BLURRED LINES: THE DEATH OF TREND

BLURRED LINES:
THE DEATH OF TREND

Words By James Vaughters
February 7, 2025

Throughout history, style trends mirrored economics but, more noticeably, recessions. While past recessions required functional, need-based trends—like women’s workwear during The Great Depression & WWII—the current era tells a different story. We’re living in the "deep information age," marked by constant political upheaval juxtaposed with the most trivial of social media trends. Today’s style lacks unified immersive movements like those of the Black Panther Party or Punk Rebellion. Today’s style exhibits infinitely simultaneous micro-trends.

Today’s fashion is aspirational. In everyday life, the busiest of nouveau riche billionaires embrace simplicity in T-shirts and jeans, while youth gravitate towards trends of past decades; Y2K-core; the "quiet luxury" of the 90s; Hip Hop of the 80s, flared cuffs and exaggerated collars of the 70s. On the runway, heritage fashion houses strut out streetwear, workwear, and athleticwear, reflecting an era where clothing is valued less for being avant-garde or innovative but more for its perception and marketability; but is that so difficult to fathom?

So far, the New Millennium is riddled with relentless financial crises—from 9/11 and the 2008 Housing Crisis to COVID-19 and the Israel-Hamas. Real-world issues magnify the privilege of inhabiting cyber-reality. The internet birthed a generation with increased knowledge of past fashion aesthetics while subduing the demand for need-based recession trends. Millennials merely adapted to the recession; Gen Z was born in it. Unprecedented entrepreneurship ventures like social media influencing and streaming create direct lines between individuals and multi-billion dollar brands that transcend the aesthetics of recession. Data metrics force innovative ideas to be overpowered by consumer-centric marketing. Adaptation both by brands and individuals to the economic climate birthed a generation with access to the look of luxury, fast fashion, archive fashion, and beyond. Any aesthetic you want, you can find. If the aesthetic is too expensive to attain, there’s probably a ‘dupe.’

Lightning-fast trend cycles and infinite online style archives have killed what was left of traditional trend forecasting. Today’s style blurs lines between: high and low fashion, gendered clothing, and old versus new. Designers like Rick Owens and Saint Laurent embrace unisex collections, while streetwear meets luxury in collaborations like Dior x Jordan. Workwear silhouettes from brands like Carhartt and Levi’s infiltrate high fashion while Shein & Temu keep track of it all.

The late avant-garde fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen once said, “Fashion is not to be taken too seriously… It is not going to cure cancer or AIDS… It's just clothes. No matter what they look like, everything has been done before. It's about the way you do it.” 25 years of global upheaval have flipped the status quo of McQueen’s time upside down. Championed for his courage and rebellious nature, one can't help but wonder what a designer like McQueen would think of today’s clothes. Would he see today’s lack of style trend as a lack of originality, or would he applaud the democratization of trend even if the price is dampened creativity? As someone who seemed to understand the paradoxical nature of the human experience, whether impressed or unimpressed, I doubt he’d be surprised.