Microtrends and the Curse of the Green Dress

unlearning shame from buying into a microtrend

If you or a loved one were victimized by this dress you may be entitled to financial compensation: 

i want to be here right now (via kendall jenner’s instagram)

It was the summer of 2020, Zoom stock was at an unprecedented height, we were just starting to see toilet paper on shelves again, and Kendall Jenner lit the world on fire when she posted a photo in a green dress by British brand House of Sunny. (Spaghetti strap knit dress for summer? Groundbreaking.)

While we WFH’d and sunk into a pandemic-induced longing for normalcy, celebrities jetted to bluer waters. And as with nearly all articles of celebrity clothing that we obsess over, it’s so much less about the dress and so much more about the lifestyle. 

Jenner was selling a vacation, a body type, a relaxation that wasn’t afforded to most of us during the pandemic. We peered into our little screens and saw a world where no one was sick. And that made us add to cart.

This dress was fast-fashioned to a level I’d never seen before. Dupe after dupe after dupe. If you were even somewhat adjacent to a fashion community online you were seeing this dress ten times a day.

Very quickly, this dress turned from almost a status symbol – “Omg you got your hands on the House of Sunny dress!?” – to an item so ubiquitous it was impossible not to assume every new one you saw was from SHEIN. 

Like any item deemed worthy of status, that status was promptly lost when it was made more readily available for mass consumption. When a piece is replicated to death, the market is saturated, and the demand goes down. 

Now, these dresses, some real and some dupes, litter secondhand online marketplaces at huge discount. You can buy this one for $25.

the diff between TRR and vestiaire is funny (via google)

Trend cycles are moving seemingly faster than ever, and we moved on from this ill-fated microtrend pretty quickly. In our algorithmically-driven online worlds, microtrends are able to multiply and spread like a virus at speeds 1950s marketers would have had wet dreams about.

But microtrends like this one, which for a brief shining moment were a major score and a symbol of being in the know, are often looked back on with shame and regret. Having the microtrend of the moment in your closet can feel more like a liability than a lewk. 

With months or years of hindsight, it’s easier to see that not every one of these pieces really suited our style and maybe we just succumbed to the internet hype. It can feel as if buying into a popular trend shows a sign of weakness, and now we have to bury the evidence by reselling it on Depop. 

It’s a recognition that we did exactly what the big commerce machine wanted us to do. We let capitalism work on us. A green knit skeleton hanging in our closet. 

It feels almost humiliating in our own admittance that maybe we don’t know our own style as well as we thought, too. What we wear is so personal and self-expression is so vulnerable. 

Admitting we no longer like this dress is admitting we were susceptible to the marketing that got us to buy it, it’s admitting our fashion convictions have vulnerable spots, and maybe our personal style backbone isn’t as strong as we thought. 

All you can really do is forgive, forget, and move on to less trendier pastures. It’s impossible to love every item we’ve ever worn every minute of every day, but it is possible to embrace that at some point we did love it, and that version of ourselves still lives within us – and we should show them a bit of compassion. 

There are a few items each year that are destined to suffer from the House of Sunny Green Dress Curse (I have ideas, tell me yours!). It’s just a fact of the trend cycle that certain pieces explode in popularity, get duped to death, and then lose their coolness status. There isn’t much we can do to fight it, but we can learn to forgive ourselves for falling victim to a system designed to get us to buy. 

Besides, not every item in our wardrobe needs coolness status. Personal style is muscle that requires exercise. To strengthen that muscle, we must take risks and try new things. It’s called personal style for a reason, and the individuality of our own interests and tastes is what makes our style interesting.

glimpse into my pinterest, aka the temple of personal style curation

The green dress serves as a lesson. I promise you don’t need whatever It Item is flooding your FYP. One piece will never save your closet (as many times as we tell ourselves that, it’s literally never proven to work). Strengthening our personal style muscle requires our purchase decisions to be made thoughtfully, intentionally, and often with self-restriction. 

The exciting thing about fashion is that we get to start over every single day. Fashion is flexible, it’s ever-evolving, and our own relationship to the clothes we wear changes constantly. And lucky for us, we have a new chance to reflect that when we pick out an outfit each morning.