clothing in Australia is outsourced. While brands such as Shein and Temu are more well known for this, brands such as Zara, Uniqlo and Big W are just as guilty. Oxfam reports that workers in Bangladesh are paid as little as 51 cents AUD an hour working for brands like Kmart, Cotton On and Target. Sweatshop workers cannot survive on these payments and suffer harsh physical abuse and threats for long hours.

These poor-quality clothes are easily damaged and therefore customers are throwing them out. Every year over 200,000 tonnes of clothes wind up in landfill, with an average person only wearing 40% of what’s in their wardrobe. After microtrends die, their clothing looks tacky, it looks out of date, it looks so last season. Everyone becomes a victim to this cycle and of course the solution is to throw it out and start again. This process will repeat itself over and over, but then the question occurs, when will it end? How fast will these microtrends come and go? What clothes will there be left to cover? And what will come next?

How to combat this

But how can you stop this cycle that seems to affect almost everyone? A major part of not participating in microtrends is stopping and thinking before you order or buy something. Ask yourself what it is you love about an item? Would you still wear it a year from now? What can you wear it with? It’s important to find your own personal style. What items do you most often wear in your closet and what do you like about them?

Another way to buy clothes more to your own style is thrifting. While you should try to avoid replacing overconsumption of new clothes with overconsumption of old ones, buying second hand is a great sustainable way to buy a new outfit.

Try to do your research on brands’ sustainability promises on their websites. Are they clear about how their clothes are made? Where and how do they source their materials?

Lastly, mending clothes was very popular in the past, when a tear meant a small repair rather than a new item. Learning how to mend by sewing up any missing buttons or holes can save you money as well as unnecessary purchases.

Conclusion  

The microtrend market is hard to escape. Seeing new products and aesthetics constantly can be difficult to avoid. But by being aware of how and by whom clothes are made, as well as buying items you love to wear time and time again, you can help overcome this cycle. Let’s stop supporting cheap labour and excess waste and start creating your own styles that you feel most confident in.