It’s been over 11 years since the release of Lana Del Rey’s second studio album Born to Die; why is it having a sudden resurgence in popularity, along with age-old ballet flats and baby pink? Meet the coquette aesthetic, the internet’s newest -core fashion trend.
What is the coquette aesthetic?
The coquette is the newest TikTok-born style craze, with a lineage traceable to its ballet, Bridgerton, Barbie, and bimbo-core predecessors. This aesthetic reaches and draws inspiration from more than just the fashion industry: the sounds of artists Lana Del Rey and pinkpantheress represent the soft, magnetic coquette-energies well, as do romantic activities such as visiting flower gardens, taking pottery classes, and browsing your local farmer’s markets. The aura is glowing baby pink and pearlescent, and the air smells like it’s been spritzed with cotton and rose fragrances.
How to dress in coquette fashion:
The coquette look, true its French translation, is flirtatious and youthful. A few defining pieces include pearls, bows in your hair, shoes, or jewelry, and ballet flats or pointe shoes. Lingerie-reminiscent lace tanks and slip dresses with a sweetheart or ruffled square neckline are also staple pieces in a coquette wardrobe.
Taking a page out of the Y2K-look book, the new style is often an arrangement of thrift finds and up-cycled existing pieces. However, where the coquette aesthetic differs is in its more muted, “vanilla” curation of accessories as opposed to Y2K closet-explosion maximalism. This time around, luxury brands are throwing their hats (or puffy headbands, a la coquette) in the internet-trend-ring. So far in 2023, we’ve seen brands like Jil Sander, Stella McCartney and Alberta Ferretti (to name a few) push the vintage slip dress style on their runways. Sandy Liang has been a key shaper of the coquette aesthetic, with their lace, feather, and bow-heavy Fall/Winter 2023 collection. It’s possible that in attempts to be ahead of the trends, high-end designers are the ones driving the style rather than merely responding to it: coquette aesthetic is noticeably newer, and more Upper East Side than, say, a cottage-core or Y2K thrift-goddess.
In conclusion…
Fashion trend-cycling in the age of TikTok and high-production marketing campaigns has become quicker and more responsive with increasingly widespread, global outreach. It seems as though as soon as one aesthetic becomes well-defined and reproduced, it’s already outdated… So stay tuned for more fashion news coverage! Keep the coquette aesthetic in the back of your mind while shopping or browsing the internet, and I’m sure you’ll see its influences on the culture. Until next week, happy shopping!
