As niche as it might seem, VSCO Girls have recently exploded on TikTok, an off-shoot of the E-Girls and Soft Girls competing with soft grunge to be crowned queen of the video sharing platform’s aesthetic hierarchy.

The app has become an adjective, with VSCO Girls defined by how they consume social media and what they post on it. VSCO is 2019’s answer to FaceTune, or Photoshop, or any other way of making sure your Insta pics are curated and stretched and smoothed to an inch of their lives. The aesthetic is named after the app which inspired it. If you’ve ever bought a Fjallraven backpack, driven in a Jeep, used Mario Badescu skincare products or worn an oversized sweatshirt, the internet says you might be a VSCO Girl. The association isn’t limited to these brands and affectations though. Common interests include scrunchies, hydro flasks, seashell chokers and Birkenstocks.' “You’ll probably catch them wearing a scrunchie, tube top, puka shell necklace, white Vans or Birkenstocks and - don’t forget - a hydroflask to finish off the look”, explains another description. Branding them “the Tumblr girls of 2019”, one contributor to the site explains the VSCO Girl trend thus: “Basically the most basic girl you’ll find out there. As with all internet phenomena though, Urban Dictionary is here with the answers. Unless you’re spending hours on end in a YouTube hole or TikTok bingeing on the regular (who? us?) then you might not be familiar with the concept of a VSCO Girl. It’s just risen again under a new name, with a new set of stereotypes. People began to call time on the term and soon it dipped (kind of) in popularity. As soon as basic had become ubiquitous though, the backlash came.

Tubbler girls