Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 401. The psychology of microtrends About this episode We all want to feel that we fit into a social group. But how does this play out when it comes to trends? From ‘mob wife energy’ to ‘cottagecore’, rapidly-evolving microtrends put more aesthetic-driven content in front of us than ever before, and it can feel hard to keep up. In this episode, we explore the ways that social media, fast fashion and ‘dopamine culture’ can pressure us to buy, how microtrend fatigue is giving way to a new type of self-expression, and how we can healthily navigate our own consumption of microtrends.
We explore:
The 5 stages of a trend, and how microtrends are different How world events influence microtrends Why social contagion, social conformity, and individual expression influence our behaviour Why social media and fast fashion have led to an explosion in microtrends The role of ‘dopamine culture’ on our brains Microtrend fatigue, and how ‘vibes’ might be replacing them When to buy, and when to wait Watch on Netflix: HERE https://netflix.com/thepsychologyofyour20s
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3:08 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
3:29 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. Today, after the love and the enthusiasm that I received for our Psychology of Fashion episode and now Psychology of Personal Style episode, so many of you demanded an episode specifically on microtrends. So many of you were in my DMs being like, that part of the podcast was great. Can you do a full episode on it? And I thought that this week, we would. Microtrends have flooded our feeds recently. I just feel like the internet cannot go more than a few weeks
4:13 Jemma Sbeg? without circulating like the new it fashion trend, the new it top, the new it print. And I also think nearly every single one of us at some stage has participated. I bought a Labubu last year. I have to admit it. I currently have a pair of office siren glasses that you guys are never gonna see that are They are incredibly impractical considering I actually wear glasses and they are so small and they are so tiny and that is a discussion for a whole other time. The question really is, despite the fact that we know it's marketing, despite the fact that we know these trends aren't going to last more than a year, maybe a few months, why do we participate in microtrends?
4:58 Jemma Sbeg? Particularly in our twenties, what is the pull? What is the drive? Especially when things do tend to be cheap and poorly made and, you know, break after a couple of words. Would you believe me if I told you it all came down to human psychology? I think you probably would, especially since this is a psychology podcast, but microtrends especially, the way they influence human emotion and and human behaviour, that is why they are so hard to escape and so hard to kind of walk away from. So today we are going to break it all down from the role of dopamine to social contagion,
5:41 Jemma Sbeg? our nervous system, frontal lobe development, identity politics. They all have some role to play in this as you will soon be aware. So if in the past year, the past couple of years, you found yourself suddenly wanting to buy animal prints or an impractical shoe or an impractical bag or trinket, this episode is hopefully going to give you some answers and it's not going to shame you from buying those things if they bring you joy. It's just going to explain the psychology behind why you want to buy them. So without further ado, let's get into the psychology of microtrends.
6:25 Jemma Sbeg? To begin to really understand the emotions and the psychology behind all of this, let's start by talking about what a trend actually is and what a micro trend actually is within that space. So in general, when we traditionally refer to trends, we are talking about a sustained change in preferences that represents, often represents, I should say, some larger social, political, aesthetic, technological shift or advancement in society. To qualify as a trend, something, whether it's a style, whether it's music,
7:07 Jemma Sbeg? it needs to show direction, i.e. it's different or new from what we had before. It needs to show duration, so it's persisting over a meaningful period of time, whether that's a few weeks, months or years. It needs to show scale as well. So basically, enough people are buying it, consuming it, making it, so that it becomes a recognizable part of our broader social world. We can see that particularly, somebody was saying this to me the other day, with jeans and jean trends and how things have changed over the years. So skinny jeans in the 90s and 2000s, when like extreme thinness was really chic.
7:46 Jemma Sbeg? Flared jeans in the 70s and 80s, when dance and music and grooving and moving was like the big thing. Wide leg jeans in the past decade, which shows like a movement towards comfort and away from restriction. That's like a great example of how trends match what's going on in society. And the thing is, they can last decades. Like the active casual athleisure wear trend we're still seeing right now, that is a trend that is probably going to stay for a long time. Or women wearing pants, at some point that was a trend, now it's just part of the culture. Now it's just a dominant way that we see fashion. So again, a few seasons or a few years or life changing
8:29 Jemma Sbeg? or throughout our entire lives, like all of those things can be trends. Unlike though, major trends which sizably push fashion in a new direction, like the women wearing pants thing, or the, you know, athletic wearers clothes or casual clothes thing. Microtrends are short-lived, they are niche, they are forgotten about very quickly, and they are overwhelmingly driven by social media. Like social media trends, you know, they inflate really fast as everyone wants to get on board and everybody wants to make money, everybody wants to be seen as cool. And then the next thing comes along and they get dropped very quickly.
9:12 Jemma Sbeg? Microtrends like social media trends only last as long as our, as our attention does. And in this day and age where we expect to be constantly entertained, that is not very long. That is why the microtrend has become so big over the past few years. Here is where the academia comes in. Researchers who study fashion psychology have found that the life cycle of any fashion trend that you can think of, whether it is cow print, skinny jeans, ballet flats, cottage core, whatever. Every trend can be divided into five stages. Introduction, rise, peak, decline, and obsolescence.
9:57 Jemma Sbeg? Okay, so let's track this cycle for a second. Beginning with introduction, this is when a trend emerges, maybe from a runway, from a celebrity, from a, a cultural or grassroots style. Bloke core, this was a recent one that was inspired by like nineties British football culture that was then kind of made more publicly accessible. Gorp core, inspired by outdoor hikers and their expensive gear. Normally there is like an influential moment or an influential celebrity or something that people grab onto, that people suddenly become like enam- enamored by. And the trend has always been there, albeit not trendy in the initial kind of group that created it.
10:41 Jemma Sbeg? But suddenly it gets taken out of that small microcosm or that small environment and made global, national, made kind of cultural. At this point, experimental people are testing it. Major retailers aren't yet willing to take a gamble on it. They aren't yet mass producing it because they're just still not sure if it's gonna catch on. Then that becomes a rise period. At some stage, the trend gains visibility, it gains traction. This is when we start seeing paid promotions, stylists, more celebrities, influencers kind of wearing it. There's often, again, some spark moment, you know, often driven by something that's happening online
11:25 Jemma Sbeg? or driven by like a trend conscious individual. And now we're at the point where it slowly trickled down from more experimental individuals into more and to more general consumers because main brand or, you know, widely accessible clothing brands have started to make it cheaper or make it in more variance. The peak is when the momentum is at its highest. Items are widely, widely available across many major retailers. It is being embraced by maybe a majority. Um, the rise of Sambas back in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, this is a great example.
12:06 Jemma Sbeg? This moment of a trend peaking can last a while, but often it will quickly fade and that's when we move into decline. After the peak, there does come a point of oversaturation, you know. It's not cool anymore because everybody's doing it. So celebrities move on, influencers, stylists, the average person kind of starts to to move on, maybe not the average person, but the person who always wants to be ahead of the of the majority starts to move on and the consumer kind of gets tired of it. They're kind of like, I've seen this before. So brands start to phase it out. They discount the remaining stock. The decline stage often, for the case of microtrends, really quickly follows the peak stage.
12:52 Jemma Sbeg? As soon as you see that a trend is extremely widespread and popular, you can kind of guess it's gonna start declining pretty soon because, yes, people wanna be part of the in-group, but they also don't want to be in the in-group that everybody else is in. So if everybody is wearing it, they're kind of like, well, how am I standing out? This is when we get to obsolescence. Nobody wants to wear it anymore. It's not considered current, but.
13:20 Jemma Sbeg? As is often, I think, becoming more common. The trend may actually reappear again in a reinterpreted form, even years, decades down the line. So we still might see the bubble come up again. And also, the people who were originally authentically wearing these items because they weren't a trend to them. They are also going to keep wearing them. You know, they're gonna keep participating because again, it was never about looking cool or fitting in. They just liked the item. You know, your dad still buys his New Balance five thirties, right? Whether the fashion girlies are wearing them or not.
14:00 Jemma Sbeg? So there is still this core, this core loyal group of people who have worn this trend before and will continue to wear it afterwards. Again, think about any trend you can imagine. Almost every single one of them will follow the same five-stage pattern. The thing is, though, most trends nowadays, like in the past, the pattern and the cycle used to take five, 10, 15 years. Social media, fast fashion, has drastically condensed this timeline. Meaning the gap between introduction and oversaturation could literally be a few months.
14:44 Jemma Sbeg? Like with La Bubu's, for example. Something could start trending on Monday, like this coming Monday. A new trend could pop up. By Friday, Amazon, Shein, Zara could be shipping out the first, their first prototypes of that trend. Because that's how fast they operate these days. That means, you know, what's cool can never really be cool for too long. Because part of what makes trends last is the aura of inaccessibility and originality. But because everything is accessible these days. Trends, again, are condensed. Honestly, whilst I was researching this episode, I was looking into companies like Shein and like
15:25 Jemma Sbeg? Amazon and like how Zara's and the stuff that I found like blew my mind. I honestly thought that I was pretty informed about fast fashion, but the scale of these companies and their production and their output is just like off the charts. It's almost unbelievable. Companies like these have perfected the production model and the pipeline to production because everything is done in one factory these days. Everything from research to design to fabric production to garment production to shipping all comes out of one big industrial complex. Meaning, again, something could trend, they could have a product that replicates that trend
16:08 Jemma Sbeg? within forty eight hours and they can make it even cheaper in the next forty eight hours and ship it out because that's their business model. Their business model focuses on quantity and replication rather than quality. According to data collected by this nonprofit called Rest of World, between July and December of twenty twenty one, Shein alone added anywhere between and I I need you to be prepared for this. Are you ready? Two thousand and ten thousand new styles to its app. Every single day, day, every day.
16:51 Jemma Sbeg? Anything that trends, regardless of intellectual property, regardless of material, they can make a dupe and they can advertise the dupe before they even have the resources to make it because that's a way of them gauging interest. They have an entire market research team, an entire data team that tracks what is selling online for others, other companies and then compares that against their own sale data to determine what items are going to be hits, what items are going to be misses, what they should plan for, what they should create. So basically they can create an order inventory virtually on demand.
17:30 Jemma Sbeg? It's easy to see how micro trends fit into this, right? I feel like I don't need to to go into it any further. But I think it's really important to see the system that is like happening below the surface of our everyday consumer choices. So that's like, that's what's going on globally and in terms of the market. What is going on in terms of our minds? When trends are rising, peaking, falling, why do we feel pulled into this cycle? At first glance, it might look really random. Maybe it looks like a big coincidence, but in reality, there is a major undercurrent of human psychology at play. Behind every trend lies the psychological concept of social proof.
18:16 Jemma Sbeg? And this is the idea that essentially, in everything we do, we look to others to guide our behavior, especially when we are not sure. Trends, trends give us a shorthand, mental and emotional code for what is going to give us acceptance. And again, what will give us access to the in-group of the time? Or the people, what will give us access to the people who we desire to be more like or we desire to surround ourselves with? If the cool girls are wearing baggy jeans, your mind says, well, if I wear baggy jeans, I will be a cool girl. I will have the uniform of a cool girl. It makes that mental shortcut.
18:59 Jemma Sbeg? That is why so many trends are driven by celebrities, influencers, people we see online. Because why would we follow these people in the first place? If a small part of us didn't wanna be like them? Or if some small part of us didn't feel some kind of allegiance to these individuals? It is It's extremely compelling. And when you are bombarded with potentially dozens of examples of people following the trend every single day, the pressure to conform becomes a lot stronger, so, so strong, so powerful.
19:41 Jemma Sbeg? Let's break this down a little bit further. There are actually a few distinct psychological processes that are going on at this very point in your mind that determine whether you are going to adopt the next trend you see on your timeline or not. The first is how susceptible you are to something that we call social contagion. So basically, if you are closer to somebody, and not just physically, but if you are closer to somebody in terms of age, in terms of whether you admire them or not, your proximity is going to determine whether you pick up the trend. So basically, social contagion is this like rapid unconscious spread of emotions, spread of
20:24 Jemma Sbeg? behaviours, spread of beliefs that kind of ripples through a group or network. The way trends spread is often described as functioning kind of like an infectious disease, you know, passing between individual to individual. One person adopts a trend, then the three people closest to them adopt the trend, then the people who follow them online adopt the trend. It's literally like, it's like an airborne virus. You are more susceptible, you're more susceptible to social contagion the closer you are to the source. Again, not just physically, but emotionally.
21:06 Jemma Sbeg? Like, the more you feel a sense of of similarity or allegiance to the person who is an initial adopter of a trend, the more you are going to buy into it. Also something to note, you know, the more a trend spreads as well, the more it mutates like a virus. And the more it becomes more popular to broader groups of people. Because companies know that if they wanna make money, they have to adapt a trend to more and more social groups. They have to initiate buy-in from more and more distinct subgenres. So they make it available in new countries, they make it available in new colorways.
21:48 Jemma Sbeg? Until it reaches like the highest status a trend can reach, which is that it becomes a must-have. The ultimate goal of a brand is essentially to be able to access all different subgroups of society through social contagion by providing a version everyone can relate to. I feel like the Adidas Sambas are a great example of how efficiently Adidas was able to do this. If you think about the Sambas or the Gazelles or whatever they were like, by their peak, I swear they were in every color, every type of style. There were bows, there were chains attached to them. There were different fabrics. This is a prime example of how marketers
22:32 Jemma Sbeg? use social contagion to their advantage to make the virus of a microtrend, I guess, more infectious to as many people as possible. Next, during this process, we are of course also feeling the pull of social conformity. This is a process whereby we align our attitudes, our beliefs, our behaviors to fit in to the social majority or the people that we see as the social majority and by doing that, reducing uncertainty. Our fear of missing out, combined with the illusion of scarcity. So things like limited item drops, limited time to to bag a trend before saturation hits means that we are so bought in
23:14 Jemma Sbeg? to seeing trends as a form of social currency. We are so bought into feeling like.
23:22 Jemma Sbeg? If I buy this item, I'm gonna be accepted. And if I don't, there is this real emotional drop of like, I don't know, like, social rejection. Don't feel worried or ashamed if you've done this, we all have. And we all will probably continue to do so because it is hardwired in you to want to conform and to always wanna be close to the thing that is most accepted or most popular in society. There was a 2015 study from researchers at Stanford, um, and also researchers in the Netherlands, actually, it was a collaboration. And it basically showed the primal neurological reactions we have when conforming. It, like, conforming, whether it's through fashion, through music, through behavior,
24:06 Jemma Sbeg? is a incredibly addictive and powerful form of positive reinforcement learning. And it initiates all kinds of, like, positive emotions and happy emotions that make us wanna continue doing so. So that is the first explanation for the, like, proliferation of microtrends. It's all social, it's all about wanting to belong. There is also a biological lens to this as well. Believe it or not, what you buy is often ruled by the tiniest chemicals inside your brain, which we are going to explore together after this short break. Stay with us.
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29:18 Jemma Sbeg? Whilst the desire for social acceptance definitely drives us towards microtrends, right? There is another big driver at play, and that is dopamine culture. Dopamine culture, the rush that we get when we browse, when we click, when we buy, when we have our purchase, you know, turn up at our door. It feels like a sense of approval and it activates something really ancient and primal in us. That is the desire to hunt, to gather, to receive, to basically like feel proud of our capture, feel proud of our resource. Microtrends activate dopamine in so many ways.
30:01 Jemma Sbeg? Through novelty, through this anticipation cycle, because there's always gonna be something better or newer for us to wear through just the act of spending money. Spending money gives us dopamine. A lot of it also comes down to our attention and the use of shopping as entertainment. Our attention, you know, especially in the context of microtrends, is currency. What catches your attention online, in the real world, is what releases dopamine. When something no longer captures our attention,
30:37 Jemma Sbeg? the dopamine levels drop, we go searching for our next hit. Over time, it can and it does create an addictive feedback loop that fuels microtrends because we are looking for something to basically keep us entertained and excited at all times. Our brain wants that so badly, it is hungering for it. Microtrends as well represent something more than just clothes, right? Scrolling your feed for the next thing, buying an outfit, trying it on days later is a form of short-term entertainment and gratification. It is all part of like a scientifically engineered dopamine feedback loop
31:22 Jemma Sbeg? that wants you to, wants you to prioritize being happy fast and wants you to prioritize getting what you want quickly over long-term gratification. This is a much broader societal shift, as I'm sure a lot of you guys are thinking. We can see this pattern everywhere, literally everywhere. Instead of reading a newspaper, you know, we
31:45 Jemma Sbeg? We watch a thirty second hot take online. Instead of consuming two hours of of poetry or stand up comedy, we watch one viral moment. Instead of listening to an album, we enjoy the snippet of one song on TikTok. Everything needs to provide instant gratification as quickly as possible. And micro trends again are no different. Instead of buying clothes less often, instead of developing a unique sense of style, instead of really like hunting for quality pieces, instead of literally making our clothes. Right? Now, this is just another form of quick entertainment for us to consume.
32:26 Jemma Sbeg? What's more, I think brands know this, they definitely know this. One study called An Economic Perspective on Attention or something like that. This study basically suggests that because there is so much online that we can consume, our attention is now a really valuable resource. And so to capture it, um, brands, companies, people, influencers now understand that that requires something really unique. In other words, like, we are less able to focus on one thing at a time or for a sustained amount of time. So you have to resort to something even more outlandish and even more attention grabbing to bring people into the trend.
33:12 Jemma Sbeg? And you really like, brands really wanna push things to go viral so that longevity is no longer the goal. It's why they're always looking for like the hottest new celebrity to face up their campaigns, always looking for like a real kind of gotcha moment or a big brand campaign that's just gonna give them as much attention and eyes on their product as possible. Trends are nothing without that. The other thing that brands do that elevates our desire to buy micro trends is they make the shopping process really stressful to push us towards a purchase.
33:46 Jemma Sbeg? So basically, they make it so that everything feels like it's gonna be urgent. The product is gonna run out, the product's no longer gonna be on sale. So that we buy it fast and we get the sense of relief that like, oh, great, that's off my to do list. These are called dark patterns. A twenty nineteen study from Princeton actually cataloged some of these dark economic patterns in retail shopping. And here are some of them, like the most common ones that you are going to see, especially like in fast fashion brands or really with any brand. So the first one is like urgency pushing. So um if you ever see a countdown timer warning you that like a special offer is gonna end in sixty seconds unless you buy right now, that is a tactic.
34:30 Jemma Sbeg? That is trying to stress you out, so you just try and remove the stress in the easiest way possible, which is to buy. There's also something called confirmed shaming. So they'll offer you a discount and then you have to be like, no, thanks. I'd rather pay full price if you decline. Like if you decline to sign up for like their email chain, which, you know, inevitably makes you feel like, God, I've just lost money. I've lost money. But they want access to you. They they know that if they can get you to sign up for their email chain, like they're gonna make more money off of you. Even if it means giving you a discount. And there's also these uh social proof tactics as well that we're seeing more often, which is like Gemma from Australia just bought this purchase.
35:13 Jemma Sbeg? Uh Tom from America just saved a million dollars on this item using this discount code. Like those people aren't real, but this stresses you out. It gives you this social sense that like everybody else is in on this, everybody else is doing this. And when we're stressed out, our prefrontal cortex is impeded. Our prefrontal cortex is responsible for rational decision making. So when it's not able to send out those clarifying messages, emotion just takes over. And again, that lovely dopamine hit comes in to save the day. The companies, social media has stressed you out, making you think that you're not gonna be accepted.
35:54 Jemma Sbeg? You're gonna lose money, you're gonna lose something if you don't buy it. So if you buy it, you get the relief. Over time, though, we know this, like, it takes more and more for you to receive the same level of pleasure from that dopamine or from that reward of buying something than it did before. That's why it's not just like the one T-shirt that you need. It's the T-shirt and the sweater, and then the T-shirt and the sweater and the jeans. You know, it gets, you need more and more to keep yourself satisfied. And that is why we are constantly wired to want more. Because more is good, right? That's what our brain thinks. More is good.
36:33 Jemma Sbeg? That it's like the basis, the most primary basis of what we call hedonism or our reward system. It is our default. It is our default to want to collect and receive and buy more. Because back in the day when resources were scarce, that is how we survived. We survived by securing more for ourselves and securing more for our tribe. That's very scientific, lots of information being thrown at you there. How do we apply this to us in our twenties specifically? Here is, here is how we apply it. Our twenties particularly are just chaotic. There's a lot going on. We all understand that. There's always like a fire that needs to be put out. And a big thing that's on fire is our sense of self, right?
37:18 Jemma Sbeg? We don't really know who we are yet, even if we think we do. Microtrends, why they are so appealing during this decade is because they provide a psychological sense of security or safety through which we can reaffirm our identity. So essentially what I'm saying is that when you don't know who you are, when your boyfriend's broken up with you, when you don't really know what your dream job is, aligning yourself to what's in and hot and cool gives you a real confidence boost and makes you and provides you with a sense of like, well, at least I belong. At least I'm in the know. I really like the way that Terry Wu says it. He's a neuroscientist. He's an author. He runs the organisation Why The Brain Follows.
38:02 Jemma Sbeg? And he says, "The human brain is not a thinking machine that feels. It is a feeling machine that thinks." Humans have this innate desire, and again, whether you are in your twenties or not. This innate desire to seize a sense of control. And if clothes, shopping, buying gives you that, it is very hard to resist, especially during a period where you are already primed to feel chaotic and unsure. You know, it's only natural that shopping can become a coping mechanism. It can actually become an emotional regulator. We talked about this in our Psychology of Personal Style episode.
38:42 Jemma Sbeg? Remember that primal feeling we were talking about, like the desire to gather, collect, store, that kind of thing? That is what's going on here. We're literally like little chipmunks, we're these little squirrels, these little chipmunks who wanna gain more for ourselves and feel confident that we're gonna have enough to survive the winter, that we're gonna have enough in our tank to feel confident, to feel secure, to feel safe, physically or emotionally. It's literally the same reason why, uh, I don't know if you guys remember this, of course you do, like during COVID, everybody was buying toilet paper. Nobody needed that much toilet paper. This was a proxy for a sense of security and a sense of certainty. At this stage, you may be thinking like, okay Gemma, so what?
39:25 Jemma Sbeg? What is so bad about finding relief and joy through clothes and fashion and style during a really hard time for myself? Or like, what's so wrong with just experimenting? You know, why can't I just look good? Why can't I just follow trends? Because you know what's so wrong with wanting to fit in? Um, honestly, in many ways, nothing. I have to agree with you, like, probably nothing. However, what is important to know is that microtrends offer a false sense of hope. Caring about clothes and feeling emotionally driven towards a trend that is not sustainable, like, those are different things. It's basically like, I think microtrends are like a bad relationship that keep you hooked on potential. They basically give you the sense that like, just one more, one more day,
40:11 Jemma Sbeg? one more purchase and everything will finally be okay. He'll finally love me back. I'll finally feel good about myself. They give you the sense that there is always a newer, better version of you out there. They give you the hope that If I buy into this trend, I will finally feel like myself. There is this destination that I will arrive at, I will arrive at, in which I will finally be happy and in which I finally will belong, and it is behind this next purchase. This has a name, it's called aspirational buying. Essentially, it's aspirational thinking, it's fantasy thinking, like in a relationship, that makes us believe that purchases, clothes, microtrends, whatever,
40:54 Jemma Sbeg? can fill an emotional hole in your life if you just buy enough. This is obviously not true because, again, a few months later, a few days later, the trend changes and the thing that we have staked our identity on suddenly becomes shaky again. And the new thing is in, strawberry girl, tomato woman, mub husband, soft boy. It's not relevant anymore. So you're forced to go back to the drawing board in an age where the drawing board is already very, very messy and a lot of us don't have the money to keep changing our identity every single season. So again, it's not that like caring about clothes is bad, it's just that this
41:40 Jemma Sbeg? this pathway to caring about clothes is gonna probably leave you feeling really anxious. It's also gonna cost you a lot of money, like I just mentioned. One British study from last year estimated that it could cost you two hundred and fifty dollars a month on the low end of things to have a shopping addiction, to be attached to trends. And again, the less stable your identity is, the younger you are, the more you are likely to spend if that is available to you, the more that you want to spend. I'm also of the firm belief, you know, buy it nice, buy it twice. And I just think that truly sitting down and intentionally choosing your style archetypes, labeling your style,
42:22 Jemma Sbeg? yeah, even if that changes over the years, does save you probably a lot of time. It does save you a lot of money, it saves you closet space and it saves you confusion about how you present and
42:36 Jemma Sbeg? Who you are right now. And it seems like a lot more people are agreeing with that. That being intentional about clothes is the way to go. A lot of people are actually saying, I was reading all these articles online, that there is a very obvious decline in microtrends happening right now. Why is that? We're going to talk about that and so much more after this short break.
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47:33 Jemma Sbeg? Okay, again, I've been going on and on about the psychology of microtrends and how they're bad for the environment, how they're bad for your bank account. And it turns out microtrends are currently dying a very slow death. People are becoming more environmentally conscious, waste conscious. People are also kind of learning to we've learned to anticipate the the trend cycle that we've all seen. And we've kind of learned that they're not going to last very long. So more and more of us are riding out the wave of certain trends. I recently read an interesting Vogue article called "Microtrends are Dead, Long Live the Vibe."
48:13 Jemma Sbeg? And it talks about how online fashion discourse is changing in front of our very eyes because being trendy is no longer cool, being individual is. Personal expression, being anti-trend, that is emerging as a counterweight to the algorithm-driven, microtrend, online environment that we've been subjected to. People are tired of having to change who they are every five months to fit in with what other people are doing. People now want something, an aura, a vibe that trends cannot capture because it is so organic and natural. It cannot be repeated, just like our individuality and our identity in itself. I think it's also just because we're smart, right?
48:59 Jemma Sbeg? Especially people in their twenties, but everybody, like, humans are smart. They naturally notice patterns. And I think we've noticed the pattern of a micro trend enough now to become suspicious of it. And to recognize also when they're just clever marketing stunts. For example, I don't know if you guys remember this, um, I feel like this has come up a lot in this episode. The Mob Wife micro trend on TikTok, like, all these people were accusing it of being an industry plant to tie to the re-release of The Sopranos in twenty twenty four. Like, that's how people, like, that's how companies and brands make things relevant. They tie it to a micro trend. In another article about this titled, Are Micro Trends Over?
49:41 Jemma Sbeg? The authors of this article basically pointed to the fact that micro trends, what really gave them an edge was, uh, the pandemic. And was when everybody was at home and everybody lacked real life experiences. So things like were transmitted very quickly online, trends flowed very quickly online. But now people are really leaning more towards being out and about. They are trying to consume less of, less content and less of their identity online. And so they're no longer as relevant. Like, it's just basically like we've recovered from the pandemic. Our, the way that information spreads is different.
50:24 Jemma Sbeg? And micro trends aren't cool anymore. Because people are moving back to dressing for their real lives and dressing in a way that is unique. And dressing in a, in a way that doesn't signal being chronically online. Because being chronically online in itself was a trend and it's now kind of going out of style. In other words, again, it pays to be individual. It pays to have personal style. Having something that no one else can replicate is the trend.
50:56 Jemma Sbeg? So my final thoughts on this actually are not my thoughts. They come from this fashion journalist called Ashanti Austin, who essentially says that the shift away from microtrends and towards vibes, the reason it's happening is because a vibe doesn't require explicit markers. A vibe can encompass everything from culture to music, food, hobbies, history, background, all these things that cannot be copied. And considering that trends emerge in the first place for self-expression and for individualism, why go the microtrend route?
51:40 Jemma Sbeg? What she basically says, and not to paraphrase her words, but what I got from some of her writing is like, essentially, it's cliche. And it's not just cliche, but like, it is a form of rebellion to be like, I can see what you're trying to sell me and I don't really care for it. And I don't really wanna buy into this anymore. Like, I don't wanna spend any more of my money being something that you are telling me is gonna make me happy and then you're gonna take the rug out from under my feet like the next moment. I wanna be somebody who is firm in their values, firm in their personal style, and cannot be sold to. So here's a quick rapid fire of what you can do instead when you feel the pull
52:24 Jemma Sbeg? of a microtrend calling. And remember, like, genuinely, sometimes things become microtrends, but also we just genuinely loved it beforehand. Or something becomes a microtrend and to you it's not a microtrend, right? To you, it is a core part of your style, it's something that you really love. It's not to say that you can't buy into them, this is just how to be more conscious about it. The biggest thing is, if you feel the desire to buy something, set it upon yourself to buy the best version of it, not just the first version of it that you see. I would also say, if you are feeling like an emotional impulse to buy something, pause.
53:05 Jemma Sbeg? Examine where the emotional motivation is coming from and give yourself twenty four, forty eight hours for that emotion, that motivational or motivating emotion towards the purchase to settle. What other dopamine avenues are available to you right now? What other ways can you get a sense of relief or happiness? Secondly, consider whether you are buying something because of the item or because of the lifestyle or emotion it is trying to sell you. Learn to recognize when the brand's budget has gone towards marketing and not to good craftsmanship or vice versa. Some of the longest-wearing things I own are from brands that like
53:49 Jemma Sbeg? do not spend any money on big advertising campaigns or which are from op shops or Depop or Vinted. Because, you know, the objective there isn't to sell in great, great quantities or to sell as much as they can, it's just to sell what they have on hand or what they think is good. There is a reason that the fashion and beauty industry is worth billions and billions of dollars every year. It is because marketers are so smart and they have found every single way to make you part with your money. Basically, if you can understand your identity and social psychology better than they do, you will not be manipulated by them into buying something just to feel like you need to belong.
54:33 Jemma Sbeg? Genuinely, look at the company, look at what you wanna buy and do a bit of an analysis, how long is this actually gonna last? And if it, if I do think it's gonna last, isn't it better to buy it quality? I would also say, keep an ongoing list in your phone of items you wanna buy and how much they are. And then at the end of the month, yeah, you can buy them if you still wanna, if you still want to. They're still in stock, if they're still on trend. But it would also give you, and it also does give you a really rich informational source. For how much you are saving by not buying them. And I think it really, like, a twenty dollar purchase, a fifty dollar purchase, a five dollar purchase here and there, like,
55:16 Jemma Sbeg? you don't think about how much that is, but keeping track of what you wanna buy or what you are buying monetarily is gonna seriously shock you into how many of these techniques are working on you and whether you want them to work on you any longer. Finally, a reminder for when you think this item is the thing that's gonna make me happy. This item is the one. I want you to think of the happiest moment in your life. What were you wearing in that moment? And if you've been married, you can't use that example, because obviously wedding dress, but simple moments. What were you wearing? Can you remember that? Did it matter? Did it really influence the moment that much? I really don't think it does.
56:00 Jemma Sbeg? Obviously, clothes are a valuable and like, super important part of self-expression. They're an art form, but they are not the be all and end all of happiness or social security or joy that you can look for. Like, there are so many other alternatives. And at the end of the day, the thing that is gonna matter the most to you is money spent on memories, money spent on experiences. And like, the memories that will form regardless of what you're wearing and regardless of whether you were trending or wearing the new it thing or not. So that is the end of this very preachy episode.
56:43 Jemma Sbeg? Again, goes without saying, you can do whatever you want. Really, at the end of the day, like, you have autonomy and agency. And if you like something, yeah, and you have the money, you can buy it if you would like. But I think this episode is just about giving you more of a conscious look into how brands and how algorithms.
57:02 Jemma Sbeg? Are like directed to control you using your psychology and how they deeply want you to part with your money. And are in many ways like manipulating your neuroscience and your emotions and your cognition to get you to do so. So yeah, I found it super interesting to research this episode and to look into all these different processes. I also want to thank our researcher Lucy Davidson for her help with this episode and for all the research and writing that she did. She is amazing. If you have made it this far and you are a loyal listener and you are listening on Spotify, I should say, leave a comment down below. What do you think is like the biggest micro trend of the moment?
57:45 Jemma Sbeg? What do you think is the thing that you are looking around being like, that is not going to last? That is going to be kaput in like a few weeks. I will go first. I think, um, I think it's the deer print. I think we're going to see like the death of deer print. And I also think we're going to see the death of like baby pink activewear. I don't know, maybe not. You can disagree with me in the comments, but as always, make sure that you are following along wherever you are listening. If this episode resonated with you, if you enjoyed it, please leave us a five star review. Maybe send it to a friend who you think would also be interested. So you guys can have a chat about it.
58:26 Jemma Sbeg? But until next time, thank you again for joining us. Be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. Rethink the next micro trend you see come across your feed and we will talk very, very soon.
58:43 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
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