Do we dress the same? I’m certain we both wore opaque scarlet tights this past winter – attracted, perhaps unwittingly, to the magnetic “pop of red” phenomenon that populated our social feeds. Are we – you and I – carrying a similarly supersized brown (rather than black) leather handbag at the moment? Because, tonally speaking, Instagram has veered away from the futuristic all-black Matrix-inspired look that once daubed our timelines in favour of a 1970s umber palette. Lately, while doomscrolling, I wonder if we are consuming identical images of Kate Moss in the early 2000s – pictures that make the case for this summer’s skinny jeans revival. At the time of writing, the search term “are skinny jeans coming back” has spiked to peak popularity, the soon-to-be-ubiquitous wardrobe fixture rising like a phoenix from the cold ashes of indie sleaze to feature in GRWM videos soundtracked by The Strokes’s “Is This It”.
Today, even the most short-lived fashion trends (RIP “mob wife”, “coastal grandma” and “tomato girl”) are exhaustingly virile, their popularity and shelf life determined by algorithms. “It’s like the stock market,” The New Yorker staff writer, and author of Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, Kyle Chayka explains over Zoom. “You want to put your money in the latest hot thing as it goes up, then you want to cash out before it gets too cringy and move on to the next thing.” And, since the algorithms that govern the content we see on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X generate endless recommendations, the next-next thing will crest and then crash before our eyes within a relatively short trend cycle.
“TikTok fashion trends can rise and fall in a matter of months or even weeks,” says Madé Lapuerta, the tech industry insider behind @Databutmakeitfashion, an Instagram account reporting on the stream of something-cores lighting up our intangible social circles, which might soon become bad stock. “The ‘mob wife’ aesthetic started coming up mid-January. Two and a half months later, it’s already been ‘out’ for a month,” she says.
If you find yourself feeling routinely overwhelmed by predominantly similar style recommendations, it’s because the fashion content we see has become more algorithmic over the past decade: “Ten years ago, what we experienced on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook was not driven by recommendations, it was about what we chose to follow,” Chayka explains. (Remember the nascency of #OOTD?)
The interesting thing is that we may now actually enjoy being less individual in the way we dress. “We’ve lived through the emergence of a super granular globalisation. We’ve got used to it, and now we take comfort in the presence of sameness and even desire it,” Chayka says. His thinking is that our collective longing for a certain kind of sameness is tagged to trend fatigue, adding that you can only get so far ahead of the herd before the herd catches up, then overwhelms you, and therefore it’s easier to succumb to the tide. But isn’t social media simply amplifying behaviour that’s underpinned real-life social circles for decades, if not centuries?
New York-based British fashion curator Shonagh Marshall points to Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel about London’s bright young things. The protagonist, Adam, a columnist reporting on the scene’s hedonistic affairs, begins to invent fashion trends for his own amusement. “When he shares that the set are wearing black suede shoes with their tuxedos, fashionable young men run out to buy black suede shoes, but he’s later fired when he tries to start a fad on bottle-green bowler hats, as it’s deemed a step too far,” she says via text. “The scenario is entirely satirical, but it’s an interesting depiction of how trends caught on nearly a century ago.”
The desire to align with our peers is the genesis of fashion, but what if our particular moment in fashion history is increasingly defined by a desire to turn down the notice-me-ness? To avoid the possibly negative digital side effects of standing out through what we wear – to try not to be filmed, without us knowing, on the Tube, waiting in line at Boots or collecting a takeaway. The continued popularity of the “non-shoe”, an uptick in buying and selling everyday basics on Vinted, and Phoebe Philo’s supremely expensive IYKYK staples are indicators of a new style movement that is born out of an anti-trend mindset – what I like to call “discreet-mode dressing” – and there’s one particularly influential woman who’s guiding the mood.
“Kylie [Jenner] came to a point where she wanted to dress more uniform and rewear more of her clothes – that was a goal when we started working with her a little over three years ago,” stylist siblings Alexandra and Mackenzie Grandquist say of the youngest sister in the Kardashian clan, whose fashion stock is currently skyrocketing precisely because it isn’t about newness or the latest trends.
The duo will create detailed moodboards of up to 30 pages, which incorporate simple pieces Jenner already owns (and pull items from past seasons), for everything from beach holidays to the Met Gala. “Wardrobe cycling is huge – that’s how you can show your style instead of just wearing new clothes,” Mackenzie says. “In the beginning, we’d always bring Kylie a rack of new things, and now it’s all about ‘let’s rewear The Row bag that you spent money on and wear it for a month with every outfit’.”
Eagle-eyed followers will already know that Jenner’s been alternating between The Row’s Park Tote Three bag and Coperni’s brown Cabas Petal leather tote these past four months. They’ll be paired with looks that are intentionally casual: a black cashmere sweater and black straight-leg trousers, which, by virtue of their crisp nondescript-ness, could be perceived as a paparazzi deterrent. Ferragamo’s sleek monochrome silhouettes are another repeat-wear favourite, as are Saint Laurent’s classic stilettos and unfalteringly chic dresses. It’s very Angelina Jolie in the 1990s, the Grandquist sisters say. It helps that they manage Kylie’s entire closet and they know each item by heart.
Anti-algorithm style is not just influencing what we shop, but how we are shopping. The website for Phoebe Philo’s eponymous label has a login section, immune to SEO ranking and optimisation, which is accessible by invite only. It’s a strategy reminiscent of the early days of Telfar’s “Bushwick Birkin”, when shoppers had to be a part of a certain community in order to access the brand’s bag drops, and tallies with Philo’s own philosophy on privacy: “The chicest thing,” she famously said back in 2013, “is when you don’t exist on Google. God, I would love to be that person!”
A rebellion against visibility is upon us, even for fashion houses, where runway shows are often strategically conceived as content festivals. It likely didn’t escape your notice that the invitation to The Row’s resort 2025 runway presentation in Paris included a note that attendees were not permitted to use their phone to shoot or film the collection, since the decision ironically raised an online furore. Showgoers could, if they liked, use the notebook and pencil provided to record the experience; images of the collection took days (rather than the usual nanoseconds) to circulate. In 2024, it seems that the coolest thing you can do is not trend. Which reminds me, do you even want to wear skinny jeans?
