What is…Cottagecore?

Before we properly delve into the whimsical, wonderful world of cottagecore, perhaps we should explain what it even is. 

Cottagecore is a trending aesthetic and now even a community popular on social media sites like TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest. It recently became popular in 2020 during the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic. Cottagecore offers escapism for its viewers and participants, promoting traditional hobbies away from modern screens and technology, such as baking, foraging, sewing and going on picnics. This blast to the past almost transcends people to another timeline completely, far from today’s turmoil to an idyllic fantasy away from deadly diseases, climate catastrophes or increasing inequality (just to name a few). It is also believed that having a hobby, especially practising arts, can improve your mental health and wellbeing, and decrease the likelihood of suffering from low mood, stress or depression. Nature is a main staple of cottagecore, with many activities taking place in the great outdoors. Mental health professionals, like mental health charity Mind, suggest that spending time in a natural green space can improve mood, self-esteem and help you feel more relaxed. They also say that it can help with mental health problems like depression, anxiety and seasonal affective disorder (SAD). 

This is not the first time that this has trended. The 1970s saw the prairie girl: a fashion trend inspired by the romanticisation of the simpler, calmer times of the past, after the second wave of feminism and newfound sexual liberation in the swinging sixties, expressed through the micro-mini skirts. Laura Ashley was one designer running the trend. Her long skirt, long sleeves and cinched in waists presented a much elder fashioned and traditional look compared to the previous eras style. Ruffles, embroidery and soft colours are all trends seen both in the 70s prairie girl style and in the modern cottagecore aesthetic. Inspired by Laura Ashley’s influence was Yves Saint Laurent who put his own high-fashion spin on the trend. Presenting full length colourful skirts with nipped-in waists and puff sleeves, at his 1976 Autumn-Winter show, the “Opéras - Ballets Russes” collection. Yves’ admiration for the Ballet Russes, “a ballet company founded in Paris in 1909”, Léon Bakst’s costumes and Orientalist paintings also inspired the collection. He also told Vogue that his “most beautiful memory in [his] thirty years of designing” was “the collection inspired by Russia… it was opulent”. 

Films and television at the time also followed suit with vintage, old-timey style of the prairie girl, from the adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Little House on the Prairie (1974) to Australian thriller film Picnic on Hanging Rock (1975). 

Although cottagecore celebrates and encourages a traditional, simple life, its followers and politics could not be further than the TradWife community that some compare it to. Tradwives are, as the name suggests, traditional housewives who live to take care of their husband, children and home, and typically enforce heteronormative gender roles. Many followers and participants of cottagecore are from marginalised groups like the LGBTQ+ community, so much so that the Cottagecore Lesbian is an actual known and searchable term! 27-year-old Reid from Arkansas told i-D magazine that “many rural areas [are] very anti-LGBTQ+” but cottagecore “is an ideal where [he] can be visibly queer in rural spaces”. Redditor Ralice177 told i-D magazine that “lesbians tend to be oversexualised by the media [but] cottagecore sees love as a connection between two souls”. 

Although the world has its problems, life is not all doom and gloom 24/7. There are ways to find escapism and romanticise the simple life. Lay down on the grass, close your eyes and dream about your idyllic cottagecore fantasy life.