Introducing 'normcore', the anti-trend trend

What do you call an à la carte, mix-and-match, label-agnostic approach to style, an anti-fashion fashion trend and a conscious effort to look effortless? If you answered "normcore", then you've at least heard the fashion world's biggest buzzword of the year - even if you don't know it when you see it. And if normcore isn't on your radar yet, that may be because it's a slippery concept.

There are a few things about normcore that aren't up for debate. One is the origin of the term, which can be traced to an October 2013 report titled "Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom" by New York City-based youth trend forecasting agency K-Hole. It reads, in part: "Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post-authenticity coolness that opts into sameness.

"But instead of appropriating an aestheticised version of the mainstream, it just cops to the situation at hand. To be truly normcore, you need to understand that there's no such thing as normal."

But like an unruly child that parents can't control, once birthed into the petri dish of popular culture, K-Hole's hashtaggable nugget was being defined variously as "self-stylised blandness" (in New York magazine), signifying that "blending in is the new standing out" (according to The Guardian). Those cited as members of the norm corps include British media personality Alexa Chung (who apparently bristled at the sobriquet), comic Jerry Seinfeld, the late tech titan Steve Jobs and the former Kate Middleton, whose middle-of-the-road wardrobe choices earned her the title "the Duchess of Normcore" (from Vogue, no less).

While some publications (such as The New York Times) couldn't seem to decide whether normcore was the next big trend or simply a massive fashion in-joke, others doubled down.

When GQ included it in a recent round-up of style tribes (normcore's about "dressing as inconspicuous as possible," according to the fashion bible), there seemed to be no denying the (bland) eagle had landed.