Google Has Published This Year's Top Fashion Searches. What Was Everyone Curious About?

One weakness of Google Trends: it pays far more attention to what happens in the United States.

What kind of fashion information were people searching for on Google this year?

For instance: do ordinary shoppers actually register "see now, buy now," the idea the industry has been arguing about so loudly? Gucci's sales numbers look wonderful since it changed creative directors — is anyone actually talking about it? Everyone says fast fashion is booming while the traditional American teen brands can't move their clothes, but does anyone still want to know about them? Or: Korean cosmetics are red hot — do Americans really care, judging by Google?

This Wednesday, Google Trends published its 2016 fashion search data, which answers most of those questions.

Google Trends' search statistics go back to 2004, and every year Google officially picks out results drawn from them. Fashion is only one slice of it; the rankings also cover topics like "hottest cities," "most popular foods," and "most popular movies."

You can read a great deal into this data, but Google Trends has one weakness: it pays far more attention to what happens in the United States.

Take the fashion data alone. Google Trends applies "fashion" as a category to basically nothing but the United States. Search by "United Kingdom" and no fashion data comes up at all — only broader results like "most famous actresses," "most popular movies," and "most famous travel destinations." Search by "France" and you get "most popular female singers," "most popular actresses," "most popular athletes" and so on — nothing about what people in France, the nation of fashion, were searching for.

The tool has also only updated its U.S. numbers through January–November 2016; every other country is still stuck in 2015. China's data is stuck in 2014, with keywords like "iPartment 4," "Sing My Song," "Tiantian Kupao," "Malaysia Airlines MH370," and "iPhone 6." (Even the 2014 figures are odd, since they only represent Chinese users who can reach Google, which is hardly representative of anything.)

So the rankings Google Trends has now published for 2016 fashion searches all come from what American users typed in between January and November. Four of the lists relate to fashion: "Most-Searched Fashion Brands," "Most-Searched Fashion Designers," "Top 10 Most-Searched Fashion Questions," and "Top 10 Most-Searched Beauty Questions."

We've pulled out the highlights below. If you're curious, you can also go and poke around the "original" page — click here.

1. In the Past Couple of Years, "Fashion" Itself May Have Grown More Important

Google Trends began counting in 2004, but only in 2015 did the word "fashion" itself start showing up in the American fashion-brand search column, sitting among brands like H&M, Tiffany & Co. and Rolex — and topping the list. It seems plenty of people are typing the word straight into Google to work out what it actually means.

2. Fast Fashion and Teen Brands Have Always Been the Most-Searched Brands. Luxury Draws Less Attention

Going by the first 11 months of 2016, the other nine entries in the "fashion brands" column, besides the word "fashion" itself, are: Forever 21, H&M, American Eagle Outfitters, Tiffany & Co., Zara, Gucci, Hollister Co., Abercrombie & Fitch and Rolex.

Forever 21, H&M and the rest of the fast-fashion and teen brands get searched hard. Forever 21 has sat at No. 2 on the list for years, and next to the luxury names, H&M and American Eagle Outfitters also rank near the top.

Business at the Abercrombie & Fitch group has been poor, and the company is still wrestling with how to reinvent itself, yet Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister Co. remain on the most-searched list. Both have been on it since 2004, in fact, which suggests Americans haven't lost interest. In 2008, Hollister Co. even came first.

3. Gucci and Rolex Have Always Been Popular

Luxury brands have never taken up much room on the "Most-Searched Fashion Brands" list, 2016 included — usually two slots, and low ones.

Over the first 11 months of 2016, for instance, the watchmaker Rolex sat at No. 10. On the very first list, in 2004, it ranked sixth.

Gucci, like Rolex, has been a sturdy fixture here. Swarovski did force its way onto the list in 2006, in the last spot, but it was gone the following year and has never returned to the top 10.

4. Over 12 Years the List Has Kept Its Regulars. These Are the Brands That Came and Went

From 2004 to 2016, the regulars have been Forever 21, H&M, American Eagle Outfitters, Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Hollister Co., Abercrombie & Fitch and Rolex. The ones that surfaced and sank: Nine West in 2009, 7 For All Mankind in 2005, and Wet Seal in both 2007 and 2010.

5. At First, Zara Was No Match for H&M

Zara is now more or less a synonym for fast fashion, and every other brand that wants to move faster studies and copies its design methods, its inventory management, its turnaround times. It wasn't always so popular.

H&M was on the "Most-Searched Fashion Brands" list in 2004, drawing more attention than Zara. Zara didn't reach the list until 2011, at No. 10. No other brand belonging to Inditex, Zara's parent company, has ever made it.

Now let's step away from the "Most-Searched Fashion Brands" list and look at the other fashion data Google compiled.

6. This Year, the Designers Everyone Watched Were the Ones Just Dabbling

Fashion Designers (Most-Searched Fashion Designers):

1. Rachel Roy, 2. Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, 3. Angela Simmons

4. Zendaya, 5. Kendall and Kylie, 6. Beyoncé

7. Anita Dongre, 8. Sonia Rykiel, 9. Ivanka Trump, 10. Kanye West

The "Most-Searched Fashion Brands" list has barely shifted in all these years. The designers list is anything but still.

In 2015, first place went to Raf Simons, fresh from his break-up with Dior. The Kaiser, Karl Lagerfeld, made the list too, along with the American designer Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss, the Italian designer Giambattista Valli and the Thai-American designer Thakoon Panichgul — all proper designers with labels of their own to run.

This year the list flipped almost entirely.

Raf Simons and Karl Lagerfeld have "vanished." The working designers who did appear are the fashion designer Rachel Roy, the shoe designer Angela Simmons, the French designer Sonia Rykiel and the Indian designer Anita Dongre.

The obvious change: the people on the list now all look like fashion enthusiasts who have dabbled very successfully.

Zendaya, for one, started out as an actress and later launched her own clothing line, Daya by Zendaya. The list also holds the supermodel Kendall Jenner and her celebrity-influencer sister Kylie Jenner, plus Beyoncé, the always-talking Kanye West, and Ivanka Trump, daughter of the incoming U.S. president (we can't rule out that she has talent too).

7. If You Care About Fashion, Fashion Designers Are Hard to Avoid

Fashion Questions (Top 10 Most-Searched Fashion Questions):

1. How to cut sleeves off a shirt?

2. How do I start modeling?

3. What is haute couture?

4. How to wear booties with skinny jeans?

5. When can you start wearing white?

6. How to become a fitness model?

7. What is boho?

8. What did people wear in the 90s?

9. How to dress like a hippie?

10. How to become a fashion designer?

In Google Trends' 2016 "Top 10 Most-Searched Fashion Questions," the one in tenth place is "How to become a fashion designer?"

So even though people aren't much good at telling celebrities who cross over into clothing or sneaker design from the real thing, some of them still want to become professional designers.

8. Fitness, Retro and Bohemian Trends Leave Clear Marks

The pull of trends shows plainly in the "Top 10 Most-Searched Fashion Questions."

"How do I start modeling?" came second; "How to become a fitness model?" came sixth. That isn't a random impulse. The athleisure look now all over the street appears to be connected to people's interest in the fitness-model job. We've written about it before, in Sport Models Are a Different Thing From Fashion Models (《与时装模特不一样，还有一种模特叫运动模特》), which spelled out what the work involves: how their shoots differ from a fashion model's, where they come from, what they do the rest of the time.

The retro look of the past couple of years has its match on this list too: the eighth question is "What did people wear in the 90s?"

And the bohemian style that has taken hold over the same stretch is no invention either. Two questions on the list touch on it — "What is boho?" and "How to dress like a hippie?"

9. Some Questions, of Course, Have Nothing to Do With Trends

First place on the "hottest fashion questions" list goes to "How to cut sleeves off a shirt?" That one comes out of nowhere, because if sleeves were the story in fashion this year, the striking part should have been how very, very long they were.

We discussed that in an earlier piece, How Did This Year's Ubiquitous Long Sleeves and Oversized Clothes Catch On? (《今年无处不在的长袖子和宽大衣服，它们怎么会流行？》).

10. The Cosmetics Questions Were All Basic, With Only One Unfamiliar Word

Beauty Questions (Top 10 Most-Searched Beauty Questions):

1. How to do a fishtail braid?

2. How to make hair grow faster?

3. How to shape eyebrows?

4. How to curl hair?

5. How to remove gel nails?

6. How to clean makeup brushes?

7. How to apply concealer?

8. How to get rid of bags under your eyes?

9. How to fill in eyebrows?

10. What is balayage?

The cosmetics questions people put to Google were fairly basic — they come down to how to do your hair, how to get nail polish off, how to draw your eyebrows. There was exactly one flashy unfamiliar word: balayage.

11. Hair, Not Makeup, Is Where the Real Puzzlement Lies

Korean cosmetics are riding high, and Americans, long accustomed to cream masks, are gradually taking to the sheet masks Korea made popular. Yet the cosmetics questions Americans ask Google have almost nothing to do with Korean cosmetics.

On the beauty list, in fact, cosmetics questions are the minority: "How to get rid of bags under your eyes?", "How to fill in eyebrows?" and "How to apply concealer?" Four of the top 10 are about hair — "How to do a fishtail braid?", "How to make hair grow faster?", "How to curl hair?" and "What is balayage?"

Cover and in-text images from:

nikewomen @ Instagram, redonline.cdnds.net and fashiongonerogue.com.