The Matrix of Micro-Aesthetics: How Trends Ruled 2022
Would you jump off a cliff if the Coastal Granddaughter told you to?
Coquette. Dark Academia. Rockstar Girlfriend. Balletcore. Clean. Downton. Indie Sleaze. To name but a small pocket of aesthetic currency, those well versed on social media will be no stranger to at least two of these conceptual ‘IT Girls’. 2022 has seen itself become the year to zenith this boiling pot of trends. Crafting pseudo-individualism and the illusion of authenticity, this year has taken popular fashion from the item into the identity; fixating lifestyle and futurity to the fur of an Afghan, the clothes of this year meant more than looking cool, they meant personality, spontaneity, and a lust for life while lying about being bothered.
The legwarmers came in, that I’d never seen real person wear. The 90s revival realigned heroin chic for a new age. The maxi skirt, the cargo: why curate your own personal style when you can pick one from a list? But where the influencer God’s that be, apparently pointed shut eyed at the year’s most ‘wearable pieces’, heaven forbid they all be worn together. What I think we’ve seen now, in realisation of this almost regulatory instruction manual to authenticity, is a chaotic hyper-fusion of clashing trends that re-immerse the tacky into the truth of personal style.
Chaotic-chic and eclectic, is this new aversion to the aesthetic a 2022 reinvention of the ‘OMG So Random’ Era? Whether you’re inside or outside of the ever-flowing mainstream, I wonder whether society is seeing a backpaddle into the Pick Me once again. With just enough content that attempts to ‘predict’ the upcoming looks and pieces of the oncoming months, as there is actual content perpetuating what’s already current, the attention has shifted from attending the trends to rather recognising and actively ignoring them, or, in extension, converging them all together to make mess of it all in the most delicious, self-dictated way.
Horses for courses, and equally for corsetry, but as micro-aesthetics and their unsustainable lifestyles attached have fallen thick across consumer algorithms, as have a re-awakening to their distortion. Calling out the pearl sandwiches and disordered daint of Coquette Core, or the white centricity of the Clean Girl, Commentary Culture has taken eager fork to the anti-trend, indebting itself ironically as a trend entirely its own to critique all the rest. Deconstructing the popular and the planted, the fashion discourse has become just as hot a topic as the fashion itself.
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Where brazen-headed analysts point out problems in the churn of trend cycles, the rotation of in-fashion approaches nothing but its own convergence, and I wonder whether it’s this we actually need? Known amply in the fashion industry as the ‘20-year-rule’, social media has seen the deconstruction of this regime that once allowed leeway of a handful of decades to decide what past was popular again.
As the side fringe and liner smudge of Indie Sleaze has seen premature rebirth from its prime barely 10 years ago however, the time to be outdated and uncool is now wearing thin. With the speed of this aesthetic metamorphosis, will we at some point reach the point of paradox? Finally embracing individual fashion as something outside the binaries of what’s in and what’s out. Either way, I’ll be sure not to throw away a single thing I own for the next five years.
As a year unshackled from a pandemic by the skin of its teeth, it’s hardly surprising consumers became both obsessed and repulsed by the aesthetic spin cycle. After too many months of banana bread and exercise once-a-day, the urge to reinvent oneself became incessant, feral. And in a born-again freedom to the outside, the concept of simply having a lifestyle, regardless of its content, was main character enough.
But equally in lockdown,was our emphasis on digital thrifting; gutting out our wardrobes and surging Depop to popularity where it now charges obscene prices, 2022 has offered a return to scrimper shopping with the growth of Vinted. Once the bashful sister, Vinted has found its surpassing of Depop, resonating from its refocus on clothes instead of brands. If you curated your Depop Likes as I admittedly still do, its algorithm feels reaped from the seeds of Instagram selling clothes to you rather than vice-versa. Our shift towards Vinted seemed to take back control, and as the year draws to a festive close, it feels as though we’re finally asking ‘what do I want to wear?
“Regardless of whether her fit would look good or unflattering on me, freedom in fashion comes from recognising that someone else’s authenticity can never truly be your own.”
With this in mind, and as autumn drew in with the itch of knits and unshaven legs, so did the comfort of the Frazzled English Woman. Eclectic, awkward and created to deflect the mainstream grain, the likes of Bridget Jones, Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson—weeping in woollen skirted shab to Joni Mitchell— became the subversive preoccupation of trending fashion. But tumultuous bumbling beauty, though she may be, there proves to be more cultivation in her mess than was asking to be noticed. Though dowdy in looks, that sweater was actually chosen for her… from a pile of stuff. I’m sure we’re all familiar with Miranda Priestley’s infamous cerulean speech, but for Frazzled Female Chic, her effortless, thrown together maximalism was in reality a mere caricature of what Hollywood contrived to be the height of the ‘unfashionable’.
With winter now in full swing and the choke of charity shop scarves swinging in ribbons, the Frazzle has warmed up Whimsigoth for the season, and once again dishes out the image of the anti-aesthetic. Despite this, she’s the closest we’ve come so far to re-embracing personal style. Focused on hand-me-downs and imperfect pieces, she’s welcomed with her enthusiasm of being herself. Identification through materialism is historical and seemingly inescapable; to paraphrase psychologist Jean Paul Sartre, we construct ourselves through our surroundings, what we own. And perhaps consumption isn’t necessarily always a bad thing provided it's personal, provided it digests, provided it actually keeps us all alive.
So where do we go from here? Already gracing TikTok are the apprehensive debates of 2023’s definitive trending pieces, the likelihood of which, we’ll have to wait and see. But as the content syrup of social media has (more prominently this year than any previous) popularised an oversaturation of content, the square eyed viewer seems to be waking up to it.
With Twitter down the drain and Instagram’s algorithm rebrand surging uproar from users, it seems possible that people are unshackling themselves from this mindless consumptive intake. Becoming aware of capitalist conglomerates attempting to milk brains into a pulp of constant stimulation, the TikTok-ification of social media platforms has felt nothing but inauthentic to consumers and in result, has awakened them to all areas of excessive product rollout.
This morning on route to coffee, I see a girl dressed like herself, trainers clashing from the colours of her skirt, a t-shirt and cardigan combo that scream of opposing styles and I think: I want that. But do I, really? Regardless of whether her fit would look good or unflattering on me, freedom in fashion comes from recognising that someone else’s authenticity can never truly be your own. Perhaps that’ll be my mantra of 2023.
Words: Mia Autumn Roe
