“Nigerians think any apparel can be repaired – we’ve seen everything brought in for our tailors, from bras to waist trainers to duvets,” Kanyinsola Doherty of Mend Lagos tells the BBC. Doherty founded Mend Lagos to address the need for specialised alterations beyond obiomas. For the traditional obioma, times have changed for various reasons, and many are being phased out. Security is one reason – increased crime in certain areas has resulted in more neighborhood security patrol. This limits the comings and goings of non-residents, so mobile tailors are no longer able to roam as freely as they previously did. And the economic downturn has also had an effect – due to inflation, many have found the business not sustainable, and have opted out.
In the 1930s, the Great Depression idled thousands of factories. To spur consumption, desperate manufacturers began researchinghow to make their products worse, writes Giles Slade in his book “Made to Break.” By incorporating inferior materials, companies forced people to buy replacements earlier, a practice called “planned obsolescence.”
Today, the idea of degrading the physical durability of many products, although alive and well, has been eclipsed by something more pervasive: “psychological obsolescence.”Persuading consumers to ditch perfectly usable products for more fashionable versions with little more than cosmetic changes has transformed consumer capitalism.
While anti-conformists may, at first, succeed in devising their own personal brand of sartorial rebelliousness, it’s followed by an inevitable, if unintentional, synchronization around a single appearance. Touboul’s study looks at how such people seem to inevitably become synchronized. He suspects that a major influence on the way it happens may be the speed of propagation of styles through a culture.
As the old Chinese saying goes, “If one seeks to identify a true beauty, then one must look at her appearance in a qipao”. This is precisely what Temper is here to do today. Backed by a true pro in the field: Chic Xique.
Chic Xique, founded by Yolanda Luo and based in Hong Kong, is the first 21st Century qipao lifestyle-gram, bringing together anything and everything concerning this historical, cultural and revolutionary classic.
Symbolizing the liberated 1920s New China Woman, this beckons the question… Is the qipao ready for another century of rambunctious revolution?
“Environments and infrastructure shape music in often subtle, imperceptible ways,” says David Zhou, the founder of London night, Eastern Margins. “With Eastern Margins, we are always fighting a battle against the scarcity of venues and spaces available, and that constricts the ideas that we can implement. Whilst we’re still incredibly privileged in the UK with the access to infrastructure we have, the direction of travel is increasingly dark. The closure of venues will inevitably lead to more conformity, as promoters are forced to fit into existing structures.”
We’re not just getting dragged for our skinny jeans. Gen Z is letting us know our choices in socks, shirt cuts, neutral colors, and even buying new instead of used, are tired, outdated — and sometimes even offensive.
Every generation has a hard time keeping up with fashion trends, but Gen Z became the generation to define cool in the era of TikTok, when trends moved faster than ever.
In 2023, clean girl, girl math, Barbiecore, coquette and tomato girl summer dominated our social feeds. This year, these trends have quickly been replaced by mob wife winter, corpcore and loud budgeting. That’s the thing about micro-trends: they’re fleeting.
In this sense, they’re not really micro-trends at all, argues trend forecaster Agustina Panzoni. “When you look at trends, you look at movements that span multiple years and multiple seasons on the micro-side,” she says. “So what has been labelled ‘micro-trends’ are more like ‘internet aesthetics’. They’re pre-packaged styles that you can buy into.”
Our circular solutions cover three key systems: food, the built environment and manufactured goods. For each country profile—lower-income Build, middle-income Grow and higher-income Shift—we highlight the most relevant systems. And, for the first time, we place people at the centre of this story, exploring the jobs and skills powering the circular transition.
Most significantly, as I found out, reaching potential customers is shockingly easy: In the course of testing TikTok’s seller tools, a placeholder listing for a used mechanical pencil got me more than a thousand livestream viewers, most of whom were as confused as I was. (More about that soon.)
“Knowledge is power,” Bianca Rangecroft, founder and CEO of digital wardrobe app Whering, says. First launched primarily as a styling tool, the app has seen a 129 per cent increase in people tracking their wardrobe in the past year. “The number one reason why [people] are coming to Whering is because it actually gives real time insights,” she notes. “I get [to see] what’s high versus low utilisation, what are some of the things that I’m wearing on repeat – and, lastly, a look into my cost per wear.”
Analyzing Trends 