I had a nail appointment this past week and, inspired by a friend’s Instagram story, I decided to get a bow painted on both accent nails.
This past 2023 summer has been labelled ‘the summer of girlhood’ because of the popularity of both The Eras Tour and the Barbie movie. The embrace of all things feminine continues into 2024 with the rise of the coquette aesthetic. Coquette is the newest rebrand for the ‘feminine look’ with its pinks and whites, ribbon, pearls, and tulle socks. Last year, it was the clean girl makeup made up of lip oil, blush, and a slicked-back bun, and in 2020, it was cottagecore, popularized by Taylor Swift’s folklore album, whose sound emulated the aesthetic.
Coquette trends in fashion have allowed women to connect to their inner child, to the girl who frantically claimed pink to be their least favourite colour, all in an attempt not to be ‘like other girls’. Luckily, the internet and society have sought to toss out this concept and seek to encourage reclaiming all things associated with being a ‘girly girl’. When I asked University student Khloe Rowse, about the reason she always wears lace shirts, long skirts, and ribbons in her hair, she said, “It feels like embracing my femininity […] showing the little girl I used to be that [femininity] does not equate to being weak […] I’ve been told that I dress like a grandmother or that I dress like a child and both comments I’ve come to enjoy because it is fun to use clothing to play around with age-related expectations and concepts of femininity.” The aesthetic has found its appeal through its challenge of stereotypes of women’s docility, and their softness. The aesthetic also encourages self-expression, and how one may take some elements of coquette into their style and make it completely their own. I believe that the coquette aesthetic’s swift ascent into popularity can be credited to the recent trends that entail reclaiming different facets of femininity.
The popularity of the coquette trend, and with most things, is credited to TikTok content that embraces feminine identity and ideals, however satirical they may be. From Girl Dinner, which was the United States’ most popular TikTok trend in 2023, to the concept of Girl Math which satirized how women think about their finances, to users putting bows on, on well, everything from pickles to dumbbells to chicken nuggets. Users often pair the clips with Lana Del Rey’s ‘Let the Light In’, which is more fitting than people may realize. Del Rey is often credited with pioneering the trends for vintage jewellery, red lipstick stains and ribbons on 2014 Tumblr.
However, the happiness that trends like this bring to corners of the internet and into real life is not without its critics. For example, people point out the tendency of the aesthetic to infantilize women as some pieces can look like children’s clothing. Additionally, the coquette style sometimes being labelled as the Lolita look, furthers this point as the name references Vladimir Nabokov’s novel featuring an inappropriate relationship between a man and his 12-year-old stepdaughter. These concerns are valid, but what needs to be kept in mind is that reclamation includes changing the way society views things. After all, the word coquette means a flirt, and now, the internet would likely define it as a girl with bows in her hair and her Mary Jane loafers.
The coquette trend is heartwarming and one that allows for the embrace of softness and participation in trends that little me would have never dared to try, for fear of being labelled a ‘girly girl’. I trade this in for 2023-2024’s idea of a ‘ballet, soft academia, coquette core girl’. I quite like wearing ribbons in my hair (with built-in hair elastics for convenience), and when I’m working I see tons of girls wandering the mall wearing them too, and I never forget to tell them how cute they look.