It was a long time ago now, but I still remember how the coolest girl in my class used to dress when we were 15. Let’s call her Laura. She was the first to wear Kangol hats, Adidas Gazelles, tiny Kookai tops – looks the rest of us quickly copied. She was also the first to pluck her brows into skinny arches. A week later, there was barely an eyebrow hair in our year group.

Almost 30 years later, teenagers still use clothing for self-expression and social currency. But their spending power has grown dramatically, with the banking app GoHenry recently putting it at £3.3 billion. They also found that, rather than the toddler years when you’re paying what feels like a second mortgage in nursery fees, it’s the teenage years that are the most expensive for parents, when demands for clothing, beauty and tech collide.

The nature of peer influence among Gen Alphas (those born after 2010) has also shifted. There are still early adopters, like Laura, but today’s teens are more likely to discover brands through social media than their friends. Which is an entirely new concept, points out Luke Hodson, founder of youth marketing agency Nerds Collective. ‘In real life, most kids aren’t well connected. But, thanks to their phone, they’re now seeing the trends that are happening in LA, New York, Shanghai, London, Marseilles. That’s how they discover things.’

Meanwhile, the relentless pace of TikTok has accelerated the trend cycle and turned it upside down. ‘Often it’s not the fashion brands bringing the trends, the trends are starting bottom up,’ says Hana Ben-Shabat, founder of Gen Z Planet, a research, training and advisory firm. She cites the case of the Aerie leggings that sold out globally a few years ago after US influencer Hannah Schlenker wore them in a TikTok dance that went viral. And the brands that have won over teenagers in this new style landscape might surprise you.

Take Longchamp. Founded in 1948, its foldable Le Pliage leather and canvas tote bags were once a staple of the kind of affluent woman who shopped at Waitrose. Recently, they have become a secondary school status symbol. Shopping platform Lyst reports demand for Le Pliage has grown around 68% year on year for the past five years. The bag was featured in Emily In Paris and its presence on social media feels youthful but never obviously ‘teenage’; think rather cool 20-somethings styled in earthy tones, grabbing a coffee on their way to the office. Some of the teenagers I spoke to buy them for around £50 on Vinted, which tallies with the data. According to the GoHenry study, 11% of Gen Alphas regularly buy and sell their clothes on secondhand sites.

Rather than browsing within brands, Gen Alphas search for specific products they’ve seen on social media.

The Longchamp bag’s soaring popularity echoes a shift that Lyst’s VP of brand and communications, Katy Lubin, has noticed in the behaviour of younger shoppers. Rather than browsing within brands, Gen Alphas search for specific products they’ve seen on social media, including Parke’s sweatshirts (a cosy brand launched by a 28-year-old TikTok influencer), Ugg slippers and New Balance 550 trainers. Retro looks are popular too, which is perhaps why adidas is succeeding with this cohort.

Poppy, 16, told me ‘everyone my age has gone off Nike and switched to adidas, inspired by old school ’90s/2000s’. Hodson agrees that adidas has played its hand well recently, ‘cleverly curating’ its offering to appeal to Gen Alpha, whether seeding products with influencers or launching colourways designed to pop on social media, while never overtly positioning any products as ‘for teens’, which is important, he says. ‘Young people like self-discovery of brands. There are teenagers who feel as though they’ve discovered the Gazelle for the first time ever.’

As well as heritage brands, there is a newer wave of labels designed for social media, such as White Fox, which does a brisk trade in oversized £55 hoodies in pastel colours with the brand’s name emblazoned on the back, as well as sexy crop tops and huge jogging bottoms. Hodson describes it as ‘influencer coded, designed for the feed’; its campaigns ‘just popped on social environments’. The Australian brand became popular among teens in the 2020s. ‘Branding was optimised for short-form video content; the algorithm took it and just went with it.’ Many other brands mentioned to me by teens sell a similar cosy-yet-frequently-booby look I, for one, would have loved at that age. ‘I see a lot of people online wearing Edikted,’ says Poppy.

Or, as Sienna, 16, puts it, ‘All my friends dress the same – Kaiia The Label hoodies, Scuffers tracksuits, Gymshark for the gym and Edikted. All the brands you see your favourite influencers on TikTok wearing. I love Brandy Melville for drawstring trousers, vest tops and jumpers.’

But whether any of these brands will be in teen closets this time next year is anyone’s guess. ‘Social media trains your brain for speed,’ says Hodson. And for vigilance around questions of ‘How do I keep up? What’s next?’ Teenagers are also ‘trained from an early age around trends’, he says, citing the Labubu as a gateway ‘drug’ to hype. According to him, teenagers are ‘continuously borrowing and discarding looks and taking from different social spaces’.

However, some, like Olivia, 16, are already shifting away from internet-first brands. ‘I’ve moved back to high street shops like Zara and H&M because I like to actually try on clothes, rather than ordering everything online. I went through a stage of wearing White Fox and Pretty Little Thing and wanting to look like all my friends, but I don’t any more.’

Meanwhile, teenagers are becoming IRL influencers themselves – to their own parents, which is never good news for a young, rebellious brand. It was around a year ago that Hodson says he started to see the waning of White Fox, for example. ‘What was crazy was teenage girls were wearing it, then their mums start wearing it,’ which often spells the ‘real end of the trend’, he says. Yep, that’ll do it every time.