The 2010s Are Back Already?

The 2010s Are Back Already?

Art
Kate Jane Villanueva
Media Staff

The streets–-meaning an amalgamation of TikTok, Twitter, Youtube, fashion websites and blogs–-are predicting that the peplum dress you wore to your 7th grade promotion ceremony will be back in style sooner than you think. 

The content creators and fashion journalists who populate these social media sites and blogs spend all day observing luxury brands' seasonal collections and analyzing to produce trend forecasts. The crystal ball for trend cycles isn’t solely TikTok as many would think. However, regardless of who would  cheerfully agree with or bemoan it, Miranda Priestly’s Cerulean sweater monologue from 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada still rings true to a devastating degree. Fashion trends have a tendency to trickle down all the way from the most luxurious luxury brands down to your neighborhood Kohls.

Mirroring the explicit nods to the early 2010s in recent runway collections, sites like TikTok have also experienced a coinciding wave of late 2000’s to early 2010s nostalgia that features creators recreating fits from the era.

So when the Attico Spring/Summer 2022 collection featured high-low hemlines on their skirts and dresses while Paco Rabanne’s Fall/Winter 2022 collection included the infamous peplum hemline on shirts and dresses - we pay attention. In the late 2000s and early 2010s a twenty-something closest wasn’t complete without a bandage dress and neither was Pabal Gurungs Fall/Winter 2022 collection.

Mirroring the explicit nods to the early 2010s in recent runway collections, sites like TikTok have also experienced a coinciding wave of late 2000’s to early 2010s nostalgia that features creators recreating fits from the era. All of which has sparked interest and despair at the idea of early 2010s looks infiltrating the trend cycle--the formerly twenty year period it took for fashion trends and silhouettes to re-emerge as fashionable. These days trends are re-emerging ten years ahead of schedule.

Exactly how much influence do social media platforms like TikTok have on the fashion industry, trends, and consumers'  purchasing habits? Given the known trickle-down effect from runway to department store, just how much power does TikTok have when it comes to the trend cycle? Is it the clock app's fault that you might don a high-low dress this spring? Either way, does it even really matter? 

Perhaps as we age the trend cycle loses its salience, and we cultivate our wardrobes around what brings us comfort and best reflects our evolving personal style.

Although we may lament the looming reemergence of the fashion from our tween years and retch with disgust at the idea of wearing anything high-low, any pressure to participate in the trend very well may have dissipated for those of us who already lived through this phase the first time. Perhaps as we age the trend cycle loses its salience, and we cultivate our wardrobes around what brings us comfort and best reflects our evolving personal style.

As we move into adulthood we not only take on more complex responsibilities, but we also become more comfortable in our own skin, in our personal likes and dislikes. As we age we become more at home in our bodies and practices, which produces an air of confidence and self-assurance that, pre-teen, we could only dream of.

In other words, we stop giving a damn - or at least the damns given get smaller, or so I’ve been told. Fashion trends and pieces from our formative years may serve as inspiration, but they often lose their resonance as we grow up and explore what works for our bodies and personal taste.

So, if you must, wear your chevron print blouse or your peplum dress. Let's get 2013 hot (with caution, of course).