The Staged Breakdown: From “Clean Girl” to “Messy Girl” - Aesthetic, Capitalism, and an Unstable Present

An essay on aestheticized identities in uncertain times.

By Karoline Brask Ziersen

As a woman in her twenties, it is almost impossible not to feel like a byproduct of trends, hashtags, and algorithms. Especially when, at the moment of writing, you sit there swinging your feet in a pair of Crocs and come across the article “Modefyrsten” in Weekendavisen. Here, Crocs are highlighted as a returning product, in line with the current poor core-phenomenon.

Crocs have gone from being “completely out” to avant-garde, partly due to the well-known designer Demna, who in 2025 took over the position as creative director of Gucci. Many describe him as “the originator of today’s poor core-phenomenon - that is, the fetishization of the aesthetics of the poor.”

Trend forecaster Anna Gunvor Hyttel notes that Crocs were originally created for comfort at home. They are cheap, but have become a new form of value by being rethought. Demna was the first to put the shoes on a runway during his time at Balenciaga - and it is far from the first time his designs have been inspired by the more “primitive.” The entire poor core-phenomenon gives me many parallels to the “messy girl” trend currently circulating on social media.

Social media today functions in many ways as a cultural mirror, which makes me ask the question: what does it say about our time that we have gone from “clean girl” to “messy girl”?

The entire "clean girl" aesthetic dominated social media for several years. Even though it existed during a time of unrest, “she” was still: organized, calm, and controlled. With several billion views on TikTok, she was hardly just a trend - she was an ideal. Donut-glazed skin, minimal makeup, and dressed in an expensive pastel-colored Pilates set, in which she would stroll down the street with a matcha in one hand and Hailey Bieber’s Rhode lip peptide in the other.

But as Nina Pratt writes in her column for Politiken, she also felt like a kind of “dark design” against us - a constant reminder of everything we are not: perfect. She may be structured and disciplined, but completely unrealistic. It was a demand for an organized, stress-free life, where the hair was tight and the morals even tighter.

She is, in many ways, also an image of what research, according to Videnskab.dk, points to: that unrealistic expectations have been created about what it feels like to be young today. “The desire for well-being can become a demand that young people must always feel good.” When we then cannot live up to it, it feels like a personal failure.

When, on top of that, you have to relate to a world marked by economic crisis, inflation, war, and political instability, everything can feel overwhelming. Several economists point out that a new recession is on its way, and some even believe, like Fred Harrison, that it will be “far worse and nastier” than the previous one. National debt, corrupt world leaders, the wars in Ukraine and Iran, spikes in electricity and oil prices, as well as global migration (and I could go on), all contribute to a constant sense of unrest.

We have reached “the economy of exhaustion,” and when the world feels overwhelming, something interesting happens: we turn toward the immediate, toward the body, toward what can be felt right now. The reaction, ladies and gentlemen, let me present: messy girl. She can be described as the intoxicating twin of the clean girl. She is also a product of capitalism, but her rebellion and message are different.

She is the embodiment of hedonism. Oversized leather jacket, smudged makeup, and greasy hair. She wanders through the city, and unlike her sister, she has a lit cigarette in one hand and a black iced coffee in the other.

Yes, you may have seen her before - Kate Moss in the 90s, #indie sleaze in the early 2010s -but today she feels different. As described in analyses of recent pop culture, including Charli XCX’s album BRAT, hedonism no longer appears as luxury, but as necessity. Not as freedom, but as a way to keep going. Hedonism as infrastructure.

Charlie's lyrics:

"When I'm in the club, yeah, I'm (Bumpin' that) 3-6-5, party girl - Shall we do a little key? Shall we have a little line? Wanna go real wild when I'm (Bumpin' that) Meet me in the bathroom if you're (Bumpin' that) 3-6-5, party girl (Bumpin' that) French manicure, wipe away the residue (Ah-ah, ah, ooh) Push my hair back, look hot when (Bumpin' that) No, I really don't stop when I'm (Bumpin' that) Gonna jump when it drops when I'm (Bumpin' that) Dial 999, it's a good time (Ah-ah, ah) Who the fuck are you? I'm a brat when I'm bumpin' that.

Now I wanna hear my track, are you bumpin' that? Till the windows crack, I'll be bumpin' that No, I never go home, don't sleep, don't eat (Ah-ah, ah) Just do it on repeat, keep (Bumpin' that)".

But now the question arises: who actually has the privilege to be messy? Because there is a clear social imbalance in who is allowed to be “messy” in an attractive way. Real messiness is not aesthetic – it is financial stress. It is struggling to pay rent, prioritizing food over skincare. This version is not what we see on TikTok, where chaos is flattering. Instead, we often see thin, white women - just like in the clean girl aesthetic - posing in front of the camera. It can therefore feel like: “A uniform of those who can afford to look like they don’t care.”

“A uniform of those who can afford to look like they don’t care.”

Many believe that Demna’s designs are critiques of power and capitalism. “This is also expressed in his shows, which have taken place in settings resembling the European Parliament or the New York Stock Exchange, where models walked the runway in latex suits.”

Or as visual artist Esben Weile Kjær states: “I don’t really see Demna’s work as provocations, but as an attempt to understand the times we live in. The death of ideologies, the overwhelming amount of information, the transformations of social media - nothing is readable or navigable anymore. I see it as an attempt to capture that chaos.”

And as Anna Gunvor Hyttel points out: “Fashion today is far more driven by consumers… at the same time, social media allows everyone to promote their own aesthetic.”

In many ways, messy girl is therefore also a product of capitalism - a way of promoting one’s aesthetic and oneself. We live in a time where the pendulum swings between clinical perfection and calculated chaos. As if identity has become a performance. If we constantly shift between aesthetics, is there anything left at the core? Or is identity something we shape depending on context and algorithm?

I believe it is important not only to reject messy girl. There is something real in the reaction. Namely the rejection of perfection, a refusal of constant optimization, and a movement toward reuse, recycle, and less superficial consumption.

Messy girl is both a rebellion and a product. A relief and an illusion. And maybe it is not only trends that are changing - but our own understanding of who we are.