“Get ready with me for Coachella Day 1!” has become a familiar phrase across social media during April’s music and arts festival weekends. While many influencers strive to piece together the most unique and creative outfits, certain styles tend to recur across the festival.

With over 125,000 attendees every weekend, the unofficial Coachella dress code has become predictable: crochet pieces styled with flowy cover-ups, boho dresses with cowboy boots, and glittery mini skirts paired with chunky belts. In an era when social media content is proliferating, influencers are multiplying and new trends are emerging every second, it feels harder than ever to develop an authentic personal style.

Generation Z consumes hundreds of pieces of content daily, which can make it increasingly difficult to develop a sense of self-agency under the pressure of constant trends, online influence and the pressure to belong.

Cat Gerbino, a sophomore majoring in dramatic arts and a model, said she finds that her personal style is often shaped by the people around her.

“Because we’re all in such an important stage of development where we’re trying to build connections, no one wants to feel like they’re the odd one out from everyone else,” Gerbino said. “At least fashion- wise, socially, that’s such a strong indicator of belonging.”

Vikram Sagar, a junior majoring in arts, technology and the business of innovation and the founder of the fashion label Seevan, said that especially at a school like USC, where students “care about what other people think” and intentionally want to look presentable, there is a tendency to borrow ideas from each other to form a style that is socially compatible with others.

“When it comes to fashion, in terms of as a designer and as a consumer, you’re always going to be influenced, and they’re always going to be working on building up on ideas that already exist,” Sagar said. “That’s inevitable.”

Sagar said he draws inspiration from observing people in Los Angeles and from his peers in the USC Fashion Industry Association when developing his personal style. At the same time, he acknowledged that he often turns to social media when experimenting with new looks.

“When I’m scrolling, if I see a cool outfit, or I see a cool silhouette, or different shapes and whatever’s going on, if I find something interesting, I’d be like, ‘Let me try out this style,’” Sagar said.

However, the rise of “micro-trends” complicates this seemingly personal process of discovery. In a 2026 article for The Good Trade, writer Audrey Stanton writes that fast fashion brands are aiming to produce “52 micro-seasons per year.” What feels like an organic moment of inspiration now exists within a fast-moving cycle of production and consumption.

Alice Cao, a sophomore majoring in dramatic arts, said she views consumerism and capitalism as major drivers of social influence on individual buyers.

“Capitalism — and just advertising in general — is for sure [going to influence purchasing decisions], because advertising is a way of trying to influence people’s decisions,” Cao said. “If everyone is picking things from fashion stores, they are influenced by society in some way.”

The fashion industry has undergone a major transformation in how influence is produced and distributed, shifting from traditional advertising to social media platforms.
In terms of speed and flexibility, fashion editors must go through verification processes and adhere to editorial guidelines, which can slow the release of information. Influencers, on the other hand, can generate content much more quickly, though not always with the same level of accuracy.
Keanan Duffty, a part-time lecturer of fashion, technology, sustainability and music for the Iovine Young Academy as well as a fashion designer, said that social media has reshaped the structure of the fashion industry.

“Vogue was the kind of curator of all things that were meaningful in the fashion industry; they are still in that role to a degree, but the marketing, the storytelling, the narrative of fashion, has been democratized,” Duffty said. “Really, anyone with access to a social media platform can have a point of view.”

However, Duffty said that this accessibility comes with a cost: While there are new opportunities for designers and consumers, there are also new pressures.

“Today, it’s instant,” Duffty said. “That’s almost a disadvantage that a sort of nascent idea of creativity doesn’t have the time to gestate now before, potentially, it gets exposed … It kind of gets caught, maybe in the chrysalis stage now, rather than being allowed to become the butterfly before everyone sees it.”

Aesthetics are shared more quickly across platforms, potentially limiting the time designers spend revising original ideas. Social influence has always existed, whether it’s through magazines or television, but now it’s faster and more disruptive — scholars note the pace of trend diffusion has accelerated in the digital era.

A 2025 study by the Aalto University School of Business found that most consumers essentially lean into the algorithm to surmise what is trending, which directly contributes to the faster and more disruptive pace of social influence.

Eric Junker, an assistant teaching professor of design, said that fashion trends are driven by constant cycles of influence and reaction, driven by outside forces.
“My dad always joked that you should just always stick to the same style, because every 10 years, you’ll be in fashion. I think the cycle is much faster now than it was for him, but there’s always acting and reacting,” Junker said. “There’s always external forces involved.”

Similar to Junker, Alexis Zoto, an associate professor of teaching, art and design, said that social media has significantly influenced and blurred the line between creators and consumers.

“Sometimes I think [social media is] actually too dominant,” Zoto said. “In my experience, students that are not immersed in art and design come to fashion and think that influencers are creators, and they’re not. They are entrepreneurs of fashion, but they’re not the actual makers, the designers.”

In the tension between social structure and personal voice, a revelation takes shape: Duffty and Sagar said that if trends and influences are constant, then perhaps self-agency in fashion is not about complete originality, but about intention. Within this rapid cycle of imitation and exposure, creating and wearing pieces that carry meaning could be the way out of mundane conformity.

For Sagar, the sense of authenticity is rooted in personal narrative.

“The other day, I was wearing a jacket that I made, which had my mom’s wedding sari,” Sagar said. “It comes from such a meaningful period in my family’s life, and now [it’s] something that I get to wear every day and wear proudly.”

Similarly, Junker recalled discovering his dad’s closet “full of cool suits from the 1960s,” reflecting a life shaped by jazz music and living in New York City. Styles that were once considered cool in the ’60s resurfaced again in the ’80s and ’90s, showing how fashion continuously cycles through time. Through fashion and aesthetics, family and generational stories can continuously be rediscovered and reinterpreted.

Cao said that uniqueness in fashion comes from the wearer, not the clothing itself.

“Every fashion piece is mostly mass-produced,” Cao said. “Uniqueness in fashion is gonna [be presented] by the person who’s wearing it, who’s styling it how they like it. For example, if I have the same top as my friend, we would have been styling it differently, and it feels different while we’re wearing it, because our personality is different.”

Beyond the individual, a collective sense of aspiration toward nostalgia and the past is also beginning to emerge. Both Junker and Zoto said that rather than chasing what is new, many are turning to what already exists — curating vintage pieces, reworking garments and finding meaning in clothing that has lived through multiple cycles of fashion. For some consumers, the act of choosing what to wear and create becomes more intentional, restoring a sense of ownership in personal style.

“There is a lot of agency on the community level. I mean, I see it with my students. I see it with my son and his friends, that there’s so much going on with thrifting and buying vintage clothes and reconfiguring, deconstructing and reconstructing clothes based on vintage,” Junker said. “[The process] is really organic, and bringing it back to this handmade mode of expression.”

As conversations about sustainability and intentional design expand, some designers are also paying closer attention to how clothing fits and functions for a wider range of bodies and daily experiences.

“I believe that fashion is at a moment where it needs to not just be aesthetically pleasing, but it actually needs to do something,” Duffty said. “There are huge groups of human beings on the planet that have not been addressed by the fashion industry.”

Duffty said that certain groups, such as people with disabilities or wheelchair users, have specific clothing needs that are often ignored in design. He said that standard garments don’t account for how clothing shifts when someone is seated for long periods, which can cause excess material to gather in the front while the back rides up. He said that practical considerations like these are frequently overlooked in fashion design.

Gerbino said that some trends empower people to express aspects of themselves in ways they may have previously avoided due to social pressure and fear of judgment.

“I love the trend of breaking gender boundaries with men in more traditionally feminine clothing, like skirts and dresses,” Gerbino said. “I just did a menswear shoot that I directed and modeled in. And I just think that using fashion in that way is such a powerful thing.”

Duffty said he believes that large segments of the global population remain overlooked by the fashion industry. Major fashion houses at Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks often fail to consider diverse needs, such as modest fashion or the interests of people over 60, who still want to actively engage with fashion but are rarely represented.

“We all want to express ourselves, but our expression is slightly different depending on our age, our demographic, how we identify ourselves, what our age group is, what our abilities are,” Duffty said. “Fashion needs to take responsibility for that over the next decade or so and really consider it.”

Revelation is not found in chasing what’s next, but in understanding what matters. Rather than rejecting trends entirely, individuals often adapt them in ways that reflect their own experiences, communities and values.

“That’s what fashion always needs to remember: It has to have a purpose,” Duffty said. “It has to create an emotional moment for both sides, for the creator and for the person that is interacting with that creation.”