So everything is kinda chic…

What differentiates being kinda chic, and kinda clean girl version 2.0? Here’s how to reframe kinda chic as an empowering movement that can benefit us all.

There was a time when being chic meant something: a good coat you saved up for, a marble-top kitchen, perhaps going out for dinner once a month with your girls. Now, apparently, it is kinda chic to stay home, repeat an outfit, protect your peace, go to therapy, bake a quiche, or simply have a day where absolutely nothing happens. The latest TikTok and Instagram trend has taken the language of aspiration and applied it to the gloriously ordinary, turning everyday wellness into something worth showing off. According to The Guardian, searches for “kinda chic” reportedly rose by 5,000% this summer, with the phrase spreading across more than 60,000 Instagram hashtags.

It is an interesting evolution of the clean-girl takeover. That aesthetic, which has dominated social media since the early 2020s, gave us slicked-back buns, green juices, Pilates classes, neutral activewear and the suggestion that wellness should look as polished as the rest of your feed. British Vogue has described it as one of the defining aesthetics of the early 2020s, while #CleanGirl had passed 1.2 million TikTok videos by February 2026.

The kinda chic trend feels like a softer version of the same obsession. Instead of trying to live perfectly, it focuses on the small, gradual changes you can implement to make life feel easier, and not so perfect at all. It can be genuinely refreshing. Resting becomes chic, or wearing the same jeans twice becomes chic. Having boundaries is chic, and being comfortable in your body is chic. In a wellness culture that has historically made self-improvement feel like a second job, there is something quite appealing about reframing wellbeing as ordinary rather than aspirational.

But being kinda chic means it brings up the same problems as we have always faced: wellbeing can quickly turn into another form of performance. If every act of self-care has to be beautiful enough to post, are we actually resting, or are we producing evidence that we rested? The clean-girl ideal has already been criticised for presenting a supposed effortless version of femininity that can involve considerable time, money, and discipline behind the scenes. The contradiction is particularly obvious when wellness becomes another checklist: Pilates, supplements, skincare, journalling, matcha, eight hours of sleep… preferably all before 7 am.

There is also something slightly funny about the internet’s ability to turn rebellion into a template. The kinda chic trend began partly as a celebration of things outside traditional ideas of glamour, including body positivity and mental wellbeing, but its very popularity risks making those ideas another aesthetic to copy.

However, the backlash may already be underway: Pinterest’s 2025 predictions pointed towards colour, maximalism and more individualistic forms of self-expression, while searches for ‘vintage maximalism’ later surged by 260%.

Maybe the answer is not choosing between being chic and decidedly un-chic. The best thing about kinda chic is its potential to make wellbeing less intimidating, and the worst thing is that we can still feel obliged to make it look good.

So yes, going for a walk is kinda chic, and cancelling plans when you need to is kinda chic. Eating something because you are hungry rather than because it fits your macros is definitely kinda chic. But perhaps the most chic thing of all is doing it without needing to prove it to anyone. It’s all about being balanced in how you approach these aesthetic trends, and not letting it morph into another all-consuming task to make you feel well-rested. And that is definitely kinda chic.