Most of us don't buy a trend because we love it. We buy it because everyone else already does.

It's the safest feeling there is. Nobody questions the thing that's everywhere. The boucle chair. The beige wall. The print that's on every second feed. You can buy it without explaining yourself, because the explanation is already built in. It's what everyone's doing.

I get the pull. Choosing something that's truly yours means risking being wrong in public. A trend takes that risk away. If it falls out of fashion, you were wrong with everyone else, and that's a much more comfortable kind of wrong.

But a trend is borrowed taste. It's an identity you can pick up in a weekend, delivered to your door, before you've had to work out who you actually are. For a lot of us, that's the appeal. It fills the space where certainty should be.

I see it in how people buy art too. The question I hear most is will it go with the sofa. Not does it stop you. Not does it feel like something. Will it match. It's the same instinct. Choose the thing that can't be questioned.

Here's what I think happens, though. A trend gets old the moment you stop being in love with the idea of belonging to it. The piece you chose because it moved you doesn't age that way. It doesn't need the room to stay in fashion. It only needs you to stay honest.

You can usually tell which one you bought. Years later, one still makes you stop in the hallway. The other just reminds you what year it was.

Buy the thing you'd still choose if nobody ever saw it.

Ready?

DX