"According to the website Know Your Meme, it's been five years since the wake up babe format which sees the phrase pasted over an image of a man waking up his girlfriend to announce a new internet talking point really took off. I first encountered it at the height of what might be called core fever in fashion. A new look seemed to be arriving on social media feeds every week, driven by gen Z's love of blink-or-miss-it microtrends."
"The idea of core in fashion dates back to 2014, when trend-forecasting agency K-Hole described a bland and anonymous aesthetic they saw on the streets of New York as normcore. Now a descriptor that is applied to everything from from gen Z's cult style icon Adam Sandler to characters in video games, the suffix has since been joined by what feels like thousands of things from corpcore (meaning a corporate, businesslike look) andclowncore, to one of my favourites, the anything-goes weirdcore."
"These microtrends aren't just dizzying they are part of the acceleration of fast fashion, with brands producing cheap, throwaway items to appeal to a fleeting moment. In 2025, this cycle has slowed down somewhat, but fashion hasn't kicked the habit entirely. Just look at the recent medievalcore, an online aesthetic that takes its cue from an era more than 600 years before the invention of the iPhone. This is a style that focuses on long skirts, corsets and pretty chainmail headbands;"
‘Wake up babe’ format places the phrase over an image of a man waking his girlfriend to announce new internet talking points and gained momentum around five years ago. The trend resurfaced amid Gen Z-driven 'core' fashion fever, which started with normcore in 2014. Numerous '-core' microaesthetics emerged, including corpcore, clowncore and weirdcore, fueling rapid seasonal changes. These microtrends accelerate fast fashion as brands produce cheap, disposable garments to capture fleeting moments. In 2025 the turnover pace eased but continued. Medievalcore became prominent online and at festivals, featuring long skirts, corsets, chainmail headbands and celebrity endorsements.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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