AT ITS CORE

Today's trends latch on to our deeper anxieties, and present an aesthetically pleasing vision of alternate realities

- NIDA NAEEM

"Fashion's forever love interest is the ambiguity of the now," announces Professor Maria Mackinney-Valentin in her book, Fashioning Identity: Status Ambivalence in Contemporary Fashion. If the now is to be compared to a fistful of sand, it is constantly at risk of trickling out of hand, and the universe of 'cores' and aesthetics make up the thousand different grains of sand.

A lot has been said and written about the fleeting nature of fashion trends and the increasing pace at which they surface, go mainstream, and die down. However, with TikTok serving as a veritable playground for everything that's in, trends aren't only subject to ephemerality. Upon looking at the sustained interest in cottagecore over the years, a new reality emerges, and it's one that turns trends into cultural movements that go far beyond passing material fads.

HERE TO STAY?