If you consider yourself a fashion enthusiast, find yourself watching styling videos or save a post featuring an intriguing pair of shorts to look up later, the odds of you coming across “niche cool-girl” style videos are quite likely. Fashion videos promising to expose viewers to “niche,” “underrated,” “cool-girl” brands have flooded the feeds and are gaining traction, particularly across Instagram and TikTok. They speak to a recent evolution away from those fleeting trends that require instant participation before dying at week’s end. Now, people are searching for a visually appealing style that speaks to them and offers a semblance of individuality. It's for that reason that these “niche cool-girl brands” videos tend to do well and catch the eye of the fashion-curious. Mia Jacobs, senior strategist for youth fashion at trend forecasting firm WGSN , believes “we’ve moved past the era of micro-trends and core aesthetics and entered a period of hyper-individuality, where the foc...
Listen to the full conversation between Kaelen Haworth and Fashionista Staff Writer Catie Pusateri on The Fashionista Network on Spotify. View the original article to see embedded media. Instead of returning home to Toronto after graduating from Parsons School of Design , Kaelen Haworth ended up staying in New York City for another 15 years building her two fashion brands, Kaelen and Second Sight. Haworth always wanted to open her own store ("I'm better at curating and editing than I was at designing, that's just the truth," she confessed), and once she moved back to Toronto in 2023, she decided it was time to jump into retail . Absolutely Fabrics — an independent multi-brand boutique stocking emerging and established labels alike — opened its doors that same year to become a hub for brand discovery. "There's a lot of opportunity here [in Toronto]," Haworth said. "There's a lot of people who are really interested i...