Cool Shiny’s 2025 Trend Report: Part 1: Meso Trends
the 7 trends we’re tracking so far in 2025
It’s nearly the summer solstice, friends, which means we’re at the halfway point of 2025. A perfect time to sunbathe talk about the trends dominating the year thus far!
As cultural researchers, we believe there is value in tracking and discussing trends. Does every trend matter? Definitely not. We might go so far as to say that most trends don’t really matter. But trends tell us something about what people are consuming, how they’re feeling, and what they might want in the future. In unpacking trends, we make sense of the world.
You might have seen - and even been a part of! - the discourse about how fast the trend cycle is moving and the resulting trend fatigue. We’d argue that The Discourse™ is reflective of micro (or even nano) trends, which are especially prevalent in the fashion and beauty space. So while we’ll share a few microtrends, we place more of our focus on unpacking meso-trends (a word you don’t really need to remember!), or trends that affect more than just a niche group and last longer than an internet discourse cycle. The goldilocks of trends, if you will!
In Part 1, we’ve highlighted 7 meso trends we’re tracking and in Part 2 we’ll bring you a handful of microtrends. These are more likely to be passing fads but will become more noticeable out in culture (think: on shelves, menus, and in content).
📚Romance fans bring “Trope Talk” into the mainstream
Women Reading Romance has gone from something done on the sly to mainstream popular culture. Along with the genre’s rise has come an ensuant rise of the associated slang. Words like “smut,” “spicy,” and “alpha” have fully entered the lexicon, and talking about preferred tropes (“enemies to lovers,” “only one bed,” “fake dating”) has gone from insider baseball to colloquial convo.
Nothing is more emblematic of this than the new title from one of our contemporary romance faves Ali Hazelwood: Problematic Summer Romance. (A fun read!)
🔮What may be next: Readers take trope preferences to the next level, relying on AI to deliver romances that fit their perfect intersection of tropes (i.e. “Write me a slow burn second chance romance with a morally gray alpha male named Pedro Pascal that switches POVs. The female lead is named Kaley & has great hair.”)
🌎 The bigger picture: Romance readers aren’t the only ones leaning into detailed tagging: for years platforms like Spotify & Netflix have relied heavily on content tags with increasingly niche subcategories. Add generative AI into the mix and we expect precision tagging to become even more important.
⛳ Golf gets more Gen Z-friendly
Taking a cue from earlier adopters, the golf sector has (finally) set its sights on Gen Z, primarily men. Through content, clothing, and celebrities, the country club sport is recruiting the younger gen:
The YouTubers behind Good Good Golf raised $45M in funding from investors football legend Peyton Manning among them.
IYKYK new age golf brand Malbon recently unveiled a well-received collab with GAP.
Tiger Woods’ son Charlie has recently stepped into the spotlight. Though he’s technically a nepo baby, he is proving to be just as talented as his dad. At just 16, he's got the pedigree of a champion, the skill to be the sport's next big star, and high relatability with teens.
🌎 The bigger picture: Golf is the latest sport to make a concerted effort to woo Gen Z, recognizing that the future health of the sport relies on younger fans. What started with the NBA and was followed by F1 and the NFL has now cascaded to more culturally laggard sports leagues like the MLB and and PGA.
👀 Watchout!: While we support men touching grass (more driving range, less red pilling!), golf is among our most problematic sports due to its huge environmental impact (what else would you expect from Trump’s fave, after all?).
📺 TikTokers get lols on TV
A new generation of comedic TV stars is being plucked straight from TikTok.
Early TikTok breakouts made their way to TV via unscripted series (Charlie and Dixie on The D’Amelio Show) and fluffy teen remakes (Addison Rae in He’s All That). This next generation is built different. They’re popping up more quietly, in scene stealing parts on scripted comedy.
What started in 2024 with Sabrina Brier & Casey Frey landing small roles on Abbott Elementary has grown this year, with appearances by:
Jake Shane and Holmes in Hacks on HBO
Courtney Parchman (aka @Averagefashionblogger) in Sex Lives of College Girls on Prime
Jack Innanen and Owen Thiele in Adults on FX
And Holmes (again), Caleb Heron, Owen Thiele (again), in Overcompensating on Prime, notably created by breakout content creator Benito Skinner (aka @bennydrama)
🌎 The bigger picture: TikTok is, unfortunately, one of the only ways to “organically” get discovered today. YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes familiarity, Instagram prioritizes already-famous public figures, and Facebook is a wasteland of AI slop. Critics might deride casting from TikTok as a vanity-based popularity contest, but it also acts as a proving ground for comics to hone their humor and grow devoted fan bases.
🔮What may be next: From unscripted to comedy, drama is likely next, so don’t be surprised if someone who got their start on TikTok wins an Oscar in 2027!
🎾 Last Call for Pickleball
We’re calling it: this is the last summer to get cool points for pickleball, tennis, or any other country club-adjacent racket sport before we declare it officially RESIDUAL.
Google Trends data for Pickleball shows increased popularity especially in Summer 2023 and beyond. The data shows a peak in Summer 2024 and while popularity continues especially in the summer time it is softening:
Tenniscore–the aesthetic marked by clothing & accessories for tennis, pickleball, badminton, and paddle ball–has reached peak dominance in mainstream culture. While fashionistas will say this trend peaked with last summers’ Challengers, we’d argue America’s enduring relationship to prep has given this trend staying power. Head out to Target, Anthropologie, or any athletic store and you’ll see, they’re heavily giving preppy tennis club vibes galore.
🔮 What may be next: While tennis-core will recede into the culturally residual space, tennis skirts will stick around, joining biker shorts and yoga pants to become a staple of athleisure.
🎙️Podcast tours are the next frontier of content monetization
This year, the YouTube-forward Cancelled podcast went international, former reality TV stars Paige DeSorbo & Hannah Berner sold out Radio City Music Hall twice with their Club Giggly tour, and lifestyle YouTubers Alisha Marie and Remi Cruz of the Pretty Basic podcast are on a Coca-Cola sponsored tour.
🌎 The bigger picture: Podcast tours are the latest trend in a long arc of creator monetization efforts, evolving directly from the popularity of podcasts, which itself rose in response to platform trends (YouTube’s push towards video podcasts, dissatisfaction with TikTok’s creator funds).
🔮What may be next: Podcast Tours become the new concert tours, concert tours become the new festivals, and the trend cycle moves on!
🎨 Embracing Creativity as Self-Care
Doesn’t it seem like everyone’s doing The Artists Way? People are embracing creativity, explicitly for the sake of it. As people grow increasingly wary of the dangers of digital dependency, they’re looking for healthier outlets for their time and are turning to crafting and other creative works. Carving out space for a creative practice is beginning to take on a similar cultural role as working out and tending to a skincare routine.
🌎 The bigger picture: This trend is a cultural response to the alienation of modern life and the fear of AI taking jobs from human creatives, and related to the popularity of digital detoxes and wellness and self-care culture.
🔮What may be next: More people will develop and talk about their “creative practice,” followed by a media uptick in discussion of the importance of “creative health” and “creative wellness.”
🦋 Perimenopause hits its prime
Miranda July wrote a book about it.
Armchair Expert devoted an episode to it.
The Netflix show The Four Seasons dealt with it.
What is it?
Perimenopause. The phase before menopause which marks the end of a woman’s reproductive life has been taking center stage lately, with prominent Gen X public figures talking about this phase of the female experience.
🌎 The bigger picture: Women are retaining a larger share of the cultural microphone as they enter middle age. Culturally, we’re no longer putting our actresses out to pasture at the first sign of crows feet (thanks Nicole Kidman?!). Many of today’s most well known, bankable stars in culture are entering midlife (Think: Amy and Tina, Michelle Obama, the Jen’s).
Plus, there’s been increasing conversation about other infradian rhythms, aka naturally occurring cycles in the human body that last longer than 24 hours, like the menstrual cycle and SAD. (See also: exploding popularity of period tracking apps).
🔮What may be next: As women take on more cultural influence, and as Millennials move into middle age, we’ll continue to see the “female gaze” centered in more stories, as well as more representation of the milestones women face beyond marriage, children, and happily ever after.
Thanks for spinning through 7 trends catching our eye so far this year. We covered golf, racket sports, and romance tropes. We talked podcast tours and the funny TikTokers taking over our TVs. We’ve all decided to commit to a creative practice and put some niche gummies into our shopping cart. Now let’s zoom out a bit.
A few consistent threads across the trends we highlighted:
MORE EFFORTS TO WOO GEN Z: Areas of culture making concerted efforts to youthify for Gen Z succeed when they cater to their values. When selecting leisure activities, Gen Z is looking for hobbies that combine their love of aesthetics with self care. (ex. Pickleball, Golf, Creativity)
CREATOR ECONOMY CONTINUES TO EVOLVE: Successful creators are looking for their next opportunity - and creating content along the way (ex. Tiktokers on TV, Podcast Tours)
WOMEN AS CULTURAL FORCE: While political power remains heavily male dominated, pop culture continues to be dominated by the needs, preferences, and evolving life experiences of women (ex. Trope talk, Perimenopause)
Stay tuned for Part 2 when we cover some fun microtrends.
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Kaley and Megan