Does calling it a 'trend' kill the trend?

The proposed death of trend forecasting

The fashion trend cycle over the past few years has been off-putting (exhausting, even). And lately, whenever I post something like “the data shows that X is trending” on instagram, comments like “now I know what to avoid” or “who still follows trends” inevitably follow. So! I wanted to know if calling something a “trend” was actually killing its appeal in 2025. And further, if the language of trend forecasting has become some kind of red flag.

Thankfully, I have 10K (ish) story viewers on ig, which gives me a good (albeit biased) sample to test these questions. I asked the question, “hearing about a trend makes me want to…” (a) buy or thrift it, (b) avoid it, (c) depends. The winning response was “depends” at 2070 votes (60% of respondents). And when asked what it depends on, the overwhelming majority said: “If the trend fits my personal style” (71%, 2546 votes), followed by, “If the trend has staying power” (19%, 666 votes). The takeaway here was that my audience is not necessarily anti-trend, but they may be anti-mass-trend. Relevance may no longer be about what is broadly popular, but where the data-point or insight comes from and how it aligns with the individual.