TikTok made me do it! (... or was it capitalism?)

By Isabel Dwyer

Cow print. Low-rise jeans. Phoebe Buffay suede jackets with faux fur lapels. These are some of the fashion trends of 2020 that I found myself discussing with my housemate Lily a couple of months back. At the kitchen table of our endearingly dusty Headford Road home, we laughed about the fact that, in the past, we never would have foreseen ourselves wearing such pieces. In fact, we admittedly hated the sight of them. But then, at some point along the avenue of disgust, came a ‘click’ moment; a moment wherein claw clips and exposed seams and Vivienne Westwood pearls suddenly didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all. The ‘click’ moment is funny because it creeps up on you. It’s as if it happens in your sleep and one day you wake up to realise that you actually want to own and wear x, y, and z, when you never did before. 

Photography by Elizabeth Hunt

What’s even funnier is the fact that, at the kitchen table that day, in between bites from our halloumi sandwiches, Lily and I seemed to have entirely forgotten the several wine-fuelled conversations we’d had before then about the inner-workings of consumer-capitalism. So too had we overlooked the deceptively enjoyable minions of such consumerism that live in our pockets: TikTok and Pinterest. 

The pandemic period has seen Gen Z, in particular, consuming less of the world and more of the internet, which must be a dream-come-true for the hyper-capitalist fashion industry. This extra time at home gave us extra space to contemplate - to reflect on who we are and who we want to be. 

Now I know what you’re thinking: “But we know not to trust social media!”, which is true for us twenty-somethings. To an extent. We spent our teens being told not to believe the façade of Instagram, not to fall for the filtered, well-lit, edited content. This is as well a known fact of internet etiquette as is not giving your bank details to the ‘Hot Singles in Your Area’ that pop up when you’re trying to illegally download Little Women. But no one warned us about TikTok, whose charm lies in the paired-back, organic nature of its videos. No one warned us about Pinterest, whose lack of an ‘external validity’ factor has us feeling safe and protected as we scroll. 

I feel like, when it comes to the spread of fashion trends online, navigating the TikTok/Pinterest dynamic is a bit like wondering if it was the chicken or the egg that came first. Did the style icons of TikTok start wearing mini handbags because they saw them on Pinterest, or did Pinterest creators start promoting mini handbags because they saw them on TikTok? Whatever the origin, the reality is that both social media apps have become catalogues from which we can choose the life we want to lead and the clothes we want to wear while leading it. 

With TikTok and Pinterest, life has been turned into a ‘choose your fighter’ game. The niche aesthetics slash lifestyles that Tumblr nurtured in 2014 are back and bigger than ever, and now it’s even easier to order a ready-made style straight to your doorstep. Cottagecore? Buy a silky floral bandana. Dark academia? Order a pair of platform Mary Janes. With the acceleration of trend-spreading through categorised aesthetics, Gen Z’s concept of that which is cool and uncool has also morphed, being pushed through an online machine whose tastes change daily. These levels of extreme exposure to categories of style have resulted in the condemnation of ‘basic’ clothes and the worshipping of all things ‘alternative’. That is until the alternative style aspects grow so popular that they become the ‘basic’, making way for new ‘alternative’ ideas to take flight - and so the pattern continues to revolve. No wonder ‘click’ moments exist in such a cycle of chasing the cool, the new, the different. 

The irony lies in the fact that we, Gen Z, the generation in which a mass rejection of the capitalist system has occurred, seem to be perpetuating the very ideals of consumer-capitalism in the way we chase and attain trends, despite the highly-conscious consumers we are. Capitalism disguised in a cute sweater vest is, unfortunately, still capitalism. Until greater changes happen across society, and until some sort of genuinely anti-capitalist fashion forum exists (Depop and ASOS marketplace don’t count, by the way), this wheel is going to keep turning.

So, the million-dollar question: is the way we style ourselves authentically to our true beings if we are simply picking and choosing elements of a consumerist-fuelled aesthetic competition online? If we are ultimately picking out personalities to wear from a social media catalogue? If our opinions on things we like and things we don’t are subject to change according to overexposure? 

I think it’s worth wondering whether authenticity can, or ever has been able to, exist under capitalism. Maybe it’s always been this way, but the speed and un-subtlety of social media have laid bare the exhaustingly cyclic ways of consumerism, especially when it comes to style. 

I suppose greater social change will unveil the answers. But until then, I can’t wait to see if nautical collars and pastels become big this summer.