In early 2022, it seemed like the internet, and specifically TikTok, was coughing up one fringe aesthetic after the next: Cottagecore! Trad Cath Coquette! Old Money! Coastal Grandmother! And of course, our personal fave, Dark Academia.
We even did a whole episode on it examining post-pandemic aesthetics (what a time). Fast forward to today, and that frenetic churn of social media-born aesthetics seems to have slowed somewhat, leaving behind a landscape that seems a bit more fragmented and difficult to parse.
So we’ve brought back our guest for that episode — style writer, trend forecaster, and bonafide Cool Girl Biz Sherbert — to help us make sense of things. Biz has stayed plenty busy, keeping her discerning eye on how the internet shapes how we dress, look, and see each other, to become one of the most exciting (and sharp) young voices in fashion criticism. Along with continuing to co-host the influential fashion and culture podcast Nymphet Alumni, and writing for places like The Face and Document Journal, Biz recently launched a new publication all about “what people are really wearing and why.”
It’s called American Style (on Substack! Subscribe!), and it’s pretty damn refreshing as far as the landscape of style and social media reportage goes. Which is the point: Biz created it as a kind of corrective to style coverage that’s largely become siloed into two reductive ways of thinking: Either that youth fashion is dead, ruined by social media and its endless trends; or, that none of those trends are even real things that make it to IRL.
If you’re a subscriber, you already got a little taste via our Coachella collab with American Style a couple weeks ago. And you’re new here, you’re in for a treat: Biz joins us to talk about American Style’s origin story and what’s she’s gleaned from talking to young people *out in the real world,* at places ranging from a Deftones concert in Atlanta to Disneyworld in Orlando. We also get into the state of countercultural and subcultural fashion in 2025, why men and boys seem, for the first time in a long time, to be leading the style conversation, the role that festivals like Coachella play in the wider image-making ecosystem, and the strange staying power of the festival cowgirl.
Subscribe to American Style and follow Biz on Instagram (fka @marcfisherquotes). Listen to Nymphet Alumni on your pod platform of choice.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe
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