This year, summer style feels split: To be on trend, it seems like you either need to embrace bright Barbie pink, become a TikTok-viral tomato girl, or opt for minimalist quiet luxury.
And color-wise, these aesthetics make sense: Reds and pinks are common in sexy seasonal ensembles, while understated neutrals retain less heat than darker hues. But what if I told you a whole new aesthetic trend, corresponding palette, and dare I say way of life has been simmering in the background this whole time? Well, it has, and it’s my new summer style obsession: lemon girl summer.
Bold, bright, fresh, and fun, lemon girl lifestyle combines the lighthearted optimism of dopamine dressing and manifestation manicures while simultaneously embracing tomato girl’s Southern European vacation style. It’s a very welcome addition to the (occasionally quite hard to navigate) world of aesthetic trends, if I do say so myself.
“The emergence of the lemon girl is a natural progression of growing awareness around aesthetics,” Yarden Horwitz, co-founder of consumer-trend data-aggregation platform Spate, tells Glamour. “It also aligns with the idea of ‘dopamine beauty‘ that has persisted following the end of lockdown: People share and continue to share their enthusiasm for a reopened world by wearing bold colors like lemon yellow.”
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Addison Cain, Spate’s beauty strategy and innovation manager who specializes in trends, agrees, pointing to quiet luxury’s minimalism as something that may have partially prompted this rise in over-the-top pigment.
“For everything, there’s an equal and opposite reaction,” she says. “We’re seeing lemon girl style alongside quiet luxury, so I think this is an answer to that. I also think we’re seeing this whole ‘Italian girl summer’ where everybody, even if they’re not going to Europe, wants the vibe of being in Europe.”
