The fashion-meme industry relies on two things: designers to make meme-friendly pieces and social media whizzes to turn them into memes. Quickly memeified, the viral attention put designer Guo Pei on the map. Or Rihanna’s yolk-yellow 2015 Met Gala outfit, dubbed “the omelette dress” for its resemblance to breakfast. Consider the following: Angelina Jolie in Versace at the 2012 Oscars, flashing her right leg, a stance that bore memorable memes such as “Jolie’ing” and leg-bombing. But occasionally one sticks so well, it goes viral. The successful ones are hard to predict – it’s usually about flinging something against the wall and seeing what sticks. Nowadays anything can become a meme, be it an idea, song or theory a lolcat, distracted boyfriend or dancing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He took it from the Greek root “mimeme” (“that which is imitated”), shaved it into a neat monosyllabic word to make it snappier (you know, like a meme) and used it to describe a unit of cultural transmission that shows the spread of ideas or culture. This is forgivable – it has become amorphous as a term – but the original concept dates back to 1976, when the word was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. ![]() If you use social media, you will have seen a meme on Instagram or laughed at one on Facebook, even if you don’t really know what it is. Morwenna enjoying some Monster Munch in a very memeable Emilia Wickstead dress.
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