ISSUE 09: Everyone’s Doing It (And That’s Okay)
A brief case for the fleeting, the viral, the of-the-moment.
I won’t deny it; there’s something comforting about pretending to be above it all—scrolling past the latest micro-trend with a little sneer, imagining yourself as someone with true taste. A lighthouse in the storm. A steady, timeless beacon of discernment.
But here’s the truth: I like trends.
Not all of them, of course. Some are terrible. Some are objectively confusing (are we still eating off those Brutalist mushroom plates?), and yes—some are deeply wasteful. But there’s something undeniably human about the whole thing. To pay attention to trends is to eavesdrop on culture, to study desire in real time. What we’re wearing, posting, buying, copying—these aren’t just superficial tics. They’re little seismic blips on the map of what we want right now, what we fear, what we hope for. Sometimes, they’re more revealing than we give them credit for.
I know, I know. The backlash has already started before most trends are even over. The rise and fall of aesthetics has gotten so fast—thanks to TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest—that “core fatigue” has become a thing in itself. (Were we ever really meant to live through balletcore, mob wife, indie sleaze, and tomato girl summer in the same year?) And yet, even with the burnout, I can’t bring myself to entirely hate the rollercoaster ride.
Because when a trend catches fire, it means something hit a nerve.
Sometimes it’s visual comfort—think of the soft curves and beige-on-beige of the early 2020s, a reaction to the anxiety of the pandemic. Sometimes it’s nostalgia, like the explosion of Y2K glitter and low-rise denim. Sometimes it’s protest, like the return of visible makeup and ultra-femininity in a political moment that feels threatening to both.
And sometimes, it’s just a moment of collective craving. A weirdly shaped chair. A tiny, unnecessary handbag. A color that feels like the future. I find that kind of instinctive mass desire fascinating—not empty.
There’s also something lovely about what trends can do. They create a kind of shorthand. A shared visual language. Even if the words are borrowed or brief, you can recognize someone who gets it. It can feel, in a very chaotic world, like finding your people. As artist and designer Nathalie Du Pasquier once said, “It’s not always about inventing something new. Sometimes it’s about reusing, remixing, speaking in a voice others already know.”
Of course, there’s a line. A good trend—the kind that sticks for a season or a year or more—usually has some weight behind it. A root system. A history it’s referencing or twisting or poking fun at. The ones that don’t, the ones that exist purely to manufacture need (fast fashion, fast furniture, etc.), tend to vanish just as quickly as they appear. But that doesn’t mean every fleeting thing is inherently bad.
Sometimes, I love something because I know it won’t last. There’s an intimacy to that kind of style—knowing you’re participating in something ephemeral, passing through a moment, fully aware it’ll be out of fashion by next year (or next month).
Like artist Wolfgang Tillmans said: “If one thing matters, everything matters.”
Trends might not matter to everyone, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter at all. They’re breadcrumbs. Cultural timestamps. They tell us what we wanted once, what we thought we needed, what we thought looked cool, even if it didn’t age well. And maybe that’s what makes them beautiful—trends remind us that we’re always evolving. That style is not a static thing, but a living one.
So no, I’m not anti-trend. I’m just picky about which ones I let in. And sometimes, letting something in for a season is enough. Taste, after all, doesn’t have to be eternal. It just has to feel right right now.
This week’s goodies: Trendy little charmers, culty crowd-pleasers, and popular picks that still feel personal—proof that taste doesn’t always have to be rare to be real.
Next week: we dig into the stories objects carry—and how meaning can shape beauty just as much as form.
