Fashion is an ever-growing industry that is heavily dependent on the media. Fashion and Media have had various relationships throughout the decades. First newspapers, then magazines, then television, and now social media.
Recent Tech Crunch research has shown that in 2022 TikTok has an estimated 755 million users making it one of the most influential social media apps to date. Gen Z is the largest demographic on the app making them one of the most influenced and powerful generations. Not only are they a very important generation, but according to News Hub NZ, we are “the first generation that has never known life without social media, mobile technology, and the internet.”
So, what does this mean?
Gen Z runs TikTok, and TikTok runs the fashion industry.
Creators on Tiktok started making comedy and dancing content and it slowly became a beauty pageant platform over time. It became less of a content creating app and more of a “who can dress the best” and “who can be prettiest” competition… (In my humble opinion.)
Trends such as these can become extremely persuasive among teenage girls which we’ve seen before when dangerous trends took over Tumblr in the early 2010s.
Popular content creators such as Charli Damelio and Victoria Paris have made a huge impact on fashion trends that have revolved around social media… without even realizing it.
Many young female TikTok users are inspired to purchase clothes that their favorite creators are wearing and it becomes a trend domino effect from there. Next thing you know, all of Gen Z is wearing the same style of clothes as what’s being advertised on the biggest social media platforms.
This is also the case for bringing back old trends.
Trends over the decades are being brought back time and time again and usually in the same order (weird how history always repeats itself, right?) Mom jeans trends came back around on social media platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest around 2017 and brought back a frenzy of ’80s and ’90s style clothes along with it. In more recent years, the “y2k” (the early 2000s) aesthetic made a huge resurgence from no other than… yep, you guessed it… TikTok!