I used to wear only free t-shirts from career fairs. I am not a fashionable man. But even I notice trends. They iterate on a massive scale; I see the same waves in Bellevue malls and on Shanghai streets.
But fashion is different from technology. When cars or phones iterate, they get better—faster, more efficient, more powerful. Fashion has no vector for “better.” It simply changes. A style from thirty years ago can return and become popular again.
This raises a question: What defines a new trend? It must be a gigantic force to direct the behavior of billions of people. I did some digging to see how it works.
Three players determine the next cycle: forecasting agencies, fashion houses, and subcultures.
Agencies like WGSN and Pantone act as the industry’s intelligence service. They predict colors and textures based on politics, economics, and social moods. Traditionally, trends trickle down from there. Luxury designers debut these ideas on the runway, and the mass market adopts them later.
Outside this main top down flow, there are the street style and subcultures where in major cities the youth can develop their own authentic style and observed by the designers. The designers then later adapt those organic looks for a global audience. Overall, unlike tech, none of the loops here are aiming for “better” or “newer”. They have their own philosophy and criteria for what will be “in” for the next wave. Old styles return not because they improved, but because the new generation finds them novel.
Only a tiny group of people are in the making of a new trend. The vast majority of people are passively consuming what is “predicted” as trendy this season. This contradicts my understanding of prediction; it is dictation. The fashion industry forecasts what will be trendy, they then design and produce the products that matches their forecasts. The average consumers accept the fact those new products are what you need to be a fashion person this year and purchase them. The industry is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now the question is, what makes the consumers “choose” the new trend?
I found three main drivers for this behavior.
First, signaling. Humans are tribal. Wearing a trend is a non-verbal signal that you understand the current social cues. It is a defense against being “othered.” For people who don’t care about fashion, this signal might be the music they listen to or the sports they play. But the mechanism is the same: we need to show we belong.
Second, novelty. Fast fashion combined with social media triggers a dopamine loop. The industry has hacked our brain’s reward system to value “new” over “good.”
Finally, anxiety. The speed of trends weaponizes the fear of missing out. If you don’t update your wardrobe, you risk looking irrelevant.
The industry predicts the trends, and it sells the products. When you are both player and referee, you cheat. They do this in three ways.
First, overclocking. Trends used to last decades. Now, fast fashion runs 52 “micro-seasons” a year. TikTok accelerates this further, creating micro-trends that last only weeks. The goal is to deprecate your wardrobe faster.
Second, breaking changes. The industry introduces new silhouettes that break backward compatibility. The shift from skinny to baggy jeans, for example, rendered existing tops and shoes “wrong.” This forces a dependency update: you must buy cropped shirts and chunky shoes just to resolve the conflict.
Finally, artificial scarcity. By manufacturing focused, urgent demand, they drive impulse purchases. This isn’t just marketing; it is risk management. It guarantees their inventory clears.
I am not arguing that the fashion industry is evil. It is a business, and its goal is profit. Nor do I think we should abolish style; a world where everyone wore free career-fair t-shirts would be dreary.
The industry is a massive economic engine. It employs 430 million people and contributes $1.5 trillion to the global GDP. It provides livelihoods, and for consumers, it provides the genuine joy of novelty.
But this engine runs on overconsumption. The system is optimized to turn resources into waste as quickly as possible. It is a major polluter. Worse, it links self-worth to inventory. It teaches us that to be “enough,” we must constantly acquire more.
I still prefer simple clothes. But I no longer see fashion as a mysterious club I don’t understand. It is simply a system optimized for change.
There is a certain peace in seeing the source code. You realize that being “out of style” doesn’t mean you are wrong; it just means the cycle has moved on without you. You can choose to update every season, or you can stay on a stable release. The algorithm runs either way, but now you know it is optional.