We’re Powerless to Trends and Peplum Tops Prove It

The image of High School Musical alum Ashley Tisdale, clad in skinny scarf, skirt over jeans and boho bag, was once considered to be the height of cringe. 

It’s an image that has been laughed at by every fashion publication and Instagram meme account for the last decade. But now the 2000s Disney kid look is mirrored by 13 to 30 year olds worldover, give or take a few colour palette alterations. 

Now, there is no such thing as a “jort”, you’re just wearing some dope shorts. Thin rimmed, geek-chic glasses grace the faces of Gabriette and Bella Hadid and no one blinks. These trends aren’t just reflected in the fashionable elite or the counterculture. It’s not out there or ahead of the curve. And now that Y2K has saturated For You Pages and suburban streets alike, it’s already on its way out.

So what will replace the spaghetti straps, cargo pants and bejewelled accessories? 

A classic theory – the 20 year cycle – would suggest trends are broadly repeated every two decades. According to it, we should still be ten years away from repeating the trends of the 2010s. But here they are anyway. 

Spring Summer 2024 Fashion Weeks, from Paris to New York, featured parades of models in peplum tops and short-shorts – found in almost every wardrobe from 2011-2014. From the established to the newly beloved, brands like Valentino, Aitor Rosas Sune, Marni, Richard Quinn, Tove, and Huishan Zhang sent items down their runways that epitomised the “uncool” only years ago. Almost as soon as they left and became widely considered out, they’re back. 

Jeffrey Campbell, of the highly-recognisable spiked ankle boot, has maintained an acceptable social status by adapting their designs to modern tastes – and with this relevance we can expect to see the shoe that defined fashion for a short time re-enter the zeitgeist. Galaxy prints and fedoras are no doubt soon to follow. 

We’ve always known, in some ways, that the cycle would bring our nightmares back to life,  but it’s finally being proven in real time for a new generation of fashion. People in their 20s are seeing a cycle complete for the first time, and at a rapidly increased rate. 

Look at runways from 2014 and you’ll see (surprise, surprise) peplums, midi skirts and creepers crop up across the board. But jump further, to 2004, and you’ll see a very different selection of pencil skirts, tailored jackets, silks and satins. While fashion week is always varied, there is little in common between the runway presentation of 2014 and 2004. This is what you’d expect when only 10 – rather than 20 – years of the cycle have passed. 

So what caused the jump ahead, and how did we end up on the pleather heels of 2013 rather than 2003? 

Until the mid 20th century, the four seasons of clothing dictated the mass production of fashion. It was logical and obvious: a reflection of both the weather and the time it took for designers to develop a new collection. But in the name of delicious and lucrative consumption the fashion industry has replaced this with the 52-season fashion cycle. Reporting every quarter is for finance bros and venture capital scumbags, anyway. Fashion, it seems, is changing every year, every month, every week, and every day. The constant changes and barrage of new fashion has pervaded stores for decades now, and we’ve become accustomed to a new season stocked on shelves every seven days. 

And we haven’t even gotten started on elitism in fashion. New trends come around as the elite seek to separate themselves from the norm, and if no one is wearing neon anymore, neon is a surefire way to stand out. 

Depending on who you are, these decisions can make you seem cutting edge or entirely out of touch. Nowadays, clothing and accessories seen on runways can be mass produced by the companies like Shein and Pretty Little Thing in weeks. In a matter of days following the debut of a new Look™ from Julia Fox, anyone could be wearing it. How do you counter something like that? By moving quickly – and the wealthy and the fashionable are happy to play ball and keep themselves one step ahead. 

Social media has also condensed the trend cycle, creating microtrends – like fluffy bucket hats, chequered trousers, and the House of Sunny Hockney dress. These pieces were rampant on TikTok during the pandemic and showed how quickly a trend could be beloved and discarded en masse. We were all over each other, seeing everything, becoming obsessed and then bored just as quickly. 

Online shopping, now far evolved beyond just Amazon and ASOS, has allowed us to have everything we coveted. Suddenly, that made owning it all a lot less fun. 

Of course there have always been differences in what people find to be stylish. In the past, the generation you were born into would play a pretty big role in separating your style from those above and below you in age. But in less than a single generation there are now 25 year olds in skinny jeans unable to let their fitted form go, 22 year olds saying they’d never be caught dead in them and 17 year olds wearing them for the first time and feeling their fantasy. So are skinny jeans on trend? With the 20 year cycle slipping from view, we’re left with a far less defined public opinion on what is or isn’t acceptable. 

The future, though, is not a trend-less world. The industry still dictates what is available and will continue to push trends to get us to part with our cold hard cash. 

There will always be people that didn’t care to start with, but the Andy Sachs of this world are as affected by fashion ideology as everyone else. Trends are dictated by industry professionals long before they ever reach us and travel from runways to ready-to-wear to instagram reels and into the hands of hapless consumers. Ultimately, people will always buy what’s stacked on the shelves. 

Trends still exist, but the waves have become so close together they meet end-to-end.

Therein lies the ugly truth: we’re dawning on a time where those of us who were convinced we’d never wear mullet skirts again, whether we realise we’re conscious of “style” or the trend cycle or not, are faced with the fact that we were wrong.

Objectivity in fashion is a myth – albeit something we cling to as we seek to define ourselves –  and the peplum tops soon to be lining the shelves at Glassons are ready to prove it.

Rachel Barker is a writer / producer at VICE NZ in Aotearoa. You can find her @rachellydiab on IG and Letterboxd and see her film criticism on Youtube.