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The "Soft Girl" aesthetic began life among Nigerian social media influencers, and has since gone mainstream. Evie Muir explores the ideas behind it, and why it has found particular resonance among young black women.
In the 1960s there were the mods and rockers. The 70s saw the disco and flower power eras, while in the 80s, new romantic style had its heyday. Fast forward to the present however, and if you have succumbed to the escapist realms of TikTok, your evening scroll through will have likely exposed you to a whole new world of subcultures. Unfolding at a rapid pace, these aesthetics and styles – which reach dizzying heights as far as likes and engagements are concerned – see the lines between fashion and beauty blur with lifestyle, culture and identity. How we dress and the way we look, these trends tell us, communicate an outward expression of how we choose to live. In recent years it's been hard to miss the Soft Girl trend on TikTok, a #SoftGirl aesthetic that is, as The Trend Spotter puts it, full of "pastel colours, fluttering butterflies and warm fluffy clouds", and as The List says, "slightly-cottagecore, super-femme".
