Are Trends and Social Media Bad for Fashion?
by Frank Messina
A trendy social media page.
Trends and social media capture and shine light on aspects of fashion people are unfamiliar with. Without a doubt, social media and trends influence fashion in many ways from bringing unique creators onto various platforms to voice their opinions and show off their styles, to multi-billion dollar corporations such as SHEIN, H&M, Fashion Nova, and Forever 21 showing off their latest collection of clothes.
While trends on social media can help people find and grow their personal style, many corporations promote unhealthy ways to consume and find style. An example of this is promoting fast fashion, which is cheap mass produced clothing that is focused on trends seen on social media or other places such as television. Social media has also generated a term known as micro-trends, which is a trend cycle that goes by especially fast. Both fast fashion and micro-trends lead to consumers overconsuming trends that expire before their clothes arrive to them in the mail.
Multi-billion dollar corporations have pushed fast fashion for years, creating environmentally unfriendly products that are made in unethical ways, whether it’s cheaping out on materials by using plastic-based textile fabrics that are harmful to both the consumer and the environment, or setting up large factories in countries that have many unregulated labor laws, leading to extremely low wage pay and child labor.
Social media and trends both can push the idea that fast fashion companies provide articles of clothing that will remain popular, or even timeless. In many cases, t his is not true and many articles of clothing in people’s wardrobes are stuck in time from past trends, such as workwear, streetwear, and college themed clothing. The fast cycle that these themes have gone through have left consumers needing more, leaving their expired pieces of clothing in the donation bin or trash, leading to landfills that pollute the environment.
While these downsides of fashion content and trends being on various social media platforms, there also may be an upside. Creators on various social media platforms may generate and provide ethical and environmentally safe ways to consume clothes, such as visiting your local thrift or second hand store, shopping at environmentally friendly and sustainable stores/websites, or even promoting ways to help you create your own pieces of clothing.
Social media and trends may showcase and push fast fashion and micro-trends but it also allows creators to display new and unique ways to consume and find new clothing and styles. As a consumer, it is important to thoroughly research and understand what companies you are buying from and their standards as far as sustainability and environmental friendliness.