What We’re Tracking: Emerging Aesthetics & Ideas, October 2025

When we first started What We’re Tracking, it was just a newsletter segment in The Week, a few observations each week on how taste shifts in real time, paired with three questions to ask and ways to apply what’s happening. Over the past two years, it’s become something of a cultural early-warning system. More than once, we’ve seen other publications cover the same shifts months later, sometimes a year on, and brands launch campaigns that feel uncannily familiar. We’re not claiming credit, but we are claiming instinct.

That’s the thrill and the curse of watching culture too closely: you can see what’s coming, but you have to wait for everyone else to catch up.

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I’ve always been drawn to the spaces between definitions, the moment before a pattern declares itself, before something becomes something else. I don’t have the stomach for medicine, but I share its curiosity: the urge to open an idea, an image, or an atmosphere and trace how it holds together. I think in cross-sections, laying a subject flat until its hidden architecture begins to show.

That habit feels useful this time of year. Q4 always reveals the edges of what will matter next. The obvious trends are already being written about; the interesting ones are still half-hidden, in the intersitial, back channels, and small collectives. This is where the next aesthetic vocabulary begins to take shape.

1. lost tapes

In the shadow of the streaming wars, small groups of collectors are hunting for films that exist only on VHS. They search thrift shops and auction sites for titles that never made the leap to digital. Once found, they digitise the tapes at home, swap them in closed forums, and catalog every scratch and hiss as part of the record.

The point isn’t nostalgia; it’s preservation. These archivists see beauty in fragility, the way a tape warps colour or how a commercial break interrupts a forgotten movie. Their work has seeded a broader fascination with physical decay as texture. You can already see its influence in independent fashion lookbooks, boutique design, even fragrance packaging that mimics magnetic dust.

As brands move into 2026, the analog collector’s ethos is likely to shape how luxury handles scarcity. Expect small-run media editions, physical drops, and members-only screenings that borrow the aura of these lost-tape exchanges. In a world where everything streams, owning what might vanish becomes a mark of taste.

2. new running class

Across global cities, running is evolving from solitary exercise to cultural currency. Crews in Paris, New York, and Seoul meet before dawn in coordinated gear that blends performance with street style. They log miles and heart rates as personal branding, share edited night-run videos, and finish at cafés that double as social clubs.

This movement has turned running into a platform for belonging. The most interesting part isn’t the fitness, it’s the structure of access. Some crews are invitation-only, supported by niche athletic labels like Satisfy Running or District Vision. Collaborations such as On Running × Loewe show how high fashion is positioning itself inside this space.

By 2026, the format will blur with private-member culture: runs that start at boutique hotels, post-laps that resemble gallery openings, and limited-edition kits treated like art releases. Athleticism becomes a passport to community.

3. micro-aesthetics as language

While the streets fill with runners, the online world keeps subdividing into microscopic style dialects. Young users on TikTok and Pinterest invent entire looks around single characters or foods: Gilmorecore’s cozy academia, Hello Kitty Girl’s sugary e-girl minimalism, Chococore’s chocolate-toned comfort.

These hyper-specific tags rarely hit mainstream media, yet each builds a self-contained world of references, colour codes, and playlists. They function like personal mythologies, ways to declare identity through extreme specificity. For brands, the point is clear: mass storytelling no longer persuades; niche fluency does. Cultural relevance now depends on speaking a dozen micro-languages at once.

4. community-driven travel

Not every signal comes from a screen. In travel, there’s a slow but decisive shift toward micro-communities that turn movement into belonging. Instead of the lone, aspirational escape, travellers are organising around shared curiosity, photography, food, meditation, design, and making that the point of the journey.

Boutique hotels and specialist operators now build itineraries that act like temporary clubs. A photography lodge in Iceland might host week-long residencies; a chef in Oaxaca curates food tours that double as creative retreats. Design-driven hotel groups report that guests no longer just ask for views or amenities—they ask who else will be there.

Remote-work “workation” villages extend the same impulse. For a month at a time, digital nomads rent adjoining villas, co-work by day, and explore together after hours. Luxury properties are quietly adapting: communal tables replace formal dining, local volunteer projects sit beside spa menus, and “guest workshops” bring strangers into conversation.

This isn’t performative togetherness; it’s a redefinition of value. Eighty-four percent of travellers say hotels could foster community, but barely a quarter feel they actually do. The gap between those numbers is where the next travel revolution sits. Connection has become the new status symbol, and the most forward-thinking brands will build it into their infrastructure, less marble, more meeting of minds.

5. connecting the dots

Taken together, the lost-tape archivists, the new running crews, the micro-aestheticists, and the community travellers reveal a shared hunger for ownership and discovery. People are searching for meaning they can touch, join, or name for themselves. The mood heading into 2026 is tactile, participatory, and self-curated.

These aren’t fleeting trends; they’re practice grounds for how culture reorganises itself. The VHS hunter restores what was almost forgotten. The runner builds belonging through motion. The aesthetic maker claims individuality by narrowing the frame until it feels personal. The traveler rebuilds luxury through connection. Each one resists the algorithmic flattening of taste.

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Three Questions for CMOs

Have we mistaken participation for intimacy?

Communities aren’t KPIs; they’re trust systems. Reach is easy. Resonance isn’t. Are we building spaces where people belong, or just brush past the brand?

What are we financing, growth or gravity?

Every spend either fuels motion or adds mass. Some buys build trust; others just bloat. As budgets tighten, are we investing in momentum or maintenance?

How do we measure what can’t be modelled?

Trust, creativity, belonging, they’re hard to price, harder to rebuild. In an AI economy, who’s accountable for what can’t be counted?

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The future rarely announces itself. It starts as a low-frequency side comments inside coffee breaks, half-second thoughts in the shower, feeds, and the forums most people never visit. Look there long enough and you start to see the outlines of what comes next: collections of tapes that shouldn’t exist, run crews that operate like member clubs, wardrobes built around dessert, dinners that turn strangers into allies.

The in-between is not the absence of trend. It’s the workshop where the next one is being made.