On how fashion objects compel, control, and convince us.
My surprise isn’t that ginormous Acne Studios multi-check wool scarves continue to dominate both IRL and my TikTok FYP for yet another winter. My surprise is more how much I personally want one. People have written both about the popularity of this particular viral scarf, the hashtag of which has more than 4.5 billion views on TikTok, and on TikTok fashion writ large. Trend cycles have probably been around since people began wearing clothes (l liked this recent piece by Madison Huizinga on “trend journalism”), but something about the Internet makes trends feel particularly hyperreal, especially in the last five years. I am never not a bit unnerved to see my TikTok and Pinterest FYPs jump out of my phone and onto the street, and about my own boundless desire to have this one piece that may look basic on my phone but that I know I could pull off if only I had the means; the algorithm is working. I’ve never been a huge trend follower, but even that statement makes me wonder if that’s really true. The truer statement is, like a lot of people with personal style, I’ve never really had the funds to fully follow trends, and as a result, developed a more personalized look that hinges on what I can afford and thrift rather than what is new or “in” every season. But certain pieces are irresistible, and with this scarf, I’ve felt an undeniable pull.
The influx of eco/slow fashion has made me pull away from trend cycles, even as certain pieces become so unaffordable that the Zara version is the only one within reach (I wouldn’t ever shop Temu though — there’s a line). Still, we’re all familiar with the way certain garments from H&M, Forever 21, and even Zara deteriorate upon first wash, and sometimes paying full price is worth it. $400 for an extremely popular scarf is baffling to me, though; the ubiquity of it even more so. Not only does the scarf cost a quarter of rent, but everyone has it. I feel a similar, unending confusion when I rabbit hole on TikTok and discover influencer girl after influencer girl with 500-900k followers. All of these girl’s faces meld into one amalgam of a TikTok face, with names like “Blake” or “Riley.” Who are these girls, and more importantly, who are their followers? The boundlessness of social media is always astounding to me, and the waste. I love a novelty product as much as anyone, but who could possibly need the amount of products peddled by these same accounts, or even have room for them? I think of how there are probably garbage bags full of sponcon, used once for a video in which the creator made thousands of dollars. The Acne scarf is at least a seemingly high-quality product; the Swedish brand founded in 1996 has long been at the forefront of innovative but wearable luxury fashion, and, in lieu of classic branding, counts celebrities such as Kylie Jenner, Rosalía, and most recently Charli XCX as its ambassadors. However, the unaffordability and universality of this specific piece is the confusing part, as well as the amount of dupes I see on the daily, people wearing a simulacrum of the original 2019 piece without even knowing it (or perhaps, knowing all too well).
Were trends always this powerful and inescapable? I remember when Adidas Superstars were super popular when I was in high school, and then Adidas Sambas when I was in college, in 2022. I maligned this trend because — not to be that person — I had a pair of baby pink Gazelles in high school and a pair of OG Sambas in college, before they got to be $150 and worn by hordes of sorority girls in the South (sorry to be mean). The immense popularity annoyed me; they genuinely are a great everyday shoe, European and svelte and sporty, equally stylish with a miniskirt or jeans. Now they’re expensive, and not only that, they no longer indicate what I want them to. They’re basic, and if I accidentally wear them with something like Reformation straight-leg jeans, then I’ll look basic, too. This is also why the news that Onitsuka Tiger (a Japanese subsidiary of Asics) wouldn’t have stores or sell in North America was so crushing to me — Onitsukas were my refuge from the Samba takeover. They were definitely picking up momentum in the influencer market with their yellow Mexico 66s and decided to dip out (I still have two pairs and will pay the eBay bidding war tax — they’re perfect, I don’t care).
I wonder whether these aforementioned European (mostly Acne; Adidas has been popular since time immemorial) brands care that their beautiful and bespoke products are being bastardized by rando beauty influencers from the Midwest. I know this makes me sound horrifically coastal elite, but it’s not the Midwest that’s the problem — it’s the fact that the girl on TikTok wearing an Acne scarf is wearing it in a way she imagines a quintessential NYC girl would wear it, but Carrie Bradshaw would never be caught dead following a micro or macro-trend. In fact, I (and everyone else in the world) loved Carrie because she set trends, not followed them. It sounds cliché, but her style was completely unique and fearless and beholden to no one but herself — anyone who wears that many hats doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her. Imagine if all the Sex and the City girls showed up to brunch in the same fuzzy 8-foot mohair scarf — this would never happen, because they had the originality, and the choice, of the ‘90s. Fashion has become narrow to fit the algorithm, products wearing influencers as opposed to the other way around. Now, when I look around and see thousands of facsimiled outfits copy-pasted from social media, I can’t help wishing people still had the guts to look bad, or at least, different.
I may not have a very large budget, but I only buy an investment piece (read: investment for me, a grad student) if I feel like it will really suit my existing style and wardrobe — which is why I have Repetto ballet flats and a Coperni bag. I want the items I wear to bring out an innate unique quality, which is why I long for a Birkin even though they’ve been gentrified by influencers who scooped it up as a status symbol gift from their sugar daddy. I’ve watched too many 1960s French movies to watch Jessica on TikTok with a decontextualized Birkin paired with skinny jeans and a fall bootie. If I had an endless fashion budget that could afford such purchases, I would be scooping up archive runway like this Raf Simons Rothko sweater I’ve been thinking about for ten years (it’s so sold out it’s scary), not statement pieces from my phone’s robotically generated neverending grid (plus, I have grown-out bangs… let me have a Birkin). A Birkin would actually be immensely more useful and meaningful to me now, because it is so classic, timeless, and everyday, whereas if I had a Birkin bank account I probably would care less about the daily wearability of a bag. The Birkin is an extreme example, but it speaks to how fashion lines and pieces have been unpaired from their context in order to become more marketable, and more universal, which is how we got Aliexpress Tabis or Dossier, a perfume website that sells $40 dupes of iconic and pricey scents like Tom Ford’s Lost Cherry or Jo Malone’s Wood Sage & Salt.
Maybe some of my trend hostility is bitterness — it’s true I’ve spent a lot of my fashion budget on having a durable car and an advanced degree and can’t afford many of the trendy pieces I genuinely love (goodbye, Bottega bag). But if I had more resources and time, I would build the closet of my niche and hyper-specific dreams — hello Marc Jacobs dress worn on the set of Gossip Girl. Maybe I have a little bit of that leftover middle school resentment toward the girl who always fits in effortlessly or has access to dad’s plastic. It would be simple to wear a uniform made up of the SSENSE trending page every season rather than budget out, re-wear, and try to style affordable basics like Brandy Melville (sorry) and L.A. Apparel, paired with some designer pieces in a way that feels me. But deep down, I know I would wear that Scandinavian balaclava scarf better than any of the auto-generated looks delivered via my algorithm, which pains me. Sometimes trends actually hit, and their oversaturation means I have to surrender another genuinely cute piece like my beloved OG sambas, which I’ve sacrificed at the altar of being basic.
I guess we’ll see if a comically oversized, multi-checked neckpiece stands the test of time, or if, like skinny jeans, it will get abandoned, relegated to millennial “cringe,” and then rediscovered by niche, specific LA/NY music scenes riffing off 3OH!3. Until then, I’ll be wearing my thrift store, hand-crocheted skinny scarf that reminds me of something Carrie Brownstein would wear in a Portlandia episode. But I probably won’t be posting about it. 🌀
Fiona Deane-Grundman is a writer, film scholar, and library student from Northern California who lives in Montréal, Québec. When she is not experiencing punishment in graduate school you can find her writing in various publications, in her diary, on her Substack, and on Twitter @pacino_girl.