Is "Core"-core in Anymore?

Have we shifted away from boxing ourselves in, in search of something more?

Amid a heatwave in New York, there I was: sitting at my desk, trying to muster up enough heat-exhausted brain cells to form a singular thought. Most of my office is traveling right now, which means it’s almost completely silent—a stark contrast to the near-constant chatter that bounces off the walls at Tibi HQ. Knowing this would be the case, I carved out some time on my calendar to take advantage of the solitude and crank out a few Substack posts. So, you can imagine my frustration when I begin a new draft and…nothing. It seems the silence has taken up residence not just in my office, but in my brain, too. Sometimes, when I experience writer’s block, I take five minutes and read something else—it usually helps kickstart my mind into writing mode. In the midst of my scrolling, a thought occurs to me: “I haven’t seen a single trend article with ‘-core’ attached to it. Like, in a really long time.”

This time last year, I wouldn’t have been able to open my phone, eavesdrop on a conversation on the subway, or watch television without hearing about “Cottage Core” or “Ballet Core” or even “Nancy Meyers-Core.” The lack of “core” trend chatter was so loud, I heard it in my dead-silent office. Have we moved away from identifying trends in this way? If so, what could that indicate about the way we view—the way we communicate—our personal style?

This isn’t to say that trends are no longer a thing. They will always be a thing. Polka dots, silk pants, mesh flats—they still walk among us, whether you like them or not. Except now, they walk alone, without being siloed into a quippy one-liner category. Perhaps it’s an indication of the sheer exhaustion that the trend cycle triggers, for those who start them and those who follow them. Last summer was so saturated with calls to action to participate in the latest and greatest hyper-niche fashion subcultures, I think it left many of us completely confused, filled with buyer’s remorse, and hungry for something…else.

Something more.

And I don’t say more as in, “suddenly we are all craving maximalism.” I mean more in the sense of meaning—something real, true, and personal. In its purest form, personal style goes beyond what we like, or even what we find remotely beautiful or interesting. Rather, it has everything to do with how we move through the world—the clues that we curate and choose to give to others about who we are and how to interact with us.

I’ve been thinking about this as it relates to community, as well—particularly for Gen-Z and Gen Alpha, who have never known community apart from the digital age. If we have collectively moved beyond finding common ground solely from the fact that you and the girl next to you both have the same “Clean Girl / Strawberry Milk-core” manicure, what are the things that bind us together? Where does community come from? Because your nails might be the same trendy shade of milky pink, but you’re both individuals with incredibly complex and unique lives of your own. And it would feel vapid to water you both down to a singular, one-dimensional aesthetic.

So—IF we are no longer style nomads that hop from one trend camp to the next, I wonder: are we still finding community in fashion archetypes?

If you’re asking me, my answer is yes—but I think we’re demanding more from our definition of community than we have before. Simply wearing the same designer or striving for a similar aesthetic is no longer enough to feel like you are truly understood by a group of people; like you’re part of something larger than yourself. And it’s in this innate craving for togetherness that trends like Mob Wife and Quiet Luxury begin to crumble. Okay…so you and someone else are both wearing massive fur stoles and blingy platform wedges—is that enough to make you feel like you can strike up a conversation that extends beyond pleasantries? (This is a rhetorical question—though maybe that is enough for you, and that’s okay).

I’ll share an example. I’m in a season of life where I’ve established who my friends are in adulthood—which I’ve discovered is a very different kind of friendship than high school, or even university friendships. You have to find things that bind you to one another outside of the school that you go to, or the extracurriculars that you’re part of. Time is scarce and expensive, and these friendships need to be rich and dynamic enough to warrant time spent. Before finding these friends, like most twenty-somethings searching for community, we went out in groups. Like, really large “catch-all” type groups—friends of friends, kind-of-acquaintances, and total strangers, all in tow. All hoping to find people that they could call friends. This was sometimes miserable, and awkward, and kind of exhausting, but like grocery shopping and laundry—it must be done. And I distinctly remember being out, scanning the various unfamiliar characters for visual cues that we might have things in common. The problem was that at the time, this was a really challenging task. The trendy “going out” outfit was a pair of jeans, a black top (bonus points if it was sheer), and black boots. Everyone looked exactly the same. You would think that since we all had the same “style” that surely we would have things to talk about…right? WRONG.

Out of all the dozens of conversations and connections I had made, I wound up with just two close girlfriends. Two people that I really connected with, out of a sea of people whose clothing mirrored one another. And it’s interesting—now that times have changed and we’ve graduated from jeans-and-a-going-out-top and developed our personal styles over the years, it makes absolute sense that the three of us are so close. We are from different walks of life, and even different continents. Each of us falls on different ends of the CP Scale—Bruna feels incredibly comfortable rocking a sheer midi skirt, Dani lives in a sleek shift dress, and I am my happiest self in a pair of baggy blue jeans—but the codes are there, and they’re aligned. And I would bet that if we had met for the first time at this age, we would spot each other in a crowd instantly and waste no time in making a beeline for each other to chit chat.

In this same way, maybe you and someone else are both dressed completely differently from one another, but you can’t help but notice that you have similar personal style codes. You might even sit on polar ends of a scale, one of you super creative, the other dogmatically pragmatic. But there’s enough visual evidence there to indicate that you have similar mindsets. You both recognize that neither of you is one-dimensional, and that, to me, is the gateway for community. Creative Pragmatism is—at its very core—the embodiment of “two things can be true at once.” And likely, you’re plenty of other things, too. Maybe you’re a new mom, or a student, or a crypto entrepreneur. Perhaps you’re a teacher, or an artist, or a psychologist. One thing is for certain: you’ll all have something in common beyond wearing the same pair of shoes. And that’s a beautiful thing.