It’s Chic to Stop Caring What’s Chic

Love Me Stone

It’s Chic to Stop Caring What’s Chic

I keep seeing this trend everywhere:

It’s chic to read books.

It’s chic to stay home.

It’s chic to have hobbies.

It’s chic to be kind.

It’s chic to be mysterious.

It’s chic to be authentically yourself.

And that last one stopped me.

Because if thousands of us are simultaneously posting about how chic it is to be authentically ourselves…

Are we actually being ourselves?

Or did being ourselves just become another trend?

We’ve Somehow Standardized Being Different

I’ve been thinking about this since the whole “whimsy” thing started making its rounds.

Suddenly whimsy was everywhere.

The trinkets. The bows. The colorful glassware. The charm necklaces. The sardine tins. The weird little objects carefully arranged to communicate Look how delightfully eccentric I am.

And listen, I love weird shit.

I love people who collect things that make absolutely no sense to anyone else. I love strange clothes and tattoos and houses that actually look like someone lives there. I love people with peculiar interests who can tell you far too much about some obscure subject because it makes their brain light up.

But something happens when individuality becomes an aesthetic.

We start buying the same things to prove how different we are.

Which is objectively pretty funny.

We somehow managed to standardize eccentricity.

The Internet Keeps Giving Us Personalities to Try On

Clean girl. Mob wife. Coastal grandmother. Old money. Tomato girl. Quiet luxury. Whimsy.

And whatever beautifully packaged identity we’ll all be introduced to next Tuesday.

The internet has become incredibly good at giving us entire personalities in little downloadable bundles.

Here’s what to wear. Here’s what to buy. Here’s what your bedroom should look like. Here’s what cocktail you drink. Here’s the vacation you take. Here’s the book sitting casually beside your coffee. Here’s the philosophy you should adopt while you’re doing all of it.

And suddenly we’re not just participating in trends.

We’re trying on identities.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

Humans have always copied each other. Fashion exists because ideas spread. Music spreads. Art spreads. Language spreads. Someone wears something interesting and another person thinks, Fuck, I love that.

That’s culture.

That’s inspiration.

That’s fun.

I’m not suggesting we all retreat into caves until we develop completely original personalities untouched by human influence.

But I do think there’s a difference between discovering something through someone else and needing everyone else to validate that you should like it.

Here’s the Better Question

Forget whether something is trending.

Will I still like this when everyone else doesn’t?

That’s where things get interesting.

Do you still wear it when the internet decides it’s cringe?

Do you still listen to the song after everyone gets sick of the audio?

Do you still love your strange little collections when minimalism comes roaring back?

Do you keep the ugly lamp?

You know the lamp.

The lamp your friends hate. The lamp that objectively makes very little sense in your house. The lamp you would rescue in a fire after the humans, animals, and important documents were safely outside.

Keep the fucking lamp.

Because genuinely eccentric people rarely wake up wondering whether eccentricity is currently trending.

They just have the weird lamp.

They’ve had it for twelve years.

And they will defend it with their life.

You Don’t Have to Hate Trends Either

This isn’t an argument for becoming contrarian just for the sake of it.

Automatically rejecting something because it’s popular isn’t individuality either.

That’s still letting everyone else determine your taste.

Just in reverse.

Sometimes the trendy thing really is fucking great.

Buy it. Wear it. Read it. Eat it. Put seventeen bows on something if that makes you happy.

The point isn’t to stop participating.

The point is to notice why you’re participating.

Do I actually like this?

Or:

Do I like the version of myself this allows me to present?

Those are very different questions.

And sometimes the answer might make you uncomfortable.

If You Need Permission From a Trend to Become Yourself, You’re Still Asking Permission

That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

We’re living in this strange moment where authenticity itself has become aspirational.

We’re being encouraged to be different. To be weird. To romanticize our peculiarities. To embrace our quirks.

But preferably while using the same audio and purchasing the same cardigan.

Authenticity doesn’t need a rebrand.

It doesn’t need to become chic.

It doesn’t need an aesthetic.

And it definitely doesn’t need permission from an algorithm.

Your actual taste might be inconsistent.

It might not photograph particularly well.

You might love expensive perfume and gas-station coffee.

You might wear vintage leather with Amazon sunglasses.

You might read Dostoevsky one week and absolutely unhinged dark romance the next.

You might love something everyone else thinks is tacky.

Good.

That’s where you start becoming interesting.

Not because being different automatically makes you interesting.

But because having preferences you didn’t crowdsource does.

Maybe This Is What Being Yourself Actually Looks Like

Wear the thing everyone hates.

Read the book nobody is talking about.

Keep the ugly lamp.

Listen to the song after the audio stops trending.

Be whimsical when minimalism comes back.

Be minimal when everyone starts collecting trinkets.

Try the trend you genuinely love.

Ignore the one you don’t.

Change your mind because you changed, not because the algorithm did.

And please, for the love of everything holy, stop worrying about whether any of it is chic.

Because maybe the most interesting person in the room isn’t the person trying hardest to be different.

Maybe it isn’t even the person refusing to follow the crowd.

Maybe it’s simply the person who knows what she likes…

and doesn’t need the room to agree with her.

That feels pretty fucking chic to me.