Januaries always come with a clumsy pause to double-check the new year. However this year, not only is everyone hyper aware of 2026, we are consciously rebranding it as 2016 part 2. Photos are grainier, the Mannequin Challenge is back, and Instagram edits are attempting the OG moody Tumblr aesthetic. But fashion-wise, we couldn’t be further away from it.
Even though digitally we are undergoing a collective deja vu, our clothes speak a different language. 2016 fashion relied on excess. Vibrant colours like neon yellow and hot pink were the base to ground our outfits on. Denim was made to be squeezed in, while the hips would sport a tied flannel shirt. And accessories absolutely dominated! From oversized rimmed glasses to the owl necklace, it was maximalism in its most unserious way possible. But it was unserious in an authentic way. And it all lies in its context. 2016 was the time we as a society hit a sweet spot between being online and being offline.
Sure, trends existed, and so did moodboards. In fact, Tumblr was one giant moodboard disguised as a blogging site. But despite that, we didn’t dress for trends but for ourselves. GRWMs and OOTDs just meant getting ready to go out. So fashion at the time looks clunky because it was true experimentation.
Between 2016 and 2026, fashion has gone from authentic tacky dressing to performative tacky dressing. It has scaled back to minimalism and then back again to maximalism, with background commentary exploding. Now, each fit can be critiqued in seconds with moodboards serving less as inspiration and more like a template. Lockdown pushed us all online, and the virtual society we built has bled into the wider cultural space. Clothes weren’t allowed to just be clothes anymore; styles are now “cores” where each piece served as the building blocks to a whole fit rather than a statement on its own.
Ultra-fast fashion also has its part to play. With sites like Temu and SHEIN gamifying their sites, shopping became less of a ritual and more of a game. These sites also helped to speed up trend cycles and further indulge every “core” the internet could come up with online, further creating microtrends that would last a handful of months at best. It was a form of consumption that we couldn’t keep up and we didn’t. 2022 onwards saw a shift into vintage fashion, thrifting, and sustainable fashion.
Fashion is now muted with its colour palette, denim is relaxed, and instead of owl necklaces, cuffs and bangles rule the trends. Clothes are polished, refined, with sleek tailoring. But the commenting voices persist, making style a performance and allowing every trend to come into question. So it’s no wonder we desire to go back to “simpler times”. Romanticising a time when we can dress without judgement holding us back might just be what we need to dress without holding back.
