There’s a glimmery new icon swimming into your summer: A sardine.
Apparel and products featuring the petite fish are all over the internet right now. Sardines, known for their long, slender bodies and bulging eyes are the online world’s cutesy representation of the Mediterranean lifestyle. Search interest in finned fashions has reached a record high in May 2025, according to Google Trends, with “beaded sardine bag” increasing 300% since 2004 and the “sardine dress” doubling over the past month. The salty snack, famously sold in bright, decorative tins, is appearing in our hair, on our beds, across our chests and dangling from our ears.
“Everything in the past month has become all things sardines!” another TikTok user said of our current moment.
The trend is similar to previous summertime obsessions with tomatoes and strawberries. On the surface, sardines are the ideal cheeky-cute aesthetic for a summer dress or dining table (look no further than this TikTok user’s sardine-style TJ Maxx haul). It’s summer! Who doesn’t want to blast Addison Rae’s “Aquamarine” and have a little fishy fun?
But we can also swim deeper and see that sardines may say something about society right now: At a time when prices of fashion and home goods are skyrocketing for American consumers, the desire to embrace a tiny fish that packs a punch indicates a desire to live simply and pleasurably.
“Sardines are a very humble fish,” says Guido Bonsaver, professor of Italian Cultural History at the University of Oxford in England. The healthy, cheap snacks speak less to an ethos of luxury, and more so to one of unpresuming. Just a few small fish can be a satisfying meal while the colorful tin gives unadorned “artistic sophistication,” he said. Finding happiness as everyday people within our economic and political context is something we’re all striving for right now, Bonsaver said.
Pair with sardines? How does white bread stack up to wheat and whole-grain bread? Poorly.
Sardines as a ‘recession indicator’? You bet.
Sardine core evokes our need to embrace a cheaper way of life “and be happy with it. Not take it as a failure, but as a new dimension in which you find a smaller place to be happy,” Bonsaver said. “Sardines are symbolic of that. They’re a very small fish (sold in) very cheap tins. But they can make a great dish.”
Taste carefully: These foods were named the ’10 riskiest to eat right now.’ Why you shouldn’t freak out.
The search for balance comes to light especially as “recession indicator” content propagates TikTok, in which Gen Z pokes fun at the idea of items in the cultural zeitgeist as predictors of the U.S. economy crashing.
While some TikTokers argue sardine core shoppers should be forced to actually taste-test sardines, whether you eat, wear or post about the little fishes is your own invitation to make little bits of life feel a bit grander – if not attainable.
And if you’re just into the idea of a “sardine girl summer” and it’s not that deep for you, that’s OK too. Just keep swimming.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What is ‘sardine girl summer’? The cultural moment, explained.
