Julia Burk
If you’ve been on the internet lately, you’ve likely heard the term “microtrend.” But what does that really mean? What separates a microtrend from any other trend? Microtrends are a surprisingly old concept, coined in 2007. They are defined as hyper-specific trends that last for anywhere from a few months to a few days. There are countless examples of these trends, from things like Labubus to the constant “core-ification” of fashion. Microtrends are driven more by marketability than by creativity, with the goal of selling as many items as possible.
It’s easy to see the effects of microtrends by looking at the quickly growing fast fashion industry, led by newer shopping sites like Temu and Shein. To keep up with the rapidly changing trends, these sites release thousands of items every day. However, these items aren’t made to last, and are often produced to be worn only one or two times before being discarded and replaced. With new clothes being produced so quickly, people are buying more than they ever have. According to BusinessWaste, it is estimated that we buy at least 60% more clothes today than we did just 25 years ago. This means that we are throwing away 60% more clothes—clothes that we likely didn’t need to own in the first place. Another huge problem with fast fashion has to do with its production. Fast fashion is cheaply produced in factories by workers who are paid far below a living wage.
Some of the more popular internet microtrends come in the form of collectibles. Many of these are recognizable by their trademark name, such as the Stanley craze from 2023 or the more recent obsession with Labubus. Collectables have always been popular, from trading cards to all the way back to the much older tradition of stamp collecting. But what separates microtrend collectables from other types is how short-lived their value is. Using the Stanley cups as an example, the popularity of these cups lasted less than a year. People don’t seem to care much about them anymore, although they would once wait in lines overnight to get a new color of the cup.
The sudden increase and decrease in popularity of collectables highlights a growing trend of consumerism. It is clear that having fifty colors of a certain keychain is largely unnecessary for any one person, yet it is easy to find plenty of people with even more than that. It is becoming normal for people to own excessive amounts of the same product purely because it’s trending. These products often end up in landfills after the product loses its popularity, meaning that these microtrends only add to our overwhelming issue of trash cluttering our world.
But microtrends are more than just clothes and collectibles; beauty products suffer from the same marketing tactics. In this field, companies focus on creating new problems, then producing products that solve them. These new products are often sold at a premium price and are often very unnecessary. One example can be found in the viral “hair identifier spray.” While it had never been seen as an issue in the past, many people suddenly became obsessed with eliminating all peach fuzz on their faces. This product is a great example of a company creating a problem and a marketable solution at the same time, something that is constantly occurring in the beauty industry.
What really makes a microtrend isn’t the product, it's the product’s marketability. A true microtrend must be easy to advertise and easy to consume. Whether this comes in the form of a new collectible, endless new clothes, or anything else, doesn’t matter. What matters is that whatever product, often wildly popular and cheaply made, sells to no end. That is what really defines a microtrend.
Sources:
header image used under the Unsplash License
https://globalfashionagenda.org/news-article/examining-the-era-of-micro-trends/
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