Trendcore Burnout? ?? How should brands navigate internet aesthetics?

Keeping up with every new trend and aesthetic is starting to feel like a chore.?

In 2023, clean girl,?girl math,?and Barbiecore dominated our social feeds. This year, these trends have quickly been replaced by?mob wife winter and corpcore.

That’s the thing about micro-trends: they’re fleeting. And while following the latest trends can be exciting at first, subscribing to so many different hype cycles can cause burnout.?

There was a collective eye-roll when the ‘2016 aesthetic’ emerged, throwing the 20-year trend cycle rule out of the window and making millennials everywhere shudder.?

In response to these fast-paced trend cycles, people are seeing the value in slowing down. So how can brands help people to savour experiences before moving on to the next thing?

Micro-trends are usually tracked over multiple years and seasons on a small scale. But, people are confusing what a micro-trend is with ‘internet aesthetics.’ These weekly cycles come and go and are unpredictable in nature, posing a challenge for brands to keep up with the next big thing.

According to Ipsos Global Trends 2023, 73% of people wish they could slow down the pace of their lives.

This presents an opportunity for brands to help consumers decelerate during a period of rapid consumption.

In our fast-paced world, many people feel overwhelmed by the pace they're urged to consume, making digital detoxes surge in popularity. Our inability to tune out has spawned spin-off industries like meditation and mindfulness apps or white-noise playlists. Brands in these spaces are listening to the challenges of over-optimised lifestyles and turning our need to switch off into commercial opportunities.

In the beauty industry, some brands (like Hermes), have opted to produce fewer, more innovative products, while others (Dieux) have set themselves the mission of selling fewer products, offering consumers the respite they crave and giving products longevity.

But this doesn’t mean brands should stray away from trends. Having a point of view on culture will always be a positive. Attaching yourself to a pre-existing aesthetic, maybe not so much. The trick is to find where your values align. If they don’t, being an antidote to ease the fatigue with experiences that are grounded in the here and now is a meaningful way to influence people.

Phones down, hands up

Music Label ‘This Never Happened’ tapped into the switching-off mindset with a series of photo and phone-free events in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane in July 2023 and more to follow in Summer 2024 with the prompt: “Experience the moment. Don’t record it.”

Slow fashion

Phoebe Philo is ditching seasonal collections, instead opting for limited drops of durable pieces. No fashion shows or seasonal schedules. This approach discourages frequent wardrobe updates with limited and unpredictable drops meant to be acquired over time.

Drinking the old fashioned way

‘The Offline Edition’ is a limited-release box by whisky brand Glengoyne that blocks phone signals for up to four smartphones. The aim is to eliminate distractions during social interactions and promote more meaningful moments between friends and family.

“Keeping up to date with trends is important but not as much as owning your personal style. Brands can adopt and adapt to design trends but to be truly memorable, it’s about having distinctive assets that are unmistakably you. Trends should inspire brands, not dictate them.”

From the studio