Of course trends are circular
I vividly remember my early high school years, when scrunchies were coming back in fashion and items like bell-bottoms, heavily-layered hair, and thick eyeliner not-so-slowly followed suit. When asking for some of the aforementioned items for Christmas during this period, my Aunt remarked with a simple, “that’s what I wore in high school.”
I often hear about similar scenarios happening to other young adults, with varying ranges of neutral, approving, or mocking. Online blogs, fashion magazines, and brands always seem caught off guard when trends from previous decades come back in style as the next generation start to become adults with their own money and wardrobe autonomy. To me, this is not shocking at all—it is the natural way of things.
Over the past year-or-so I’ve heard a lot of references to living an adult life that “heals your inner child,” and I think that trend circularity is a result of this very phenomenon; the reason trends seem to follow this pattern is because any given generation reaching adulthood grew up watching their older siblings, favorite celebrities, and television and movie characters wear the outfits of another era, wishing and dreaming to own a denim vest or a plaid skirt. It logically follows that when we become adults with spending money and freedom of our own we collectively seek to acquire modernized versions of these style choices.
I generally think that publications or older relatives shocked by these renewals in fashion might come from a place of jealousy or cringing at the former-self (to see my opinions on cringe, look at last week’s edition), projected upon younger people. I am sure that we all think of what we wore in middle school or high school and think to ourselves who let me leave the house like this; older folks seeing their budding young adults falling into the same habits and fashion horrors can cause alarm and protectiveness.
Adults are just as sentimental as anyone else, and their sentimentalities might come off in strange and maybe inappropriate ways, but I think this pattern is a lesson for us who are becoming adults and will someday watch generation alpha fall in love with the early-2000’s fashion trends with their obsession with joutfits (jean-outfits, of course) and absurdly-buckled belts. In fact, I would say that we can already see this phenomenon happening, and it will catch up with us sooner or later. Therefore, when we see younger people start to mimic and repeat outfit choices we look upon not so fondly, we should not discourage them: They are living out their childhood dreams in that moment, if subconsciously, and they probably know how to style themselves even better than we did.
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