How Social Media Changed Fashion: From Tumblr to TikTok

The fashion world has always been in a flux, but a couple decades ago, it wasn’t this fast-paced; nor was it this accessible. Before social media and fashion were intertwined, before the days of Instagram fashion influencers, TikTok “core” videos or Pinterest boards; fashion inspo would come from designer runway looks, celebrities and magazines.

Imagine it’s 1981, you watch the royal wedding of Princess Diana and you see this beautiful ivory dress with puff sleeves, a staggeringly long train, and an even longer veil. No details of the dress were released and you want to know all the specifics. You needed to get up bright and early the next morning to get the tabloids before they flew off the shelves.

Nowadays whenever a fashion moment or trend happens, we have minute access to all the specifics. Whether it’s Zendaya’s winged The Odyssey premiere look or Zara Larsson inspired sequin skirts that go viral on TikTok, you can access the details of the look.

Before the Feed: Who Decided What Was Fashionable?

Before social media took over the trend cycle, fashion was more of a top-down affair. It would trickle down from the runways to the general public. Fashion designer Alexander McQueen introduced the “bumster” trousers which sat scandalously low on the hips. Celebrities like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton popularized the look which was then shown to the public via magazines. That’s one of the factors that popularized the Y2K low-rise jean look we all love.

If you were a teen in the 2000s, who at least glanced at an issue of Teen Vogue, there was a very high chance you would beg your parents to drive you to your local mall just to get a pair of low-rise jeans so you could be one of the cool kids.

Tumblr Made Fashion Feel Personal

You’ve probably heard the term “You are what you eat”, and on Tumblr, you were what you wore. 

When Personal Style Became an Aesthetic

Everything slowly changed with the widespread use of the internet. Behind the anonymity of a blog, you could be anyone you wanted to. Or more accurately, you could portray yourself however you wanted. 

Tumblr blogs were a collage of everything you liked. Anything and everything that could be considered a part of you, you could weave carefully into an aesthetic tapestry. From fishnets and ripped jeans to lyrics of your favourite Arctic Monkeys song, to room decor like dreamcatchers, it was all in one place. This way of “moodboarding” helped crystallize different aesthetic trends.

This time inspiration wasn’t handed down from runways, it was founded on posts by anonymous users and small communities. Thanks to the reblogging feature, these communities could increase the visibility of certain looks, which helped shape a more united vision for the group. Your fashion taste was a signal for belonging, it was a way to define yourself. 

The Rise of the Tumblr Girl

Even though there were multiple aesthetics floating around Tumblr, if you were active on the internet circa 2014, there was a certain “Tumblr Girl” look and persona I’m sure you’re familiar with. It’s a mix of grunge, indie and pastel goth that gave us the iconic Tumblr aesthetic. The Tumblr girl came across many-a dashboard surrounded by a haze of melancholy and nostalgia. She wore dark colors and fishnets and her quintessential accessory was wired headphones. 

The look and its influence weren’t limited to social media, due to its popularity, mainstream fashion brands took notice. You could find clothes that fit the aesthetic at most big retailers. So began the reverse trickle effect from the general public to fashion brands.

If you want to dive deeper into Tumblr and its effect on fashion, keep an eye out for our upcoming blog.

Pinterest Turned Fashion Inspiration Into a Plan

Tumblr gave you a vision for who you wanted to be and Pinterest helped you plan out how to dress to become that version of yourself.

The Mood Board Goes Mainstream

Moodboarding isn’t anything new, even the term comes from actual corkboards. It’s a way to create a direction or “aesthetic vibe” for a creative project. I think for many of us, that project was to plan the perfect wedding without even knowing who your spouse would be. From the colors of the flowers to the perfect dress, everything was planned. 

With the popularity of Pinterest in the 2010s, you didn’t need to get your hands on Elle or Harper’s Bazaar to cut out looks from.  Anyone with internet access could moodboard without any additional barrier to entry. You could design your vision for any aspect of your life on Pinterest with just a few clicks.

From Inspiration to Real-Life Outfits

On Tumblr, aesthetics were a broader identity, but on Pinterest you could focus on individual pieces. If you wanted to see what indie sleaze looked like, you could find hundreds of Pinterest boards with specific items of clothing, all curated by users.

And of course, fashion mood boards were created for any occasion. First day of school, fall wardrobe, summer vacation, euro trips… All had their own place. You could get inspiration from other users and actually plan looks for yourself.

Boards became a resource to utilize before you hit the shops. You’d create an entire wardrobe to shop for, whether it matched your current look or not didn’t matter. If you wondered what a certain style looked like on an item-to-item basis, Pinterest was the first place to explore that.

Instagram Puts a Face Behind the Outfit

When Instagram took the stage, focus shifted from the garments to the person who was wearing it

The Rise of OOTD

It’s a random Tuesday, you are getting ready for school or work or whatever you have planned that day. You throw a few pieces together and when you go to check yourself out in the mirror, you look good. OOTD is for those days.

Outfit of the day, or OOTD for short, is a form of content that became viral on Instagram around the start of 2010s. Originally starting out as a way to show off the outfit you put together that day, it’s now more generalized. Regardless of whether you actually wore the look that day, or you were just inspired to pair those pieces, you can post your pics or videos under the OOTD tag. 

With the popularization of OOTD fashion, documenting and sharing your looks became a casual thing.

From Fashion Blogger to Fashion Influencer

If you asked me what the difference between a fashion blogger and a fashion influencer was, I’d tell you that it’s the relationship with the audience. Of course bloggers were also in touch with their audiences but with Instagram fashion influencers, everything was much more personal. 

An influencer who was into the same things as you was way more relatable than a celebrity. This relatability translated so well in terms of sales, that brands started to work with Instagram creators alongside magazines and celebrities. 

It wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that Instagram feeds became the new runways. 

When Personal Style Became Personal Branding

With the rise of influencers, people behind the trends and aesthetics became as important as the styles themselves. Influencers occupied the middle space between celebrities and the public. They often became popular for one thing, but the nature of posting content on Instagram demands frequency, which leads to branching out from that one particular thing.

An influencer might start out posting different aspects of their lives and personalities, and if they manage to garner a following for being themselves, at one point their personality becomes their brand.

This branding led to influencers collaborating with brands to produce their own clothing lines or creating their own capsule collections. But of course, the branding isn’t limited to one aspect either. Much like the content encapsulating the whole personality, branding does too.

You can pop in at Hollister and get the items for the Social Tourist collection by D’Amelio sisters. Through the denim, you get to have a part of their lifestyle too.

We’ll talk more about Instagram Influencers and how they reshaped the fashion industry as a whole in our upcoming blog.

TikTok Pushes Fashion to Fast Forward

TikTok is the final nail in the coffin of seasonal trends, we are changing them week by week now.

The Algorithm Becomes the Trend Forecaster

If Instagram is for influencers, TikTok is for everyone. There are two reasons for this. First is the layout of the app. The first page you see when you log on is the “For you page”, and it’s not just limited to the people you follow or sponsored content.

The second and biggest reason is the algorithm. The TikTok algorithm pushes videos to wider audiences not based on the follower count of the poster’s account but based on various metrics like watch time, save counts and shares. This lets smaller creators go viral and create trends.

Have you ever followed a friend on TikTok and started getting recommended videos about their interests? That is because the TikTok algorithm isn't just showing you videos for things you already like. It uses a complicated system to find content you might also like. Your past behavior on the app and your friends’ likes are just a part of this system.

The algorithm finds niche aesthetics and foreign trends, pushes them to go viral. This way, there is no need for a mediator like magazine editors or influencers; content is content and trends are ever-multiplying. So the trend cycle picks up the pace.

Welcome to the Microtrend Era

Tomato girl, mob wife, clean girl, office siren, and countless more. We touched on the TikTok algorithm and how it makes it possible to create trends for everyone. Well it turns out that when everyone creates trends and everyone participates in them, they get old. Fast. Let’s compare good old-fashioned macrotrends with microtrends.

When Yesterday’s Trend Becomes Today’s “Core”

“This is so me-core dude”, “That pink is sooo Barbiecore.” What is everyone talking about? The -core suffix is basically a neat way to repackage trends in shiny wrapping paper, ready for easy digestion. It has become a shorthand for referring to a certain lifestyle and aesthetic. While trends might have deeper meanings or implications that can take some time to fully comprehend, -cores are usually very self-explanatory. 

If you see a video with the hashtag #Balletcore accompanied by a person in a pink tutu, it doesn’t really take much to figure out what the -core entails. Still not every -core is a microtrend though. Sometimes a trend just gets named or renamed as -core for visibility or speed.

We only scratched the surface of the upheaval that TikTok made in the fashion sphere. Learn more about it on our upcoming blog.

From Seasonal Trends to Internet-Speed Microtrends

If you are still rocking tomato-print dresses, hot-pink Barbiecore plastic platforms or faux-fur Mob Wife coats, all the power to you! But for many, they are either relics of a not-so-distant past or considered passé, if not totally forgotten. 

We already talked a bit about how swift the new trends pop up and fade out. If we examine the cyclical nature of trends, we might spot a few differences between now and then. 

For example, Uggs became popular for the first time around the early 2000s, partially due to endorsements from celebrities like Oprah and Paris Hilton. They trickled down to mainstream and were the dominant popular winter boots all up to the 2010s. Of course not all items were as prevalent back then either, but most had at least one fashion season in Spring/Summer or Fall/Winter.

When it comes to microtrends, there is a much shorter cycle span. A trend appears, goes viral, peaks in popularity and everyone buys into it. Then the market gets oversaturated, the item or look becomes too easily accessible and loses appeal. The microtrends replace each other very quickly. There might even be multiple microtrends having their moment simultaneously.

This shorter span and strong desire to follow trends that come with social media may lead to devastating ecological consequences. The trends come and pass, but the clothes bought for them stay with you. 

According to Ellen MacArthur Foundation, every second one truckload of clothing is going to the landfill or being burnt. We all want to be fashionable. Being mindful about our style choices works to create better outfits and reduce our carbon footprint. 

When Style Became an “Aesthetic”

With the rise of aesthetics, you don’t just search for a singular item like skinny jeans or platform shoes, you search for a whole visual identity. We already discussed how the idea of aesthetics came to be. Tumblr created the identities, Pinterest organized the mood, Instagram made them visible through influencers and TikTok repackaged them to speed up the process. 

How people thought about fashion started to change along the way. The BuzzFeed quizzes you took changed from “Which Kind of Jeans Are You?” to “Which Aesthetic Suits Your Personality Best?”. The latter type of questioning definitely makes it easier to find a personal style.

That is not to say that one item of clothing belongs solely to one aesthetic identity. No Lana Del Rey fans will chase you down the street for wearing red heart-shaped sunglasses in a Coquette way and not in a Vintage Americana way. But still, if you are looking for low-rise jeans, using Y2K as a shorthand probably makes it easier to navigate online shops and use search bars.

From Scroll to Cart: How Social Media Changed Fashion Shopping

We’ve talked about fashion inspiration and trendsetters up to this point. But how did things change on the consumer end? 

Before the internet age, buying clothes without ever seeing them or trying them on was not this smooth. Sure, you could see a sweater on the TV that you really wanted to have, but the steps to actually get it were more than just a few taps. You had to go to the physical store. Or alternatively, pick clothes from a catalogue, complete the transaction over either snail mail or telephone then wait weeks for them to arrive. 

Today you can go on TikTok or Instagram, like an item on an influencer and chances are, you can just swipe on to the shop section in the app, pick your size and confirm the order before moving on to the next video that algorithm gods picked out for you. You can get your items much faster and have the whole transaction done before the week’s up.

Even if the product you liked isn’t tagged with an affiliate link, you can just save it and find it very easily thanks to the aesthetic naming we discussed. A “corset top with floral detailing and lace-up back”  is harder to search for than simply typing “Cottagecore corset”. 

That’s why aesthetic-based collections took their place next to the item-based categories in online fashion. For example, at Litlookz Studio, you can explore by Y2K, Coquette or Grunge instead of piecing the look together under different categories. It makes it simpler to find other clothes you like. 

This frictionless shopping paired with changing trends also creates a “See now, buy now” mentality, because the item might be sold out by the time you circle back to it. It feels easier to just click buy and keep going.

All these facts combined can cause more people to impulsively buy into microtrends. Next time we are lying in bed and shopping before we go to sleep, maybe we should put the phone down and leave it until the morning.

More Style or More Sameness? 

When you take a stroll on the streets today, especially in big cities, people are wearing all sorts of clothes. The fashion sphere seems to have more inspiration than ever! But why is everyone wearing Adidas Sambas?

Social media and the whole fashion culture around it is a double-edged sword in this sense. 

On one hand, different small communities that would be considered to dress in a fringe way can have a platform and reach further than ever. Any sort of self-expression and sense of belonging through fashion or otherwise is net-positive. If you have the internet, you have a community, however remote you currently are.

On top of being great for getting inspiration, the internet also creates a safe space for people to experiment with their fashion sense. Maybe you don’t feel safe debuting your new style out on the streets, or maybe you just don’t feel confident enough. Social media platforms can help you overcome these anxieties or get pointers from like-minded people.

On the other hand, aesthetic labels on social media can cause a pigeonholing problem. If you find your style, you may feel the need to strictly adhere to it. At one point all the “inspo” photos become formulaic guidelines to follow. An item goes viral in your aesthetic, everyone gets it and wears it at the same time. 

It can strip away all the self-expression that makes fashion fun and exciting in the first place. You might find yourself getting dressed not for your own enjoyment but for the critical eye of the aesthetic-driven audience that took root in your brain. 

So I’d definitely say social media can create a space for uniqueness in fashion even though there is some uniformity within the aesthetics. Perhaps the key to balance this is to let inspiration simply stay as inspiration. 

So, Who Decides What’s Fashionable Now?

Fashion is much like art, in the sense that it’s extremely subjective and relative. What’s fashionable? The answer depends on who you are asking the question. Even still, there seems to be a general consensus on what is in or out in fashion. 

The usual suspects for dominating the trends of the fashion world are not completely out of the picture. A celebrity endorsement or a mention in Vogue still holds sway over the cultural zeitgeist. But as we’ve discussed, the social media algorithms, influencers and online communities are also players in this game now. The old and the new both have influence over what’s popular.

A good example of this is the viral Tabi Shoes. They have existed for decades, and were popular in art school and fashion insider spheres. But what catapulted them into mainstream visibility were celebrities like Dua Lipa, Anya Taylor-Joy and Kylie Jenner wearing them. They were still considered divisive shoes. But users on social media liked them good enough as a statement piece. Even British Vogue reluctantly labeled them  “unexpectedly mainstream”.

Society can have opinions on what is in or out. But in the end, dear reader, the only one who can decide whether something is stylish or not, is you. And with social media, these are not just pretty platitudes, your opinions have an impact.

What Comes After TikTok Fashion?

We covered the rise of social media and the reciprocal relationship between social media and fashion over a two decade period. When we look at the future with all this in mind, there seems to be a few lingering questions.

Are we circling back to a slower fashion cycle or will we stick to microtrends that have been the craze in the last 5 years? 

People already seem to be tired of keeping up with the latest aesthetics. We’ve had Hot Girl Summer, Barbie Summer and Brat Summer but as we’re nearing the end of 2026 Summer, there doesn’t seem to be a popular trend to brand the summer with. 

Is it because we are starting to lean towards an individualistic personal style that’s relatively free from trends? Is the new trend timelessness? 

Then there’s the whole discourse about AI. Is AI going to rewrite the rulebook of fashion as social media once did? Are we any closer to Cher’s Closet from Clueless? 

What do you think awaits fashion in the future? Let’s compare notes in the comments down below!

As always, keep dazzling fashionistas!

Written by

Şevval Hatice Songün

Şevval is a psychology master's student and blog writer at Litlookz Studio. A lover of music, fashion, books, and all things creative.

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