Pieces of me

If Mark Penn is to be believed, small is the new big. The author of Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes claims that “under-the-radar groups who are doing or thinking things that run counter to conventional wisdom” can “tip an election, make or break a business, or trigger a social movement.” A microtrend, he states in the two-year-old book, can number as little as three million people. This fragment, however, is enough to create significant shifts in society.

Faster than you can say “Next!” this phenomenon — the Internet has hastened the onset — has permeated pop culture as well, turning emerging obsessions into even shorter flings. From blog-friendly bands to anonymous models, the current youthscape may look pretty. A closer examination, unfortunately, will reveal that it’s also pretty forgettable.

Bursts Of Publicity

As Alyx Gorman writes in Oyster magazine #82, the “Luminary” issue, a pop-up band appears “with bursts of publicity on hot-lists and talents-to-watch spaces, they garner pages of critical acclaim, and then you don’t hear a peep for months.” The web editor of the Australian fashion publication may have been referring to Hot Little Hands, a fivesome from Sydney, but the definition applies to most of today’s burgeoning rock and indie-electro acts.     

Future-focused magazines and music blogs — The Fader, Nylon Guys, Dazed & Confused, and WavesAtNight.com are some of my sources — earmark prime space for these bubbling-under groups on a regular basis; there are too many of them that they tend to lose character. The number of new bands to keep track of can drive even the most passionate music cognoscenti bonkers.

This is probably why only a handful have managed to translate viral fame into real-life success in recent years: Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Lily Allen, Friendly Fires, and The Virgins. On the other hand, the likes of Animal Collective, Passion Pit, Bon Iver, and Miike Snow still remain relatively obscure despite the rapturous cyber-response. Bands like these are in danger of coming and going like the annoying online ads after which their type of fame was named. The peak, it seems, is getting blogged about.

Anonymodels

This nano-sociology also applies to the most fickle of battlefields: fashion. Gorman, in another Oyster article, notices the interchangeability in the industry. “For most of this decade, models have been a series of anonymous Eastern European emaciates, young enough to be the daughters of the front row. Sure there were some successes, even household names, but no one really cared.”

While millennial mannequins like Sasha Pivovarova, Agyness Deyn, Caroline Trentini, Coco Rocha, Anja Rubik, Jessica Stam, Gemma Ward, Chanel Iman and Jourdan Dunn are considered by many as the leading lights of this style generation — i-D and French Vogue have dedicated entire issues to some of these girls — their wattage is weak compared to that of their ’90s counterparts.

Celebrity-Alert Nudges

The problem, if you can call it that, is that the business is saturated with rafts of these beautiful aliens that it gets harder to stand out, be noticed, and build a long-lasting catwalk career. Just as a blonde Russian waif is buzzed about by designers, 10 look-alikes show up to try to cash in on the trend — and some are 13-year-olds. All of this, of course, is apart from Hollywood celebrities stealing gigs meant for bonafide human hangers.

It’s even more difficult for the guy gazelles. Small fry compared to the females, male supermodels are almost impossible to come by now. The ones that have warranted the most celebrity-alert nudges during the last few seasons are all British: Cole Mohr, Josh Beech, George Barnett, Luke Worall and Ash Stymest. Even then, only the most fervent model worshipper can tell them apart in a police line-up. Faceless faces? Kind of ironic.

And as if epitomizing today’s highly changeable climate, the last one, 17-year-old Stymest, was once part of an all-male-model band called The Mannequins. They formed in January 2009 and parted ways in April.

Societal Subsets

“I think we are seeing an explosion of tolerance for differences which is an important pre-condition for the growth of microtrends. People have to feel comfortable expressing themselves and so society is opening up in many new ways,” Mark Penn continues in his treatise. “Microtrends represent the triumph of personal choice, and with the rise of choice comes not only greater personal satisfaction, but also greater freedom for individual and minority rights.”

Perhaps our fragmentation into tiny, societal subsets is a sign that culture is turning inward faster than ever. The good news for the easily bored is that there’s bound to be something fresh and new, so to speak, that we can call our own when we feel like it.

The downside? As tiny details take precedence over the bigger picture, future generations may scoff at the suggestion of teamwork. Moreover, if society continues to splinter off and think in piecemeal, it will become virtually impossible for global phenomena to take root, gain traction and sink into our collective memory. It may be a whole lot easier to indulge individual whims these days as everything is — or at least, can be — niche. But when everything is about “me, me, me,” what will happen to the concept of “us”?