Keeping up with fashion trends can feel like a full-time job in the digital age. One day, Y2K maximalism is all the rage, and the next day, it’s all about understated high-quality pieces that are the opposite of loud. The fashion landscape is constantly changing, and the modern trend cycle can stump even the most seasoned industry vets.
The Trend Cycle Is No More
Where once trends came and went every 20 years or so, following the traditional cycle (introduction, rise, peak, decline, and finally obsolescence), it’s no longer hard to argue that everything is trending all at once. The ’90s are back, yes, but so are the 2000s. Oh, and don’t forget the ’60s and ’70s! Cowboy boots and capris, cottagecore, indie sleaze, and gorpcore, it’s tiring trying to keep track of it all.
The TikTok boom of the early 2020s certainly helped accelerate the shift, as did the coming of age of the first wave of Gen Z. At the same time, the 20-year trend cycle rule has finally become quantifiable, and data now support the idea that multiple trends can coexist. A new study from Northwestern University, released earlier this year, found that fashion trends do, in fact, tend to cycle roughly every 20 years—but that pattern has become increasingly fragmented in recent decades.
Hannah Ewens of Vice also described how Gen Z is truly the first cohort of youth on the precipice of adulthood who have lived in this new retro-society so obsessed with nostalgia and its very own cultural artifacts. They are a generation that has had a large influence on fashion’s ever-changing trends, having grown up with the world at their fingertips from a young age.
In a World Where Everything Is Trending, Personal Style Wins
From stylistic subcultures to microtrends and even generational lingo, TikTok and social media more broadly have helped smash the traditional trend cycle in favor of an anything-goes approach. It’s this obsession with ever-changing “moods” or “vibes,” as the TikTok set puts it, that has had a profound impact on how we all collectively digest fashion, both luxury and not.
Alas, there is something positive to be said about it all. With everything trending all at once, it leaves space for creating a personal style that’s yours and yours alone. “What this actually speaks to is a fascinating amalgamation of aesthetics that is blurring the lines of set style guidelines and expectations,” José Criales-Unzueta mused for i-D. After all, style should be just that, personal, and it’s something we all need to be reminded of at the end of the day.
For handbag lovers, these changing times mean a constant stream of new (but often old) bags to lust over. And even as some grow tired of archival revivals and nostalgic wares, consumers continue to eat them up, boosting sales on the secondary market all the while. Those pre-loved carries have, against all odds, become some of the most unlikely It-bags of our time.
Why Handbags Are the Ultimate Trend-Cycle Test
Whereas once toting a carryall from Prada’s Spring 2005 runway would have been passé, these days, it’s actually quite the opposite. As the traditional trend cycle becomes almost a thing of the past, it feels like anything goes when it comes to bags. The streets of New York are a perfect example of this handbag melting pot. Vintage Gucci and Louis Vuitton are like passing ships in the night with new iterations of old favorites like the Chloé Paddington and the revival of the Dior Saddle Bag.
It’s that very Dior Saddle Bag, reintroduced in 2018, that remains a House staple despite returning during one of the most tumultuous periods in modern fashion. It has remained an icon of modern handbag history, withstanding this new era of fashion, and many other bags have done the same (think the Fendi Baguette, Saint Laurent Mombasa, Balenciaga City, and more).
Despite fashion’s constant upheavals, some bags stand the test of time, immune to the ever-changing trend cycle. And perhaps that’s the biggest upside to a world where everything is trending at once: there’s no longer a wrong time to carry whatever it is that you love.
Maybe you should spend less time worrying about trends and more time enjoying what you have?