EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE

We're well on our way into a new fashion decade a chapter in fashion history marked by a superfluity of trends - and no trend at all.

- Daniel Goh

For centuries, fashion operated as a top-down system. The concept of "fashion" as we now know it Big-Banged into being when Marie Antoinette appointed her dressmaker Rose Bertin as "Minister of Fashion" at the court of Louis XVI. Whatever Marie Antoinette wore (she was the original KOL!) trickled down as fashion trends through the aristocrats, then to the tradespeople, and the masses - cake, crumb and pink wig powder. She was known to have whims.

This pyramid model of fashion remained intact over the centuries, varying but slightly up to recent times: What generations of people wore was dictated by just a mere handful of queen bee designers and editors, no questions asked. However, this elitist hierarchy bears zero resemblance to the way fashion functions today. Designers and editors are no longer the only gatekeepers, and the people pushing the sartorial trends forward are just as likely to be a Kardashian or an art school student.

Thanks to the pervasive death grip of social media, trends now filter up, rather than down. Because the base is always as wide as it is heterogeneous, there are no defining trends now, unlike the hippie movement of the 1970s, or the excess of the 1980s, where a set of dominant aesthetics ruled the way we dressed.

SAME, SAME AND NOT AT ALL DIFFERENT

In the age of inclusivity, fashion has become decidedly non-prescriptive. When everyone is suddenly a fashion expert on the podiums of different platforms, every impassioned view suddenly becomes relevant, and everything becomes a micro trend. When everything is in, then nothing is out: You wear whatever makes you feel best, even if it's dad jeans and Crocs.