Should you go into your closet and throw out all of your new, trendy shoes and clothes, or are these trends maybe bringing people together? The thing is, trends have existed for a very long time.
According to the Orion Magazine trends have been around almost as long as things like art, using things like animal bones to adorn themselves. And, more recently, trends like bobbed hair from the 1920s all the way to the ones we have today like cheetah print and polka dots.
Although they’ve been around for a long time, are they actually harmful to us as a society? Well, Mahir Can Işik’s TED Talk, “How companies predict fashion trends and kill individuality” and Nicole Rudolph’s “The (ancient) History of Modern Fashion Trends” talk about how trends and trend predictions can in fact take away originality and creativity
The thing about trends is that they can very well be beneficial and they had been for years until Trend Forecasting or Trend Creation was created. In Mahir Can Işik’s TED Talk he claims, “predictability in fashion is now, sadly, the death of individuality.”
I think this is a valid point because the more that companies feed the same things to buy the more alike people are gonna look and the less creative they’re going to be. Basically trend forecasting renders new and innovative fashion useless.
The thing about trends and fashion specifically is that there aren’t many super new things to create anyway. In Nicole Rudouph’s video she addresses this saying, “There are certain weights and certain shapes that play well with each other… and some feel a little awkward.” so “We are going to see similar silhouettes over and over and over again.”
Trends are a constant cycle of bringing things back over and over again in different ways every time. An example that Rudolph brings up is how the 70s had a 20s trend and the 2010-20s had a bit of a 70s trend as well.
This is not to say that all individuality is screwed for good, Rudolph’s video claims, “we want a little bit of fun, we want a little bit of playness in our clothing.” and this need for fun could bring designers to innovation
And Mahir Can Işik’s talk addresses this as well, saying, “don’t lose hope, the solution actually lives within the problem… The brands that are solely reliant on these prediction reports are becoming dull and predictable.” People want more for their fashion.
So, don’t let these trends sway you, be your own individual self and wear what you like, and if it is a trend put your own spin onto it, being a copy of everyone around you kills originality that we need more than ever.
