Social media is blocking you from reaching your personal style

By Anita Loughlin Staff Writer The many trends we are exposed to on almost every social media platform are beginning to drown out the true meaning of personal style. What would you wear if you didn’t have the constant access to consuming a whole trend cycle that rises and falls daily through your phone? TikTok, specifically, has transformed into a platform that has spun out of control, categorizing niche aesthetics into rules and shopping lists. Endless videos box aesthetics into moodboards with the exact clothing required to achieve them. Although the platform can be a valuable source of inspiration, the line between inspiration and replication has become drastically blurred. As Shenea Walker argues in her Substack article, “You Don’t Have Personal Style, You Have WiFi,” many people are no longer developing style - they are copying it. Over the past decade, trend cycles have accelerated faster than we even have time to meaningfully participate in them. Fast fashion has made aesthetics widely accessible, and the ones that are pushed out the most aggressively are the same ones that are the quickest to fade away. “We’re not even given time to decide if we actually like something before we’re sick of it, and by the time we want to play into it, it feels almost too late,” said Walker. This speed adds an immense pressure to owning an item before it becomes outdated and too embarrassing to wear. Social media hands us every styling tip, every OOTD (Outfit Of The Day), and every link to copy and purchase the exact same outfit everyone is wearing. The steady process of developing style is becoming replaced by the ease of just copying it instead. You don’t have to spend time searching for your favorite designers to take inspiration from anymore when you can just search for a video breakdown telling you how to style something, and social media makes this more mindless than ever. The result is a loss of originality when everyone is dressing as carbon copies of each other, taken from the same references. According to a Vogue article, “Did Micro-trends Kill the Trend Cycle?” written by Madeline Schulz, even the fashion industry hesitates including hyper-specific trends on to the runway. “Less ‘cores’ are making their way from TikTok feeds to fashion publications, and the fashion crowd is wondering whether the coolest thing to do is not to trend at all, a question posed by Vogue’s Julia Hobbs for the British Vogue’s June issue,” said Schulz. Fashioning an identity is slow. It simply cannot and should not be rushed, just like how getting to know a person should not be rushed. Developing a personal identity through clothing requires an inner truth that doesn't change as well as years of consistency and repetition. This is what puts you at the ultimate level of ‘Coolness.’ When you know who you are, the clothes you wear and the aesthetics you choose should tailor to your accommodation. Your “aesthetic” should not be a shield for who you are at your center, and you do not need to own something just because it’s popular. There are ways to engage with trends and aesthetics subtly without rebuilding your whole wardrobe on something that may only exist temporarily. Instead of looking for what's trending, look for yourself first. Trends will continue to rise and fall, but when personal style is genuine, it’s never temporary.