Fashion Is Already Preparing for Gen Beta

The eldest members of Gen Alpha may only be just starting high school, but fashion is already thinking about what — or who — is coming next.

Babies born starting this year (through 2039) are entering a new generational cohort, Generation Beta, coined by Mark McCrindle, futurist and founder of McCrindle Research. And though most members of this generation have yet to be conceived, trend forecasters are beginning to speculate on what they will be like.

Given they’ve yet to speak for themselves (or at all), obviously, it will be a while until Gen Beta has any sort of meaningful impact on fashion and beauty. Most of the forecasting taking place is guesswork and big-picture themes, with the bulk of the current conversation centred around how they will be parented — by young Millennials and Gen Zers.

But given the young age at which Gen Alpha shook up the industry, it’s likely brands will be thinking about Beta earlier than ever — and have some key decisions to make about how they should or shouldn’t engage with this budding consumer group. During the “Sephora tween” craze of 2024, for instance, the industry caught flack for tempting adolescents to grow up and spend, as well as directly targeting them, including through video games.

“They don’t even know they’re being advertised to,” said Mallory Huron, director of beauty and wellness at Future Snoops. “It’s insidious marketing that comes across as very fun.”

Beta’s entry, though, has created a lightning rod for thinking about the future, in a particularly testy moment for the industry and world at large. At least right now, Betas are arriving in a complicated world marked by global instability, artificial intelligence’s rise and the threat of climate change. What will the world look like when Betas grow up? What sort of jobs will exist? Where will they shop?

The generation has already made landfall in fashion’s creative consciousness. A Beta Baby notched the cover of i-D magazine’s latest issue, where a slew of creatives offered advice to the new generation (Hasan Piker advised making “friends in the real world. Go to a public park,” while Nan Goldin warned “Turn back. It’s better where you came from.”) and the magazine’s editors cheekily probed the idea of what it means to be a “Beta.”

“What if being a Beta isn’t so bad? The world made by all these other generations is looking pretty cooked,” said Thom Bettridge, editor-in-chief of i-D and author of Substack newsletter Content in an Instagram post. “A Beta test is something new, a second try.”

What are the factors shaping Gen Beta?

Move aside Alpha iPad kids and make room for… ChatGPT babies?

Gen Beta will be the first to grow up fully AI-native, according to futurists, and the technology is set to be the dominant force shaping the generation.

“They’re growing up in a world where AI is here. They can generate information, [AI is] powering through all the internet to find their answers,” said Cassandra Napoli, consumer forecaster and digital futurist at WGSN. “That’s going to affect the way they speak to people, their socialisation, their mental health.”

It will also influence how they’re raised and educated. Given today’s obsession with wellness — and the existence of more advanced technology to chase it — Beta is likely to be one of the most tracked and health-optimised generations yet, according to Nivara Xaykao, director of culture and consumer insights at Future Snoops

“We’re entering the age of the hyper-optimised human,” she said. “The health and fitness boom is happening earlier, with kids as well. There’s almost too much information to ignore.”

Though their parents, some Gen Zers — many of whom romanticise nostalgia and are increasingly disillusioned with social media — could push them slightly away from a life too online, forecasters say.

Generational lines are a messy way to divide people and distinguish characteristics, particularly when it comes to fashion. Increasingly, they’re dissolving for forecasters.

“The pace of culture and technology is going so rapidly it’s going to skew the generations to be smaller,” Napoli said. “We won’t be talking about 15-year spans anymore, but about fringe groups that span five or six years.”

Why does it matter for fashion and beauty?

Gen Beta’s elders have wielded their spending power precociously, and are interested in buying “grown-up” products before they’ve reached high school. They go to Sephora to buy their first makeup products, not the drug store, and are quickly aging out of kid-specific brands like Claire’s and Justice.

In turn, they’re attracting brands to their own turf, helping bring Nike, Adidas, E.l.f. and Gucci to games like Fortnite and Roblox.

Recently, a slew of beauty launches aimed at Gen Alpha have hit the market; in September, a 15-year-old even launched her own beauty line to a crowd of 80,000 screaming tweens at the American Dream Mall in New Jersey.

Their spending power extends beyond their own allowances, said Monica Chun, president of research firm ACC, which released a report on Gen Alpha with the University of Southern California in September. Alphas have more sway over the way their parents shop than prior generations did.

“Some of the moms in our focus groups said they would buy things from Amazon and their kids would be like, ‘If you’re going to buy joggers you should really buy Alo or Aritzia,’” she said. “Or they would take their kids shopping and the moms would buy what the kids were buying.”

Social media access is the driving force moulding Gen Alpha’s relationship with fashion and beauty, which will only be amplified for Gen Beta, said Xaykao. More knowledge doesn’t just drive consumption, but raises their fashion awareness.

Surprising numbers of young people now know the names of creative directors, or, who Rick Owens is, said Bettridge. He references the “Hedi Boys,” a TikTok phenomenon consisting of Hedi Slimane groupies, mostly under 25.

“They weren’t even alive when he did his first Dior men’s collection but it doesn’t matter,” said Bettridge. “Everyone has this instantaneous download on the history of culture. At a different time you would have had to own magazines or good coffee table books.”

The inspiration goes both ways. Lately, some fashion brands have played off of the sometimes surprising wisdom of kids in their creative. Last year Ssense did a series of ads (which Bettridge directed) that showed children, dressed in head-to-toe looks from the site’s assortment, being quizzed on how to spell “Thom Browne” and “Collina Strada.” In September, Dior put out a video riffing on back-to-school showing kids speaking to the camera about their personality archetypes and getting ready in the morning.

i-D’s Beta cover hit a nerve, sparking conversation about the future, both from the creatives it tapped to participate and i-D’s audience once it was published, said Bettridge.

“The fear and anxiety people have about AI and the way internet culture is radicalising young people and all those things aren’t just intellectual feelings, but genuine fears that exist on a visceral level,” said Bettridge. “It showed us what people are thinking about the future, in both optimistic and pessimistic ways.”