Artificial Intelligence—and Some SSENSE Editors—Predict Summer 2024’s Aesthetics

In the post-pandemic world a new battle is being fought in another cultural colosseum: the aesthetic of the summer. Ideas popular in the early 2020s, like cottagecore and indie sleaze, were lifestyle trends that included not just fashion but hobbies and activities, too. To genuinely embody cottagecore meant excelling in basketmaking. If you wanted to be indie sleaze, you needed a Sony Cyber-shot digital camera. Those expansive trends are replaced each summer with highly specific micro ones: tomato girl summer fought coastal grandmother aesthetic in 2023.

To predict the super-specific, near indescribable cocktail of vibes that will rule summer 2024, the team at SSENSE took advantage of every tool at our disposal. We tracked Google Trends data monitoring spikes in bratty behavior. We compared TikToks to look for a man in finance. We asked the music steamers for playlists based on the Challengers soundtrack and Chappell Roan. We watched the “recommended for you” movies on Amazon Prime Video and fed our favorite lines into ChatGPT.

We collected all this cultural detritus into one long laundry list of people, places, things, and ideas, and began to organize it into groups that we fed into Midjourney, asking the AI software to generate images based on our prompts. In collaboration with the machine, we present the five vast and strangely niche vibes of summer 2024.

Chappell Roan—normcore—election year—camisole tops

The fusion of normcore and understated quiet luxury basics has birthed a new kind of American Teenage Dream aesthetic that favors normalcy over a bold fashion statement. It’s a look for a post-Brandy Melville world, where that denim flannel might be secretly Bottega Veneta leather, and the soundtrack is almost exclusively Chappell Roan.

Red wine sangria—fisherman sandals—Challengers—olympics

The heat of Challengers meets Olympics fever in a sexy, summer trend that melds the European vacation vibes of Tomato Girl Summer with the sweaty, sensual mood of a Spanish seaside night. It’s post blokecore and post lad-culture, but accepts that clubbing—and loving—is a sport.

Office siren—Ecco2K—Zyn—the hated Apple ad

Corporate sirens and preppy nerds commune after dark in a trend inspired by breaking down the formality of “appropriate” attire. Pastel and neon colors pulled from pastoral sunscapes clash with the expectations of modern life in a screensaver palette. It’s staying at the afters so long you find yourself back at the office.

Addison Rae—American Apparel disco pants—Dior Addict lip gloss—Cobrasnake

If you’ve recently searched “American Apparel Disco Pants” this trend is for you. An evolution of Barbiecore and Y2K, Pop Princess takes the romantic shapes of late aughts and early 2010s It Girls and fuses them with the sexy look of today’s Pop Girlies. For those just living that life.

Billionaires’ Row—lower cortisol—cashmere—Ethereum

Quiet luxury isn’t quiet enough for the real .01%. The ultimate in anonymity comes together with soft textures and basic white and beige for a void of beauty.