The Fashion Trend Struggle: Conflicting Trends and Mixed Messages

Every runway season is punctuated with a synopsis of the season’s hottest trends. These “trend forecasts,” of course, come courtesy of myriad fashion bloggers, stylists and glossy magazines whose job is to tell you what to wear and how to wear it.

As fashion-forward femmes, we try our very best to follow these trends. Naturally, we want to make sure everyone knows that we know what’s hip and, conversely, what’s no longer all the rage. After all, donning an aquatic print when everyone’s sporting tribal-inspired duds is a recipe for fashion suicide. And heaven forbid you stomp around in a kitten heel when all your female cohorts are wearing sky high wedges.

Anyway, you’d think that the Internet, fashion applications such as Polyvore, countless bloggers and celebs-turned-fashion-spokespeople would make following trends easier. Unfortunately — and you may have already noticed — that’s simply not the case.

Trends are constantly changing. And, because there are so many opinions as to what’s vogue today, all those trends start to conflict with one another. For example, some gurus insist that color blocked apparel is a fashion must for spring 2012 while others contend it’s the worse thing you could don this season. Some big time bloggers tout the peplum skirt while others with just as much influence say the silhouette is horrendously unflattering. Even each city’s respective fashion week showcase conflicting trends. Sometimes it seems as though New York, Milan and Paris are a year or two apart from each other.

It goes without saying that all these mixed fashion messages makes following trends a tricky endeavor. So, don’t feel bad when you’ve watched all the must-see runway shows, read the post-show blogs and then can’t find said trends in stores.

Even well-regarded magazines such as Elle have a difficult time finding the best trends du jour to highlight every season. For example, their recent “Top 10 Trends from Spring 2012” seem to even conflict with each other. Does flashy abstract art really compliment pale pastels? Does the drop waist dress, which hides the midsection, really mesh well with exposed midriffs, Elle’s chosen body part to highlight this year?

What’s your take on Elle’s, and other magazines or blogs, fashion predictions? And how do you decide what trends to follow, if any? We’d love to hear about your thought process.

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Image credit: Elle.com

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Posted by Mirela Gluck at 01:42 AM
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