Everyone knows that historically, magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair are the epitome of fashion sense. They have set the overall blueprint for how to be fashionable, 

At least until now.  In today’s age we have social media. With the rise of social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok came a flurry of diverse people with many diverse interests. What was known as fashion styles, which usually only prioritized the type of clothing you wear, has now evolved into your whole life. This new niche of fashion is called fashion aesthetics. 

Here are some of the most influential fashion aesthetics we’re seeing today.

Opium

One of the most popular fashion aesthetics to recently come into the scene is Opium. What this usually entails is a style of streetwear with many snippets of avant-garde, metal, and punk styles. This subgenre of street style tends to feature an all-black baggy facade with a nonchalant demeanor and usually means you listen to artists like Playboi Carti and Lil Uzi Vert. Common visuals for this aesthetic are pentagrams, night-time colors, black cats, and bats.

Coquette

Another one of these fashion aesthetics that has been around for a couple years now is Coquette. I’m sure many of you have heard the stigma around this topic and its alleged support towards certain eating habits and its direct correlation to everything pastel pink. If you identify with this aesthetic you probably walk around with a silk dress on while you play “Cherry Blossom” by Lana Del Rey in your wired headphones. Most of the visuals for this aesthetic tend to be very hyper feminine and girly things like pearls, dainty dresses, and lots of flower decals.

Y2K

The doorway to low rise jeans and their huge return is called Y2K. You might know this as the millennial bug that bombed everyone back in 2000, but now it’s used to represent everything your favorite celebrities from the 2000s wore, like Britney Spears and Destiny’s Child. Although very commonly confused with other similar styles like McBling, it still keeps its dignity with a CGI chrome figurine in hand. If you consider yourself Y2K you probably enjoy wearing space age clothes, high contrast colors and futuristic sunglasses. 

Downtown

This aesthetic was around for a bit but never really had its moment until this year. You might like to read books, chill out to music, drink coffee and overall just wish you lived in downtown New York. Inspired by autumn and cozy vibes came to fruition the Downtown aesthetic which is another form of street style highly inspired by urban style and brings in elements of grunge fashion. Most of the fashion style for this aesthetic involves oversized yarn sweaters, band tees, and headphones. If you identify with this you probably like to watch Gilmore Girls with your cat while you drink your iced matcha latte and romanticize a perfect school life.

Overall I believe the rise of fashion aesthetics has brought nothing but good. While many of them create many niche cliques and yes one might argue that it separates people too much, but now people can have many things they could explore and have fun with. Maybe today you’ll be a Downtown Girl but tomorrow you’ll feel more Coquette. Who knows!