The Death of the Microtrend: How Style in St Andrews Moves Differently
Are microtrends dying, or have students in the bubble found a different way to define style?
St Andrews has become a fashion haven in its own right. Despite its relatively small size and population, there is a distinct way of dressing that is on trend, chic, and effortless all at once. When comparing a town such as St Andrews to style hotspots such as New York and London, there is a familiar sense of good taste and panache, yet a noticeable absence of one of the most prevailing tropes of the modern age: the microtrend.
After my initial admiration of the in-vogue style of St Andrews students, I began to notice what people weren’t wearing. Thanks to TikTok, Instagram, and the seemingly endless stream of trend forecasts we see on social media, fashion has become a constant cycle that often feels too fast-paced to keep up with. One week, it's ballet flats. Next, it’s vintage graphic tees. The next, it's a new “niche” brand that suddenly has waitlists and preorders, and so on and so forth. While trends and fashion forecasts are still highly present in St Andrews, there is a distinct culture of style that seems to operate on its own schedule.
Here, fashion feels less about wearing whatever is currently trending online and more about curating a sense of individual style that suits both the wearer's identity and the general character of life at the university. Of course, that can still entail the latest Pinterest craze, but being well-dressed here isn’t defined by a need to keep up with whatever’s popular and instead by a natural desire for authenticity, comfort, and personal curation.
Part of what makes St Andrews fashion special is the nature of the town itself. Here, outfits aren’t worn once and then lost in the abyss of a big city or social media post. In St Andrews, you are almost guaranteed to see the same people again and again, whether it be in class, out at the Union, at a dinner party, or strolling down Market Street. Investing in a piece because it's having its five minutes of fame on the internet becomes less appealing when you’re running into the same faces constantly. Instead, students seem to build wardrobes around good pieces that can be repeated, such as well-fitting jeans, high-quality knitwear, jewellery you never take off, and coats that can be paired with a plethora of outfits. Paired with the occasional statement piece, these looks come off as personal and authentic rather than purely trendy. Especially in a place with such an international population, you’ll often find students wearing unique items from their hometowns, passed down from family, or acquired on their travels that can’t be replicated or lost in a sea of fast fashion trends. There is an inherent coolness in finding personal style from within.
People care more about creating their own style rather than recreating outfits straight from Pinterest or TikTok. This also brings in a refreshing element of sustainability, especially in the practice of borrowing clothes from friends and flatmates. The other side of seeing the same people constantly means that there are cases where you don’t want to be seen repeating outfits too often, especially when it comes to more dressy matters such as ballgowns or statement pieces acquired for specific events that occur once a year. This means that you’ll also see the same clothing repeated, but maybe on different people than before. This is something that wouldn’t be common in most other places in the world, but St Andrews fosters a sense of fashion-forwardness that doesn’t have to mean overconsumption and microtrend culture.
Against the grain of such a fast-paced consumer world, in a place where dressing up is ingrained in the student culture, being fashionable doesn’t necessarily mean wearing the newest item but instead finding and knowing what works for you and sticking with it. Microtrends are certainly not dead and gone. It is impossible to be immune to the throes of the fashion cycle on social media, and students are certainly still purchasing the shoes, dresses, jackets, and accessories that are popular online. Trends inevitably make their way onto the St Andrews campus, but these aesthetic frameworks manifest themselves differently here. Instead of completely adopting an ‘aesthetic’ and replacing it with another one a month later, people seem more interested in taking inspiration from current fashion crazes and incorporating them into what works for their personal style, such as bandana scarves, fringe, patterned loafers and ballet flats, and unique jewellery pieces like chokers and fun earrings. The university experience is grounded in finding yourself and working out your true identity, and personal style directly parallels that journey. As a fresher, it can be easy to fall into the idea of what you “should” be wearing, and there can be a certain sense of imposter syndrome when you find yourself wearing outfits to your lectures that you would never imagine putting on at home. However, as one makes their way through their years at St Andrews, they navigate how to match the somewhat vague idea of the “St Andrews” style while finding what they truly like and look good in, and you might just find that when you feel settled in your own self at university, your clothing choices will reflect that.
That is where the real uniqueness of St Andrews style lies. Not in the lack of trends, but in the death of feeling the desperate need to follow all of them. In a town where everyone knows everyone, and where you’ll definitely see the same look more than once, what matters more is finding a sense of style that you truly love rather than putting unnecessary pressure on yourself to fit into an arbitrary mode of trendiness. After all, if we keep running into each other through town, we might as well wear something worth seeing more than once.
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