Trend Overload

Consider yourself lucky if you have never heard of the “coastal grandmother aesthetic.”

Or “blueberry milk nails,” or the “mob wife aesthetic” or a hundred other blink-and-you’ll-miss-them crazes that cycle online with the ferocity of a centrifuge. These microtrends, as they’re known, tend to be associated with Gen Z. But members of that generation say they are exhausted by the onslaught of faddish clothes and new phrases they encounter every time they pick up their phones.

I’ve spent the last few months asking young people about the fashion and social media trends that are actually registering in their offline lives. More than any one trend, the teenagers and twentysomethings I spoke with wanted to talk about just how many trends there were, and how overwhelming it all felt.

Every generation feels pressure to keep up with trends, especially in its youth. But many members of Gen Z seem to be under particular stress: The fire hose of social media offers endless opportunities to feel left out. Others say they just can’t afford — mentally or financially — to try to keep up.

For a new story in The Times’s Style section, I talked to young people about the frenzied trend ecosystem — and what some of them were doing to escape it.

Keeping up

Short-form video platforms like TikTok are fertile territory for microtrends. They get a heavy assist from fast fashion companies like Temu and Shein that sell inexpensive but poorly made clothes and accessories, available in just a few clicks on the apps.

On the first day of sixth grade, Neena Atkins noticed that several girls at her middle school wore scrunchies on their wrists. She searched for scrunchies on TikTok, and in the days that followed she was served dozens more videos in which the hair ties were being worn as bracelets.

“I distinctly remember being like, ‘Wow, am I weird?’” Neena, now 16, said. “The repetition over and over, it really seeps in to your brain.”

Because TikTok’s algorithm is designed to show viewers more of the things they already like, viewers can feel like they are passing the same billboard hundreds of times rather than once or twice a day. That can be pretty convincing, especially in combination with the age-old teenage desire to fit in.

Neena bought a 30-pack of scrunchies on Amazon, but before long, the girls in her feed were obsessing over something else. The cycle began anew.

“There were these two months where cheetah print was everywhere,” Neena added, “and now when I go on TikTok, I see people saying, like, ‘Cheetah print is getting so old.’”

Dropping out

Many young people I spoke to said they felt stuck in a cycle of chasing, buying and discarding in order to keep up. Others, though, are trying to move beyond it. Some are swearing off fast fashion, or limiting their clothing to a similar uniform every day. A few have deleted social media.

Before buying something, Abner Gordan, 21, a student in Manhattan, tries to ask himself whether he wants something because it appeals to his sense of style, or because he is emulating what he has seen online.

He was heartened when he saw some TikTok users push “underconsumption core,” a style of video in which they showed off their underwhelming apartments and very regular clothing.

But he was discouraged when he saw that trend lose steam after just a few months. “In a weird way, being anti-trend is very trendy,” he said.

Other Big Stories

• Wildfires erupted on Long Island, injuring at least one firefighter.

• A legal services company has created a hotline to collect sexual assault accusations against the music mogul Sean Combs, formerly known as Diddy. It says it has received around 26,000 contacts.

• The Newark police have arrested a 14-year-old boy in connection with a shooting that killed one of their detectives and injured another officer.

TRUMP’S ACTIONS

It can be hard to keep up with the deluge of news from the White House. The Times has created a page to track the Trump administration — including its major executive orders, memos, lawsuits and social media posts. Here are some from the past week:

• Military: Restored the name of another base named for a Confederate leader, Fort Benning, but said it was now named for a formerly obscure soldier who shared the surname.

• Cryptocurrency: Signed an executive order to create a national stockpile of Bitcoin and other digital currencies.

• Government overhaul: Posted, and then took down, a list of more than 440 federal properties that could be sold — including the F.B.I. and Justice Department headquarters.

• Ukraine: Suspended Ukraine’s access to U.S. satellite imagery, which tracked the movement of Russian troops.

See the full list here.

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

Was it wise for Andrew Cuomo to enter the New York City mayor’s race?

Yes. Cuomo has government experience and oversaw the creation of a new terminal at LaGuardia Airport. “Cuomo’s nearly 12 years as governor — not to mention four years as HUD Secretary and four as state attorney general — allow him to accurately claim to have far more experience than any of his rivals,” New York Magazine’s Errol Louis writes.

No. During the pandemic, Cuomo hid the true death toll in nursing homes and then denied any wrongdoing. “As Mr. Cuomo seeks a return to high office, it’s worth revisiting how he handled the most important leadership test of his career,” Bill Hammond writes for The Wall Street Journal.

FROM OPINION

Musk’s risk-taking works in business. In government, though, those strategies can lead to death, the Editorial Board writes.

Alyona Synenko took up singing two years into the war in Ukraine. Having a goal made life during conflict bearable, she writes.

Here are columns by Ross Douthat on French leadership in Europe and Nicholas Kristof on Trump’s recklessness.

“Dream Count,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: It’s been 12 years since Adichie published “Americanah,” her acclaimed novel about a young Nigerian woman finding her way in the United States. Since then, she’s delivered a trio of pocket-size nonfiction on feminism and grief. Now Adichie is back with “Dream Count,” a novel about the braided lives of four African women — a lawyer, a banker, a travel writer and a housekeeper. In an author’s note, she explains that one character was inspired by Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel employee who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French politician and economist, of sexual assault. Adichie wanted to “‘write’ a wrong” with a “gesture of returned dignity,” she writes. Our critic described the book, which was just longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, as “dreamy indeed: an accumulation of scenes and sensations, cloudlike in their contour, floating this way and that against the backdrop of the pandemic.” Read the review.

More on books

• Before Harper Lee published “To Kill a Mockingbird,” she wrote short stories exploring some of the themes that would make her famous: fathers and daughters, race relations, small town gossip. Those stories will be published this fall.

THE INTERVIEW

This week’s subject for The Interview is Lady Gaga, whose new album, “Mayhem,” is out now.

Your partner, Michael Polansky, is an executive producer on the album. What impact did he have on the music?

He oversaw the whole process of making the record, completing it, helping me to shape the sound of the record creatively. It was an amazing thing to do with your partner, because when I start to doubt myself, there is nobody that’s going to call me on it better than he is.

I could imagine that relationships are tricky in your position because you might have questions about whether someone’s feelings are genuine. How did you realize that Michael was genuine?

From the moment that I met Michael, he had the most warm disposition. Yes, he was impressive, but the thing I cared about the most was he wanted to know about my family. [Pause.] I’m sorry I’m crying.

No, it’s OK.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I knew Michael was genuine because he wanted to be my friend. He wanted to take walks with me. He took me rock climbing. I also have a pain condition [fibromyalgia], but he had this belief that I could get better, and he inspired me to have more hope about it. So, yeah, I guess I know Michael is genuine because he’s my friend.

Read more of the interview here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests making maple and miso salmon, shrimp fried rice doused in yum yum sauce, and spiced chicken and rice with cardamom and cinnamon.