I remember when chokers had me in a literal chokehold in 2016. Everyone wore a choker and I wouldn’t rest until I got my hands on one. To be fair, I’m not usually one to blindly follow whatever is in vogue, but there was something about those necklaces and the way they enclosed the hollow of my neck and locked it in a beautiful embrace that made them something to die for. In the same breath and in another era, were coloured skinny jeans. Those tight jeans that came in different spectrums of the rainbow hugging our derrieres were a dream that I swear many gladly sold their souls to own a pair. It was the elite fashion item, and if you didn’t have them in your roster, you were wrong and so was your outfit. The same went for bandage skirts, boyfriend jeans, and those colourful pump heels that reigned for time.
Trends will go from revolutionary to obsolete in a twinkle of an eye, and it’s so interesting how we continuously fall into the trap of missing out on this fickleness every time something new starts to pop off. BBLs became mainstream at a time when society demanded novelty in fashion, but instead of working hard to create new designs that will complement natural bodies, it made more sense to incentivize people to opt for surgically altered, mannequin-like features. That way, clothes are better tailored to fit and exceedingly “RTW”. These designs of course won’t last because there will arise another demand, but at least the body will remain altered-to-fit for life. Skittles for oranges.
Now, GLP-1 is the golden child of this era. A drug meant for type 2 diabetes has somehow become the ultimate accessory, systematically shrinking the very curves society spent the last decade telling us to buy. It is the ultimate proof that we have yet again shifted the goalposts and are now fully in tune with altering our biology to achieve a phantom “more”. Trends convince us to make permanent modifications for temporary aesthetics, and I believe this is the ultimate trap of the cycle. When the dust settles and the next wave inevitably arrives, I am afraid we will be left trying to unpack who we are underneath the leftovers of another phase that the world will undoubtedly soon forget.
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