5 Current Fashion & Beauty Trends That Predicted A Conservative Political Swing Before Most People Could See It, According To A Style Expert
Most of us didn't see the election results coming, but those who follow trends saw it a mile away.
IOIO IMAGES | Shutterstock It's long been said that all art is political, and fashion, beauty, and design aesthetics are no exception. When it comes to fashion, the conventional wisdom has always been that you can gauge the national perception of the economy, even if not necessarily the economy itself, by looking at clothes, particularly women's hemlines — the lower they are, the more pinched and pessimistic people are likely feeling.
Many of us were shocked by the recent election results and never saw the rightward swing coming. But when you weigh it in the context of fashion and beauty trends, the canaries in the proverbial coalmine were singing all along — and had been for years.
5 fashion and beauty trends that predicted a conservative political swing, according to a fashion expert:
Elysia Berman is a fashion and style influencer who tracks beauty and design trends on her TikTok account. In a recent video, she said that she saw Trump's big win a mile away because the trends have been moving toward conservatism, conformity, and, perhaps especially, views of womanhood that many of us would consider not just old-fashioned but maybe even downright retrograde.
"Fashion is political, okay?" Berman said in her video, and it has always been this way. The go-to example is always the Roaring '20s drop-waists and above-the-knee flapper dresses moving to the natural waists and ankle-length of the Depression-era 1930s in pretty much the blink of an eye after the 1929 stock market crash.
The same happened between the '90s and the years after the 2008 Great Recession. The notorious mini-skirt business suits of "Ally McBeal" and sexualized Juicy Couture sweatsuits of the booming '90s and 2000s gave way to a more subtle, logo-free minimalism after 2008 came along and upended nearly everyone's wallets.
And tellingly, some of those aesthetics have never really left, even after ostentation returned in key ways like the Kardashian-izing of the human face — rather than disappear with better economic times, Great Recession "subtlety chic" just shifted into the cold, grey-black-and-beige minimalism of recent years. It is no coincidence that for the vast majority of us, economic factors like the job and housing markets have never returned to pre-2008 normalcy either.
(That disconnect, by the way, between the Biden Administration's strong fundamental economic numbers and people's lived experience of their own financial realities — that the economic recovery hadn't yet lowered people's rent payments and grocery bills — is, according to polling, basically what pushed Trump over the top.)
But it's not just economy-driven aesthetics that were hiding in plain sight. The regressive social trends this economic strife has brought were there in our fashion and design aesthetics all along, too.
"The conformity on [social media] and in the fashion industry over the last two years is extremely indicative of a return to [conservatism]," Berman said. "And honestly, shame on us for not knowing." Here are five signs we missed while they were right under our noses.
1. 'Trad wife,' 'cottagecore' and other trends informed by old-fashioned ideas of femininity
This is the most obvious one, as these aesthetics are rooted in notions that women's place is in the home — ideally, the kitchen — and that their duties and allegiances should be to husbands and families.
There's nothing wrong with choosing that kind of life, of course. But when a trend comes with pronouncements about what women "should" be doing with their lives, that's something to pay attention to.
And when it's packaged as a lifestyle trend by influencers directly connected to right-wing religious movements? Well ... That's not an accident (and as one of the many people who warned about this for quite some time only to be shouted down as sexists and alarmists… forgive me, but we tried to tell you.)
2. Dissolving fillers, lasering off tattoos, 'the no-makeup makeup look,' and other trends toward undoing past beauty aesthetics
There have been myriad think pieces, including on this website, about how "the Kardashians are over," and what underpins many of them is the obvious point so many left-wing people, including Democratic politicians themselves, missed entirely: People are tired of rich people's crap because they're tired of struggling so much financially.
As the bloom has gone off the Kardashian rose, so too have the beauty trends they inspired fallen out of favor. Social media is full of women who are having the fillers Kim et. al. popularized dissolved to go back to a more "natural" facial appearance, for instance.
More conservative — in both senses of the word — trends have come in behind them. As Berman put it in another video, "Something about that 'no makeup' makeup look screams conservative values to me." Here again, we're talking about traditional views of femininity — "natural beauty" that is fresh and demure rather than sexy and "optimized" like Kylie Jenner or whatever.
3. Trends like 'Utah curls' that come directly from religious conservative culture
This just might be the one trend out of all of them that should have been on everyone's radar. As moms and wives who are members of the Church or Latter-Day Saints have become an ever bigger cultural force online — there's literally a reality show called "The Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives" now — so have beauty trends affiliated with the influencers who peddle it.
Chief among them is "Utah curls," a direct reference to the influencers in question, which is sort of like beachy waves but for… well, Utah moms and housewives. Given how Utah and the LDS church have consistently voted for eons, their aesthetics going insanely viral in recent years was a major tell.
4. 'Old money,' quiet luxury, and a return to 'Americana'
The clothes themselves are showing a conservative swing, too. Berman pointed out that brands like Ralph Lauren and Celine have returned to the forefront. The former, of course, is all about the "preppie," classically American aesthetics that first had their heyday in the 1980s, another deeply conservative era that was obsessed with the bygone supposed utopia of the 1950s (in a way aesthetically not dissimilar to today's 'trad wife' nonsense).
Celine, meanwhile, is all about luxury, but "old money" luxury — think Chanel but laundered of color and embellishment. It's the embodiment of the old saw that "money screams, wealth whispers" — the elegant, refined, aristocratic notions of wealth favored not by progressive Hollywood stars or fingers-on-the-pulse cool kids, but rather the "ladies who lunch" and hold fundraisers — which is to say, power-brokering conservative women.
5. Ozempic and the return of 'thin is in'
Even people who are themselves ON Ozempic called this out in Berman's comments. "I’m on it but Ozempic was also a sign," one wrote. "The body positivity movement was squashed overnight."
That really is a tell. Body positivity was all about accepting and elevating those who've previously been cast aside from the mainstream, but now, "thin is in" all over again, with even the aforementioned Kardashian clan rumored to have had the legendarily curvy physiques they popularized altered to a more slender profile.
The goal of this, of course, is the hallowed conservative value Berman called out previously: conformity. It's no coincidence that even formerly curvy celebrity Republicans like Kimberly Guilfoyle have become whippet thin in recent years.
Like so many of these other trends, the last time we did this was another deeply conservative era — the thinness-obsessed 2000s Bush years that many millennial women, and even many men, will tell you gave them full-on body dysmorphia and eating disorders.
Whether or not this turning back of the clock is going to make America "great" again is certainly up for debate, but what's not is that we should have seen it coming.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.