How To Talk About Fashion Now

Rian Phin’s tiktok videos are about fashion – but there are few of the styling tips, hacks or hauls that usually dominate the category. instead, watch her videos and you might learn something new.

One reveals how the y2k revival ‘signals authenticity’ in our modern era, a further focuses on status as it relates to style and another is something even less typical of an average fashion creator: a reading list.

Phin, whose social-media handle is @thatadult, is one of a new generation of voices giving fashion criticism a software update. There’s also, to name a few, @thekimbino, an Instagram account run by Kim Russell that looks at catwalk nostalgia through an archival lens; Odunayo Ojo’s Fashion Roadman on YouTube, which offers fashion history and analysis to newcomers and insiders alike; @oldloserinbrooklyn on TikTok, a trend-forecaster account run by Mandy Lee; and Alexandra Hildreth’s commentary under the account @ guyfieri.superfan, also on TikTok.

Moving on from the age-old notion of the fashion critic as a front-row insider reviewing catwalk shows for a small audience of other fashion experts, this new cohort is more likely to give their thoughts from their bedrooms – but with significant reach. Ojo’s YouTube channel has nearly 100k subscribers. The Kimbino has 158k followers on Instagram, including Julia Fox, Precious Lee and Jourdan Dunn. Lee’s @oldloserinbrooklyn, meanwhile, has an audience of 430k on TikTok and such influence that a video about indie sleaze she posted in October 2021 sparked last year’s much-discussed revival.