Something shifted this year, and I didn't immediately clock it until I saw the data.

The slicked back bun, the glazed donut skin, the meticulously organized shelfie, the 5 AM Pilates class followed by a green juice and journaling in matching neutrals? She's exhausted. Not just physically (because we all knew that was coming), but culturally. 

The clean girl aesthetic, the one that dominated TikTok for years with over 248 million posts under #cleangirl, is quietly unraveling; and what's taking her place is messier, louder, and honestly, a lot more interesting.

I've been watching this happen in real time, in the way my For You Page has stopped serving me organizational hacks and started serving me Lola Young's "Messy" on repeat. "I'm too messy, and then I'm too fucking clean," she sings, and the internet has turned it into an anthem. It's not just a song. It's a whole mood shift.

The clean girl aesthetic became more about performance than personality. Content creator Anne Valois pointed this out in a TikTok that broke down the shift, noting that "conformity used to be a status symbol" but now it "reads more like a lack of imagination or algorithmic compliance." 

That hit me because I've seen this in brand strategy for years. When everyone is doing the same thing, it stops being aspirational, and it starts being boring.

The data backs this up. According to real-time consumer tracking platform Particl, tobacco products are up 843 percent and alcoholic beverages are up nearly 1,000 percent in the past 12 months. 

Brands like Coach and Ganni are benefiting from this shift because they've always leaned into character-driven design rather than quiet luxury conformity. Suddenly, having a beer in cowboy boots feels more aspirational than having a green juice at Erewhon.

YPulse research found that 55% of 18-24-year-old women say social media makes them feel bad about their appearance. The messy girl aesthetic is the direct counter to that pressure. Instead of curating every detail to look like Hailey Bieber's rhode vanity, we're leaning into carefree style that feels less like copying others and more chaotic in the best way.

Let's be real: the clean girl aesthetic was never just about slicked back buns and minimal makeup. It was a whole philosophy: optimization, discipline, control. Morning routines that started at 5AM. Skincare that cost more than rent. Workout classes that required booking a week in advance. The message was clear: your life should look like a wellness advertisement, and if it didn't, you were doing it wrong.

The problem is that this aesthetic had some pretty serious blind spots. Research from Florida State University found that 60% of clean girl content creators had thin body types, 66% adhered to Eurocentric beauty ideals, and only 6% were nonwhite.

The aesthetic wasn't just aspirational; it was exclusionary. It demanded expensive products, specific body types, and honestly? A level of time and energy that most of us do not have.

Meanwhile, the messy girl is over here with her two-day-old hair, wired headphones, smudged eyeliner, and absolutely ZERO guilt about it. She's not rejecting ambition. She's rejecting the performance of perfection that was never sustainable in the first place.

Here's where my business brain kicks in. Aesthetic trends don't exist in a vacuum. They're directly tied to economic conditions. The clean girl aesthetic emerged during and after the pandemic when we all craved control in a chaotic world. It offered a fantasy of order: if I can just organize my skincare shelf, maybe I can organize my life.

The messy girl shift is happening against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, climate anxiety, and collective exhaustion with influencer culture. When the world feels out of control, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stop trying to look like you have it together. It's giving anti-optimization. It's giving "I refuse to perform wellness for the algorithm."

The indie sleaze revival happening alongside this shift isn't coincidental. The original indie sleaze era (2008-2012) emerged after the financial crisis when there was similar disillusionment with mainstream consumerism. Now we're seeing the same pattern: thrifting over fast fashion, DIY over designer and character over conformity. 

If you're a founder, a marketer, or anyone trying to connect with consumers right now, pay attention. The brands winning this moment are the ones that feel like they have personality, not just polish. They're the ones that embrace imperfection rather than running from it.

Ganni gets it. Creative director Ditte Reffstrup has described the brand as 'playful, confident, sexy, and full of contrasts,' and their clothes work for day-to-night dressing, imperfect layering, and women who want to look like themselves rather than a copy of someone else. Coach gets it too, with their character-driven design ethos that feels distinctly NOT quiet luxury. Even Charli XCX's entire "Brat" aesthetic is built on this principle: chaos as creative expression.

The question for brands isn't "how do we look more polished?" It's "how do we look more human?" That's a fundamentally different brief, and most companies aren't equipped to execute it because they've spent years optimizing for the opposite.

I'll be honest: I see myself in this shift. I spent years girlbossing too close to the sun, optimizing every corner of my life, performing wellness while actually burning out. 

The messy girl aesthetic isn't about giving up. It's about giving ourselves permission to be human in a world that's been demanding we be content. Designer Francesca Grace said it perfectly: "There's intention in the messiness. It's about warmth, comfort, and expressing yourself without worrying about perfection."

That's it. That's the whole thing. We're tired of the pressure to look the same, behave the same, and follow identical routines. We want our lives to look like places where life is actually happening, not museum exhibits curated for Instagram.

So if you've been feeling like you can't keep up with the clean girl standard, congratulations: you're ahead of the trend. The messy girl era isn't coming. She's already here, and I think she's going to be a lot more fun at parties.

What about you? Have you felt the shift away from the curated, optimized version of yourself? 

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