Cactus Plant Flea Market has collaborated with McDonald's︎︎︎

to create an adult Happy Meal. Perhaps inspired by the success of the

Balenciaga and Fortnight︎︎︎

collab, Burberry has dropped a Minecraft collection not only for real clothes, but also Minecraft skins and a meticulously beautiful adventure game. 22-year-old women with coke addictions are calling themselves nymphettes. Or God’s silliest warrior. VSCO girls have come and gone. And then

Kidcore ︎︎︎

. And then Barbiecore. And then Bratzcore. Tamagotchis are a  new trending accessory,

apparently︎︎︎

. Heaven by Marc Jacobs’s imitation of the club kid aesthetic is being sported by every microinfluencer you can think of. Playboi Carti is responsible for an entire legion of baby-voice rappers. Indie sleaze has constructed a culture so post-ironic that galaxy leggings and an ugly doll beanie could honestly be construed as a part of a fire fit. These are all thoughts banging in my head every time I find myself wondering why I want to copy a three-year-old’s outfit on the street. Then, I think about how my mom had already immigrated, got married, and been financially independent by the time she was 23, and switch my focus.


But a question remains: why are adults taking aesthetic cues from children? Perhaps something Freudian is going on— but I suspect a larger cultural syndrome.

Regression

The year is 2020. The summer pandemic lockdowns have brought entire migrations of humbled young adults back into their childhood bedrooms. Desperately seeking a sense of comfort and familiarity amidst a time of major social, economic, and political strife, people turned to a drug more powerful than meth or religion: regression. It makes sense that “Kidcore” became a major aesthetic contender for the algorithm’s micro trends du jour. Suddenly, Jojo Siwa and Elton John were deemed alternative. Murakami’s effervescent rainbow flower pillows laid like a globally scattered garden atop twin-sized beds. Muted gray walls appeared vibrant orange in every saturated filtered selfie accompanied by a 100 gecs-referencing caption.

Style was not immune. The same aesthetic impulse somehow manifested in the consumption of items ranging from Beepy Bella jewelry to crochet mushroom beanies to baggy oversized jeans. Clothes became loud, heavy eyeliner and blush applied like face paint, the points of shoes innocently curved. These were dark times, overcompensated for by wearing neon. 

I use the pandemic and Kidcore to illustrate my regression hypotheses, but I do not fully attribute modern culture’s arrested development to the pandemic, nor do I suggest that Kidcore was the only embraced aesthetic at the time. For decades, young people have delayed marrying, having kids, and becoming financially independent for later and later.

Childlike︎︎︎

trends have existed before Kidcore, and many have taken its place since it was put to rest. However, calling yourself “Kidcore” while being locked down in your parents’ home symbolizes this delayed adolescence almost painfully clear.

The nostalgic aesthetic before us today, I would argue, is the 2000s-inspired indie sleaze “vibe shift.” Being a colorful infant is out; reliving your teenage Tumblr aspirations is in. However, I now feel obliged to remind readers about that one TikTok of someone painting over their DIY cow print walls with plain white paint. Eagerly embracing new trends to feel part of the in-group later congeals itself as regretful cringe, and its digital footprint will remain like a scar. Seeing themselves in this, commenters then denounce the creator for being a blind follower. This cycle repeats on and on. Maybe being so plugged in online has fried our short-term memory, turning us into perpetual fashion victims.

The power the algorithm wields over people is steadily expanding, deconstructing generational divides while reifying aesthetic ones. Sure, there are some popular indicators differentiating generational stylistic taste— for example, millennials wear skinny jeans while Gen Z wears mom jeans. Upon closer inspection, however, these aesthetic differences are not so much influenced by age as they are by online cultural engagement. Isaac Hindin-Miller (or should I just say the I Like You! guy) is thirty-eight years old, but the New York realm he recommends (fine, I’ll just say it…

Dimes Square︎︎︎

) is carved out for people twenty years younger than him. Red Scare podcasters Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova are thirty-seven and thirty-one, but they and their listeners practically exist in Brandy Melville (whose sizing caters primarily to pubescent girls). Older generations used to have a more casual relationship with technology than their progeny born into and raised in it; now, it seems, no one can distance themselves from the blitzkrieg of social media and its advertising. Here’s another essay topic: is Baddie Winkle an algorithmic victim or strategist?

Consumerism and the social currency of youth

Still, we know that desire fuels self-expression, and the desire to be young is ironically timeless. Reminiscent adults recognize youth as the last time they were free from their shitty job, rent payments, and doomer worldview. Our culture is consumed by nepo babies, not celebrities’ parents (maybe except for Addison Rae’s). The fascination with whether old talent begets fresh entertainment is understandable, but the nepo baby obsession at times feels more like getting to smooth over their parents’ skin and relive their former glory. Perhaps it is also not surprising, then, how aggressively botox is being marketed to an increasingly young crowd. The youth-obsessed may find the idea of Walt Disney’s frozen chamber ridiculously dystopian, but they consider baby-botox totally fair game.

It’s time to acknowledge the elephant in the room– although they certainly wouldn’t appreciate this comparison– the

coquettes︎︎︎

. For most women, aging not only means the loss of childlike freedom and wonder, but also, unfortunately, sex appeal. Most won’t need verification of this assertion, but any quick examination of a porn site, locker room conversation, or comments under a minor’s bikini pic can radicalize even skeptics. The Flappers knew youth was sexy in the 1920s, which is why dressing boyishly afforded them effortless sex appeal and independence. Today’s coquettes (also known as nymphettes) don pure cotton tank tops, mini tennis skirts, and dainty jewelry to communicate their desire to be desired. They also religiously (mis)read Lolita, listen to Lana del Rey, and rename their boyfriends “daddy.” At its least extreme, the aesthetic is cute, if not strange; taken to its most severe, the aesthetic feels knowingly anguished and perverse. But who am I to judge— I can’t recall any instance when a woman was called a silver fox or when a man was called a hag.

Performing Youth

Of course, performing youthfulness is the antithesis of being youthful. The now-defunct trend forecasting group K-Hole captured the essence of this perfectly (albeit with a bit of pretension) in their infamous “Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom”:

Youth is a mode. It’s an attitude. Think Kevin Spacey’s potsmoking muscle hunk breakdown in American Beauty. That’s a Boomer model of how it’s done. Regression to a state before the suit and the tie sucked all the life out of you and made you into a corporate drone. Everything fell apart for Spacey’s character because he did it all wrong. Being in YOUTH MODE isn’t about perpetually reliving yourself at a younger age, it’s about being youthfully present at any given age. Youth isn’t a process, aging is. In YOUTH MODE, you are infinite.

If to be young is to be creative, adaptable, new, then following nostalgic or regressive trends is the opposite—it participates in a process of dead-end repetition where innovation is made impossible. Explaining how capitalism has eroded people’s ability to conceive alternative systems in Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher observed that:

The old struggle between detournement and recuperation, between subversion and incorporation, seems to have been played out. What we are dealing with now is not the incorporation of materials that previously seemed to possess subversive potentials, but instead, their precorporation: the pre-emptive formatting and shaping of desires, aspirations and hopes by capitalist culture.

Which is to say, the desire to dress and appear young—and therefore free from the repressive lull of being a “corporate drone”—is precisely a manifestation of the system that turns you into one. Although I wouldn’t personally treat a Nylon article like a manifesto, I find it hard to believe anyone would buy their claim that “coquette is not just a trend but it’s become a lifestyle for many; it almost feels like you’re sending love letters to yourself on a daily basis.” Buying into a consumer-driven subculture can never provide salvation from the perils of capitalism. Especially when it’s so neatly marketed, packaged, and sold.

But being an adult doesn’t mean succumbing to the red pill or prancing around it in a children’s shirt. Authentic wonder, innocence, and, above all, creativity, are not only possible, but are being currently achieved in the fashion world. Just look at CDG Girl,

Issey Miyake︎︎︎

,

Chopova Lowena︎︎︎

,

Simone Rocha︎︎︎

, and

Jeremy Scott x Adidas︎︎︎

, to name a few. Conveying these brands’ complex and dynamic playfulness would require that they all get their own essays, but they have some things in common: they capture a childlike essence, experiment with structure and form, and imbue their ethos and meaning into the final product. What’s more, they remind us all that adults are developed enough to supplement childlike naivety with deeper intellect. Ideas can be furthered rather than rehashed or abandoned; development can be celebrated rather than vilified.


After all, who wants another uninspired remake tainting the specialness of a movie you coveted in your youth? Maybe retaining youth as an adult means creating an adult playground, not taking fit pics at the nearest children’s park.