Happy new year, my dear readers! (but only to those who are subscribed. if you’re reading this and you’re not subscribed, you’re probably stalking me from instagram, in which case you may know me, or know of me, from real life. there is no shame in subscribing. I will only like you more and think of you fondly if you commit to giving me attention.)
Anyway… let’s get into it. Welcome to my official thesis presentation and defense of my 2022 predictions.
What’s sticking around in 2022
Ballet is the classic pretty girl activity. if your girlfriend does ballet, she’s probably really skinny and has a casual but well-curated and aesthetic instagram. maybe she also has a food twitter. with the return of heroin chic comes the return of ballet and ballet-adjacent activities, like barre workout classes and wearing leotards and tights in your daily life. forget model off-duty. it’s all about being the ballerina off-duty. Think natalie portman in black swan when she’s sitting in that desolate hallway.
Ballet flats I want:
Ballet aesthetic in editorials:
I’ve noticed this movement toward delicate femininity, away from the #HOTGIRL #GIRLBOSS #iHATEMEN loud, annoying, and abrasive social media discourse, and away from the tacky thotwear aesthetic, for some time now. It’s a shift being pushed by the girls with small–medium twitter followings and photographer boyfriends, who listen to red scare, spend $300 on Mason Pearson hairbrushes instead of Shein hauls, and don’t own any drugstore makeup or skincare products. Ugh. Literally goals.
“Women want to be loved like roses. They spend hours perfecting their eyebrows and toes and inventing irresistible curls that fall by accident down the back of their necks from otherwise austere hair-dos. They want their lover to remember the way they held a glass. They want to haunt.”
—Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company
The Babitz quote resonates with me because it’s so true, no matter how uncool it is to admit these days—women want love! I feel vindicated by this type of womanhood (quieter, subtle, feminine, prefers monogamy) becoming acceptable again in my circles because I’ve always felt that it’s extremely tacky to proclaim oneself a hot girl, to talk about pretty privilege at every opportunity, and to constantly share every struggle and trauma in public forums. Whatever happened to humility? In quiet confidence? All of my most beautiful friends are the ones who say the least on social media. I aspire to be more like them, as should we all.
This brings me to another 2022 prediction I want to highlight: instagramming as much as you want but retaining the mystery by revealing very little actual personal information. This is also a reaction to the turbulent and messy era of oversharing of political opinions, arguing, infographics, etc. of 2020-21. I’ve already been doing this (posting a lot but nothing substantive) for a while. It works well for me because my fatal flaw is “oversharing”, but all I’m actually posting to main is low-qual photos, pretty stories, and maybe some memes with no context or explanation. like yes, ideally I wouldn’t use instagram as a crutch because it’s unhealthy and toxic blahdeblahblah but it’s so much fun! At least I don’t stick my neck out and try to cancel my sorority anymore (iykyk), and I only sometimes share my trauma (the dead parent card truly trumps all).
TLDR; don’t be surprised if, in 2022, you see girls posting even more random “casual dumps”, except with fewer people in the photos and more objects/scenery, and if you see people leaving the caption blank altogether. My 2015-16 high school aesthetic is mainstream, babyyy!
Another overarching theme I want to discuss for what will be IN this year is the west coast. After all the influencers and clout chasers migrated from LA to NYC in 2021, new york will officially become basic to the social media content farmers and the people who care about them, thank god (need the trend cycle to accelerate so they can leave ASAP).
Also, in the wake of Joan Didion’s and Eve Babitz’s deaths (may the queens RIP <3 ), Los Angeles and even the Bay Area have a nostalgic glimmer to them (grass is always greener). The new cool girl thing to do is to move from brooklyn to LA, or to be based in NYC but spend a good portion of time in CA, on the low, though, NOT ostentatiously. What will never be cool: calling yourself “bicoastal.” Literally disgusting.
“There’s always something missing about late afternoon to me on the East Coast. Late afternoon on the West Coast ends with the sky doing all its brilliant stuff.”
—Joan Didion, Conversations with Joan Didion
“The two girls grew up at the edge of the ocean and knew it was paradise, and better than Eden, which was only a garden.”
—Eve Babitz, Sex and Rage
All this talk about California brings me to another prediction: we’ll be seeing more nepotism girls from tech fortunes, specifically, come into public consciousness this year. Like the nepotism babies of other industries, they will not be confined to their parents’ paths. Especially in a new era in which tech (or maybe tech people) is being taken more seriously by East Coast industry gatekeepers in high fashion, art, and culture, nepotism babies and anyone with social and cultural clout will have more freedom than ever to carve out careers that don’t just differ from their parents’, but that cross back and forth across industry bounds. This is also thanks in part to the influence of the late Virgil Abloh.
This is off-topic from nepotism babies, now, but an excerpt from a profile on Zack Bia, written by Samuel Hine for GQ:
It’s a lesson Bia picked up from Abloh himself: if you can establish yourself as a multi-hyphenate creative across music, fashion, and lifestyle, everything you do in one field picks up some of the cool you’ve accumulated in another. You can launder clout. You can do the impossible, the thing that spurs zillions of dollars in advertising and influencer marketing each year: you can make people think things are cool just by talking about them.
Muuuch to unpack here, especially as it relates to 2022 and the future. But a discussion for a different time.
The last thing I want to address: the return of vintage shabby chic home décor/general undone aesthetic. There is nothing more terrifying to me than an influencer’s apartment. Do they own any books?? They always look like cold museums with no personal touches at all, and I’m glad they’re being recognized as trendy and tacky. I’ve been saying, leave the Wing aesthetic and apartment trends to rest!! All that Urban Outfitters junk will just end up in a landfill in a year, anyway (they do have some cute things, but choose wisely and don’t furnish your entire apartment with it). Mixing and matching vintage with new and accumulating things over time is key.
Some examples:
^My bedroom in California. The bed is a swedish antique I got from a vintage shop for my sixteenth birthday.
These meme accounts crack me up. I’m pretty sure they’re run by teen girls and I feel like I must protect them at all costs.
You get the idea.
What’s leaving in 2022
My predictions for what will go out of style in 2022 are pretty self-explanatory, for the most part. The online sex positivity movement had its flaws exposed pretty heavily the past couple years, Deux Moi has become as annoying as Diet Prada (leave Lily-Rose Depp alone!!), and Nicholas Braun is officially ran through. Heard he likes short brunette civilians (non-entertainment industry) though, so shoot your shot I guess.
I may write more on my theory of the aesthetic Youtube vlogs fading out this year, and maybe I’ll invite one of my tech friends who’s smarter than me to guest blog and explain to us the great debate over web3 and NFTs that’s happening on tech twitter right now.
What I told myself when I finally found the courage to start this blog and shamelessly promote it:
I’ve decided it’s going to be a great year.
Much love,
Esmé