At the center of the fashion student universe lies the holy grail of inspiration: Pinterest.
According to Pinterest’s “About Us” page, Pinterest is “a visual discovery engine for finding ideas like recipes, home and style inspiration, and more.” An emphasis should be put on “and more” because the content on Pinterest is virtually limitless.
The sheer number of pins is ever-growing, making it a limitless resource for inspiration. As of 2023, there are “billions” of pins on the site created by its 482 million monthly users. “If Pinterest were a country, it would surpass the United States as the third largest in the world.”
Throughout their educational career, fashion students create almost as many mood and trend boards as there are pins on Pinterest, making the site perfect for sourcing photos. Their algorithm just gets it. Pinterest captures vibes and aesthetics, which is something that a Google search can’t do. You can search any word followed by “vibes” on Pinterest and you’ll get an array of photos that feature the object, but through an artistic lens. That is the pull for fashion students– we don’t want just any photos, we want the perfect vibe.
If you aren’t familiar with the site, there are three main pages for each user: home, explore, and create.
Home is similar to Tiktok’s “For You” page, and it features an endless stream of content catered toward each individual’s activity on the site. The more you interact with content, the more personalized your feed becomes.
The “Explore” page sounds like it would be similar to Instagram’s “Explore” page, but it has two fundamental differences. For one, the content is the same for every user and two, it is not an endless stream of content. Every day, Pinterest releases seven themed boards that correlate to what is currently trending on the app. The boards range everywhere from seasonal drinks to niche trends like “cherry mocha nails” or “olive girl fall.”
The create page is where users can use their pins to create their own boards. This is especially appealing to fashion students and professionals because it is laid out in a format that mimics the beginnings of projects they are working on. Creative projects normally start out with an inspiration or trend board, so Pinterest’s layout serves as the perfect blueprint.
The inspiration doesn’t stop at fashion students. Pinterest’s unique structure has begun to appeal to every demographic. From frat brothers looking for tattoo inspiration to 55-year-old moms re-doing their kitchens who pronounce the site as “pin-interest,” all users have one thing in common– they all use Pinterest to plan for the future.
With access to a trail of 482 million people’s future endeavors and interests, Pinterest creates trend reports and according to their site, “for the last three years, 80% of our report predictions came true.” This accomplishment has led them to create their own trend forecasting service called, “Pinterest Predicts.” To debut the service, they have released 27 emerging trends from 2023, some of them including, Romcom-core, Fringe With Benefits, and Mush-rooms. The trend report is free to download and includes statistics, an explanation of the trend’s origin, and “sample pins” for each one.
According to the debut page of Pinterest Predicts, “This isn’t another year-end trend report. This is a not-yet-trending report—a window into the future, from the place where people go to plan it.”
As we continue to search Pinterest their algorithms will only get smarter, leading us to better predictions each year. Whether that idea is terrifying or convenient is up to your interpretation. However, for the majority of users, it’s safe to say the pinning will never end.
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Hi! I’m Annie Gleydura, A Magazine’s editor-in-chief. My staff and I are committed to bringing you the most important and entertaining news from the realms of fashion, beauty and culture. We are full-time students and hard-working journalists. While we get support from the student media fee and earned revenue such as advertising, both of those continue to decline. Your generous gift of any amount will help enhance our student experience as we grow into working professionals. Please go here to donate to A Magazine.
