Momo, 25, rummaged through her closet to find the perfect outfit for a recent function at work.
By the erratic standards of TikTok, many of her recent purchases were already out of style.
Should she wear the “office siren” style of thin-framed glasses? Or maybe she could dress in black translucent tights and a gothic jacket to channel “dark academia.” Should she wear bows on her sleeves and stack her jewellery? Or should she choose to wear neutral hues and smooth back her hair for a more “clean girl” appearance?
She felt as if her closet was mocking her.
Before the epidemic and TikTok, trend cycles tended to focus on colour and texture. With a little help from pop culture, the newest seasonal trends were first shown on the fashion industry’s runways before making their way into the high street. However, what occurs when a new generation that has been online for a long time establishes fresh roots for the trend cycle?
Sporty sunglasses for November, Adidas Sambas for October, beige Birkenstock Bostons for September, and low-rise denim for August. The trend cycle is shorter than it has ever been. Because Kendall Jenner wore the green House of Sunny dress once, perhaps you did your best to forget the days when marble-print polyester was all over and having it meant anything. The rapidity with which fashions come and go doesn’t only mean that your wardrobe will seem outdated a year or less after you follow a trend. Additionally, it means that thousands of unwanted garments wind up in landfills.
ENTER MICRO-TRENDS
According to Renate Stauss, an associate professor of Fashion Studies at The American University of Paris, fashion is both a “universal connective tissue” and an act of self-dressing. Since everyone has always had fashion, what was once a significant cultural practice is now completely different. Every year, people discard nearly 78 million tonnes of apparel, or 37 kilogrammes each person. How and why have we changed the way we dress? And how is TikTok related to this?
In contrast to a decade or a few years, micro-trends are transient; most barely endure a month or two. Microtrends have been spreading online and contributing to the growth of fast fashion websites that harm the environment. Influencers on social media sites strongly promote them. To market their clothes, brands usually fund influencers that have a large fan base. The procedure is straightforward: an influencer who wants to become more well-known receives free clothing from any clothing website and is instructed to promote it to gain advantages like a positive relationship with the business, platform promotion, payment, and additional freebies.
Even if they have different opinions, influencers often present the product favourably because of the advantages it offers them personally. False advertising is sparked by this, making a product seem “too good to be true.” Everything is a trap! Fans instantly rush to buy similar apparel since the influencer in question is so highly regarded. This ultimately has a cascading effect, establishing a fashion “norm” that is deemed fashionable one day but not the next.
THE PSYCHOLOGY
In an online society that is preoccupied with the production and destruction of physical beauty, the psychological pressure that promotes an excessive pace of consumption to look on-trend is increasingly noticeable. The clean girl, with her slicked-back bun, gratitude journal, jacket, and gua shua-moulded face, was born during the epidemic. By spring 2022, the clean girl had perished in preparation for the feral girl summer, which would be a rejection of everything associated with the girl boss and a poisonous freedom to embrace your most annoying side. The ensuing aesthetics of disorder arrive with their on-trend goods that will unavoidably meet the same fate, even though this corresponded with the rejection of the microtrends associated with the clean girl (think H&M’s smart-casual, claw clips, and Molly Mae after Love Island).
These fashion subcultures might be characterised as indie sleaze or ketamine chic. Although the desire for anarchic style may have inspired these looks, quick fashion retailers such as Shein and H&M cheaply copy the look’s most popular components, speeding up the trend cycle and ensuring that its most distinctive pieces will only become another microtrend. Under capitalism, fashion discriminates against people based on their skin colour, body shape, and 401(k) status. The well-known YouTuber Mina Le examined the history of fashion before the emergence of microtrends and aesthetics. She claimed that standing out was a significant, rebellious decision in a society that emphasised conformity and fitting in. A work that made a statement.
Although identity development is a complicated issue, new research indicates that it does not occur in a vacuum. This procedure would often take place in social settings, involving your family, elders, friends, etc. However, the epidemic changed our online social spaces, turning them into the WildWildWest of the internet. The social niches in which we found ourselves were governed by algorithms. This influenced our cultural education during the process of self-definition, particularly for teenagers and young adults. They fall into the traps of capitalism in their quest for a sense of belonging. The tendency of microtrends, in my opinion, is a sign of a more significant cultural problem. There are no offline or third places available for young people to securely investigate the consequences of their identity. We feel more alienated as a result, which draws us closer to capitalism.
Another issue is the “development of market competitive identities.” Identity development is a psychological process that is distinct from our economic system, to put it in non-financial words. However, they have joined together to create a new process under late-stage capitalism. This is brought on by the messages that our immediate surroundings are sending us about how capitalism is an inevitable part of our daily lives and how we are constantly forming our identities around consumerism and capitalism. This is why purchasing apparel that embodies the “old-money core” is more important to the identity of this group than the community. It is selfish and individualistic, and worse, it has nothing to do with building a real community, which makes you feel even more alone and hollow.
THE IMPACTS
THE FACTORY WORKERS
The mass buying of its apparel rose significantly for a while before fading away more quickly than it began since microtrends are so transient. In addition to forcing workers to put in more hours, this leads to poor working conditions, underpayment of workers, and many other issues. Workers in the garment industry are frequently required to put in 14–16 hours a day, seven days a week. To meet the fashion brand’s deadline during peak season, they could labour till two or three in the morning.
Apart from the fact that many would be dismissed if they refused to work extra, they are overworked and their base pay is so low that they are unable to refuse overtime. Overtime may not even be compensated in some situations. Workers’ mental and physical health suffers when they are not paid enough to support themselves or their families. Workers typically operate in hazardous structures without ventilation, inhaling fibre dust, blasting sand, or breathing in poisonous compounds. On textile manufacturing plants, accidents, fires, injuries, and illnesses happen often. Workers are not protected by regulations that guarantee their adequate treatment and access to healthcare in many nations where industrial employment is prevalent. In addition to being against human rights, we all unwittingly encourage this.
Regrettably, one of the main issues in the manufacturing of textile factories is child labour. Around the world, 160 million children are compelled to labour. Child labour is particularly prevalent in the fashion industry due to the need for low-skilled workers in this sector. Even when laws are established, they are frequently disregarded, forcing minors into dangerous work practices and situations with unthinkable repercussions.
THE ENVIRONMENT
When a fashion trend swiftly fades, the clothing is usually discarded. As a result of their fast production and use of non-sustainable or eco-friendly materials, these garments harm our environment when they are discarded. Every year, piles of clothes from fads are discarded. An article on the actual environmental effects of fast fashion by EARTH.ORG states that “92 million tonnes of the 100 billion garments produced each year end up in landfills.”
On paper, the statistics appear to be harmful enough, but let’s examine how serious these figures are for the environment. According to the same article, textiles are responsible for “nearly 10% of microplastics dispersed in the ocean each year,” or the “plastic pollution of more than 50 billion bottles.”
Not only do animals encounter life-threatening situations daily, but humans are also greatly affected. Fast fashion production uses hazardous chemicals and emits carbon emissions into the atmosphere, which is bad for the health of our planet. “Online returns generated 16 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in the US in 2020 – the equivalent of 3.5 million cars on the road for a year” during quarantine alone. Imagine the harm that will persist over the ensuing decades if we can achieve that in a year.
Clothing manufacturing has only become worse. Since polyester, a sort of plastic is less expensive, quick-drying, and wrinkle-free—all of which are desirable qualities to a customer when searching for clothing—many businesses have switched from utilising cotton as their primary material to using polyester instead. This has increased sales.
A quarter of the 300 million plastic waste heaps that are dumped in landfills annually are made up of clothing. “Polyester, a ubiquitous form of plastic that’s derived from oil, has overtaken cotton as the backbone of textile production,” according to research on the harmful consequences of polyester. One major cause of microplastic contamination, which is particularly detrimental to marine life, is clothing made of polyester and other synthetic fibres.
SO, WHAT CAN WE DO?
Although microtrends are inefficient and have several negative repercussions, there is still plenty we can do to improve the situation. Second-hand shopping is one of the many alternatives that have grown in popularity since it makes excellent use of clothing that would otherwise be thrown away. More than ever, social media is being used to advertise thrift stores and the idea of reselling used apparel via apps that operate as fashion marketplaces.
These new behaviours are beginning to gain popularity among younger generations and are being highlighted in the media. Therefore, we are doing better even if quick fashion and micro trends have peaked in recent years. I think the harm of micro-trends is something that people are starting to talk more about on social media, especially with ‘de-influencing’, and if this keeps up, there may be a notable decline in them, which would benefit both humans and the environment.
Many clothes that were mass-produced for micro-trends end up being thrown away, which in itself is a big source of pollution and a threat to habitats — but if we all work toward taking sustainable practices with the clothing we wear, advocating for the health of our environment, and understanding its impact, we can bring ourselves one step closer to a better way of living.
