We’re So Obsessed With Having an Aesthetic, We Forgot to Have a Personality

Esra Şenyurt

Aug 30

4 min read

The other day, my sister and I were talking about personal style when she casually pointed out that I never seem to stick to one. I'm always trying something new, always dressing like a different version of myself. I laughed when she said it. Then I went home and couldn't stop thinking about it. Because she wasn't wrong.

Maybe I've spent years chasing trends, trying to build a style that finally feels like mine. Trying to find somewhere to belong. And somewhere along the way, I started wondering whether I was actually discovering myself or just collecting different versions of who I thought I should be. There was a time when inspiration was something we went looking for. We found it in the streets we walked through, in the conversations that somehow lasted for hours, in the feelings we couldn't quite explain. That's where pieces of our identity came from.

Now it feels different.

We're like computers with too many tabs open, trying to process more inspiration than we were ever designed to hold. Every refresh brings another aesthetic. Another micro-trend. Another version of the person we're supposed to become. And maybe that's the real problem. Not that we have too many options, but that somewhere between all those options, we've stopped listening to ourselves.

Fashion has always reflected the world around us. Society experienced change first, and fashion responded. Economic crises reshaped silhouettes, wars simplified fabrics, liberation movements transformed the way we saw our bodies. Aesthetics were never just about looking good; they were physical expressions of a collective state of mind.

But lately, that relationship feels like it's shifted. Trends don't just reflect culture anymore; they increasingly shape it. They don't simply tell us who we are; they quietly tell us who we could become and, sometimes, who we should become.

The pandemic was one of the first major turning points. Life, as we knew it, suddenly stopped. Our sense of security disappeared overnight. The future became impossible to predict, and all of us were left asking the same question: What now?

Our minds don't like uncertainty. We crave meaning. When the world feels impossible to control, we create symbols to make sense of it. That's why the aesthetics that emerged during those years weren't just visual trends.

Clean Girl promised order in the middle of chaos. Y2K let us disappear into a version of the past that felt safer. Barbiecore wrapped uncertainty in bright pink optimism.

They all answered the same psychological need: survival.

We escaped reality the only way many of us could: we scrolled. Hours disappeared on social media. The moods we collectively performed online slowly turned into micro-trends. Looking back, they weren't just fashion or entertainment. They were wearable coping mechanisms.

Today, though, we've arrived somewhere else entirely. These aesthetics no longer simply reflect our emotions; they increasingly dictate them. Every day, algorithms introduce us to another version of ourselves. Another identity waiting to be tried on.

I'm not blaming micro-trends for moving fast. I'm questioning the way we've taught ourselves to consume them. Sometimes I open Pinterest looking for inspiration and leave wondering who I'm supposed to become next.

There was a time when style was simply an extension of identity. Now we're trying to build our identities through style. And honestly... haven't we all grown a little tired of that?

Life already moves fast enough. We're all trying to find our place, keep up, and somehow stay visible. Maybe, in the process, we've started squeezing ourselves into categories that were never meant to hold us.

Personally, I don't think the biggest problem is how fast trends move. I think the problem is that they've started moving faster than we can get to know ourselves.

Sometimes it feels like we're all swimming against the same current, desperately trying to catch up. But I wonder what would happen if we simply stopped. What if we stopped trying to catch every trend? Maybe we'd finally have enough space to build a style that grows naturally from who we already are.

One thing is undeniable: social media democratised inspiration. We can discover creatives from the other side of the world within seconds and become part of stories we'd never have encountered otherwise. But the more accessible inspiration became, the more normal comparison started to feel.

‘I should look like that. I should wear that. I should buy that.’

Without realising it, we became stuck in the endless cycle of consumption that capitalism depends on.

So I keep coming back to the same question.

Do we embrace an aesthetic because we genuinely love it, or because we want to become the person that aesthetic promises we could be?

Maybe that's where today's identity crisis really begins. Because this isn't about what we wear anymore. It's about handing the process of discovering who we are over to the outside world.

In the end, trends still reflect our collective state of mind. But they're no longer just mirrors. They've become mechanisms that shape it, influence it, and sometimes even rebuild it.

Maybe what we're feeling isn't trend fatigue. Maybe it's the exhaustion of living in a world that constantly asks us to become someone new.