How does a trend become immortal?
With thoughts on what happens when we reach peak-peak
I walked into Bergdorf Goodman last week and noticed dozens of mary janes for sale on the shoe floor. Each version was from a different brand: Prada, Margiela, Alaia, Aquazzura, Jimmy Choo, Gianvito Rossi, Manolo. Louboutin, Bottega, Valentino, JW Anderson, Phillip Lim (5th floor), Pierre Hardy (I love these ones), Miu Miu, The Row and the classics: Le Monde Beryl, Vibi, Carel.
But when I passed the pair Zanotti was suggesting, it triggered the thought that even though we are post-peak mary jane (I’d say the fever pitch landed for fall 2022), they’re not going anywhere.
What makes a trend stick?
It got me thinking about what it takes for a trend to achieve this kind of proliferate staying power — to start to feel like it is becoming immortal. What conditions have to be present, what cultural nuances, consumer behavioral tendencies matter?
Part of it is function for sure. Mary janes are like a more supportive sibling to the classic ballet flat. They’re also a bit more dynamic because of the strap that crosses the front of the foot.
And there’s a versatile ease about them. They work as formal flats, casual flats, flimsy friulanes, big ass chunkers, ballet shoes, heels, even sneakers.
But why did these become canon for the zeitgeist and not some other convenient silhouette?
Maybe it’s about how they rushed in. I’d argue it’s The Row’s Ava that planted the seed, but you can take it further back to the first inklings of Miu Miu’s ballet shoe for Spring 2016:
And then two summers ago (2022) there was the uptick in interest around the Drogheria/Vibi/Cayumas style. These iterations (velvet on top with bike tire soles) provided a component of price attainability.
That was followed by the storm ignited by Alaia mary janes, with new iterations from The Row chiming in around the same time, and the trend-portmanteaus, delivered in mesh and pvc (two additional trends we have yet to cycle through completely).
The mary jane is not a complicated shoe. This makes it easy for any brand, at any price point, to make them and get it right.
They’re also familiar (maybe even nostalgic) because there’s no wheel reinvention required — any woman who had party shoes when she was a 4-year-old girl is acquainted with Mary Jane. This familiarity factor makes it much easier to buy in to a trend.
But the thing that I think is most interesting to explore is actually the variable of fashion content as a new driving force.
Mary janes are certainly not as out there as the mesh glove shoes or the more recent jelly shoes that have ruled/are ruling the last summer and this one, but they show us a lot about how the flywheel of what makes something popular works.
When products earn their own hypemen
I touched on this in Friday’s letter of rec but have been thinking about hype and wondering whether the hoopla that forms around an item is the result of the designer who makes the thing or the editor-into-content creator/influencer funnel that rallies around the designer.
The Row’s jelly shoes, for example, originally appeared on the runway in October 2023 and were met, instantaneously, by massive fanfare. Sort of the same way Phoebe Philo’s original fur Birkenstock-style sandal swept the internet shortly after her show for spring 2013.
While the first craze reflected a divisive polarity (what are those? I can’t look away! Do I like them?) and this one was met with an almost unanimous I must have you, in both instances, the fanfare was provoked by the editors in attendance sharing pictures from the shows, which was then carried out on social media by the creators (many of whom wielding large, dedicated audiences) observing from a distance.
But would the jelly shoes have become so popular if they weren’t hyped up so hard post-show? Would the hype-up feel as intense if we weren’t approaching a new peak of fashion content? And does this element of content-provoked fandom and hype-up play into whether a trend carries the quality that will propel it towards immortality?
You can trace these questions back to the mary janes too, which enjoyed their uptick in popularity after Miu Miu’s second coming of the flat-with-strap in 2022.
Fashion newsletters as the new blog
When I say we’ve reached a new peak of fashion content, I am referring to the most recent and popular way to consume style stories — through the fashion newsletter.
I am a fan of this format for obvious reasons and there is good insight to take from what broader newsletter success indicates: a fashion audience’s desire for a return to traditional blogging: longer form, more fleshed out, with the space to create unique fantasy, ask more questions, see more quality but not necessarily stuff.
It seemed like traditional fashion blogging died completely during the pandemic, even though it had been suffocating for years on account of the rising popularity of short-form, bite-sized, conveniently instant stories thanks to Instagram.
In that transition, we lost a lot of originality to algorithmic sameness. I think what newsletters have given their audiences is a return to that sense of originality.
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What’s important to acknowledge about the blogs is that throughout the 2010’s, they captured a ton of consumer attention from the magazines that used to rule the industry, in part for this reason of originality. They felt like something different and new — less prescriptive, more intimate, real.
But when they (the blogs) either started to become social media accounts or wither away completely, nothing substantive really filled the void until after the pandemic when all of a sudden, there was massive hunger — starvation! — for thorough, unique style stories. The world has re-opened! What should I wear? How should I think about what I wear? What should I buy, what shouldn’t I buy, what’s too much, too little, where’s the axis of enough?
This ushered in the new era of content, longer form than what you’d get on Instagram but less frequently than you’d get with a blog, around the how of getting dressed. And with such clear intentions stated (e.g “A newsletter about how to get dressed,” [that’s from this one,] “the culture of shopping,” “what to buy,” etc), and a sort of return to the originality factor, there has been no mistaking what you’re going to get and newfound excitement has been established.
Are we at risk of the sameness too?
The growth that has surrounded these newsletters, and in many instances the camaraderie that has taken shape among those who run them have created its own splinter of culture. But now I am wondering if this splinter comes with a trapping wherein we start to look at, shop and talk about the same things.
If part of what has been causing the fandom is actually a slow drip and trend away from originality. Is this condition actually how mary janes became canon in the first place? Was the force at play before we could fully articulate it?
I know I have been craving not newness but weirdness and wonder if this is a symptom of a broader trend away from the uniqueness that has made so many of these newsletter projects compelling. But what happens if/when we abandon what seems like we can call it The Collective Taste? Can there be trends without mimesis?
Trends are a helpful marker to recall history, they help us compartmentalize what is happening in the culture, and in some instances predict what could happen. They reflect our desires and behaviors and longings and addictions. They are a sort of glue that keeps fashion sticky — but then again fashion, or at least the genre of personal style that has become so popular in the era of blogs > instagram > newsletter is all about original expression. So where does that leave us?
“I know I have been craving not newness but weirdness…” 👏🏼 🩷🤓This is why your newsletter rises to the top for me.
Brave and good to ask — are we hyping each other up over the same things? I followed you as a blogger a million years ago when you put a philip lim dress over pants on your parents’ porch — and even though I’d never do that — I thought: I needed someone with a new idea so much. It is my thinking and sussing and culling that’s original — not the styling IDEAS so I am grateful for ones going into the weird to get those.