Hello, Open Thread. Happy 2026! I hope everyone had a good and revivifying break. We’ll all need it given the manic start to the year, with the seizure and arrest of Nicolás Maduro; the inauguration of the new New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani; and the probable impending bankruptcy of Saks Global, the department store group that includes Saks, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. The department store news is not nearly as important as the other political events, of course, but in fashion land it’s a big deal, and it’s pretty much the talk of the industry. For decades, the major department stores were the gateways to America for most fashion brands. They were the way brands reached new customers and new customers discovered them. Now there are fewer and fewer of them — Barneys is gone, as is Lord & Taylor, Bonwit Teller and Henri Bendel — and the ones we have are in trouble. Last week the chief executive of Saks Global resigned, the latest domino to fall. Still, no one thinks Saks is going away, nor (probably) is Neiman Marcus. But given the expectations that it is going to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it’s a safe bet that whatever comes out on the other side is going to look different than it does now. We’ll have more on that if and when it does happen. In other sign-o’-the-times news, Francesco Risso, the former genius designer of Marni who parted ways with that label in June, has a new job as the creative director of Gu, the sister brand to Uniqlo in the Fast Retailing stable. Gu is big in Asia and has global ambitions, so this makes sense. Even more pointedly, though, Mr. Risso joins Clare Waight Keller, who went from Givenchy to Uniqlo, and Zac Posen, who went from his own brand and Brooks Brothers to Gap Inc. and Old Navy, in trading the runway for accessibility and reach. I can’t help but wonder if the dissatisfaction with luxury fashion — the sense that it has lost all touch with reality and is fiddling while Rome burns — is affecting designers, too. NUMBER OF THE WEEK
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Finally, a few things I am looking forward to this year:
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While we wait and watch, take a gander through the most striking looks at the Critic’s Choice Awards, meet the go-to suit guy for fashion and finance, and check in on the latest magazine world shake-up. Sunday is the Golden Globes, when red carpet season seriously kicks off. We’ll be live-blogging, so check in here for all the looks. And the lip.
Have a good, safe weekend. Stay warm.
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INSIDE SCOOPS |
Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or X. Questions are edited and condensed.
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| Sharon Stone in “Casino,” perfectly embodying the “mob wife” aesthetic. Everett Collection |
First, let’s distinguish between an actual trend and a micro-trend, at least when it applies to dress. A real trend — a deep one — changes your eye. A micro-trend, on the other hand, comes not from the runway, designers or magazines, but rather from TikTok and has less to do with real style than algorithms.
Essentially, micro-trends have created the digital version of what used to be called fads or crazes, formalized by our penchant for naming and thus hash-tagging things. Everything has “core” or “girl” stuck on the end of it.
According to my colleague Madison Malone Kircher, who covers such phenomena, micro-trends occur in large part because once someone has spent any time looking at one kind of post, most platforms serve up more examples of similar posts. “Which, in turn, motivates the creators on the other end to make more similar videos,” Madison said. “It’s a digital ouroboros.”
Which means we are being served a constant sense that whatever you are looking at is a bona fide trend.
Madison pointed out that micro-trends generally last only six to eight weeks, which is why there are so many that they could drive anyone nuts. In fact, last year the Styles reporter Callie Holtermann discovered that, while the micro-trend trend is often blamed on the youth, the youth hate it, too.
As for how you separate a micro-trend from an actual trend like, for example, barrel pants, Madison said that her first tell is that it is being “peddled by somebody breathlessly trying to sell me a garment I need RIGHT now!”
(The corollary: You need it now because you may not need it tomorrow.)
As to whether you should to pay attention to all of this or — even more significantly — buy into any of it, the answer is: (1) maybe and (2) no.
There is, after all, a difference between understanding what people are talking about and being a living, breathing adopter of it. Understanding what is going on around you, even if “around you” simply means your social feed or your friends’ or kids’ social feeds, is a way of understanding a part of the subculture, which can be useful, if brain-cluttering.
Buying into micro-trends, however, is a fast route to becoming a fashion victim. They are also bad for the budget and the planet, given their built-in disposability. As Madison pointed out, by the time you order an item and it actually arrives, often a new micro-trend has taken its place.
Momentary as they are, however, micro-trends can have an afterlife that, thanks to their names, continues to live on long after the trend itself disappears. That’s why you remember the “tomato girl” moment, even though it was a summer 2023 micro-trend. Being fluent in the names is one thing; dressing like a name is another.
Though the death of micro-trends has been heralded since at least the end of 2024, and is gaining steam again with the movement to just say no to social media, they live on. Which suggests it is possible that the reported end of micro-trends is itself … well, a micro-trend.
