Cottagecore Style Is Much Older Than You Think

hi how did you like my cottage core outfit today i look like i'm about to uh milk your cows if you were on the internet at all during the past couple of years you must have noticed the rise of aesthetics which is basically how young people now are trying to identify their tastes and their fashion styles and one of the most prevalent aesthetic right now is cottage core as most aesthetics cottage core is mostly an internet phenomenon it basically idealizes rural life i'm gonna have a lot of fun with the word rural today because i absolutely freaking hate it it is very savage of english speakers to come up with stupid words that have a lot of r's and l's in them like why would you do that ruler anyway cottage court is basically being close to nature and doing stuff like living in pretty houses in the middle of nowhere picking flowers having picnics cooking living living simple wearing pretty dresses taking care of sunny gardens and writing poems and practicing traditional crafts and collecting herbs and lying in the middle of a meadow it's you know it's a thing so there's of course a whole variety of different cottage course styles and trends so for this video we're going to focus on the mainstream cottage course so like basically what what shows up when you start looking into it and maybe not necessarily some different branches of it fashion wise cottage course seems to be anything rustical but also a bit princessy so you have puffy sleeves and cotton and linen and delicates often floral prints and pastels or subdued hues conventionally feminine garments and hair ribbons flowers flower crowns pretty socks aprons white shirts and swishy skirts basically it's a lot of elements compiled into that particular style but when you see it you know it so kaddish car is basically what everyone wants when they've just missed another bus a stinky person next to them starts yelling and peeing at the bus stop wall and they're already laid to a job interview for a job they don't even want so i'm pretty sure a lot of us can relate i've seen some people speculate that basically cottage core is sort of like a side effect of the hustle culture and and it's being disappointed in the modern lifestyle that it's a form of escapism escapism i don't know but it basically gained popularity during the pandemic so a lot of people tend to speculate that it's just something terrible happened we were all stressed out and suddenly everyone wanted to live in the countryside with their friends and dress nicely which um sure but at the same time i personally think cottage core as a philosophy but especially as an aesthetic comes from a really long history of idealizing rural life and aesthetic i made it so because we're focusing on fashion we're not going to dwell on the ancient origins of idealizing peasants and idealizing living close to nature but instead we're jumping straight to renaissance which based a lot of its ideas on the ancient philosophies and ideas so one of those ideas was a concept of arcadia which was like a utopian vision of a simple life being close to nature and living with your sheep and chasing your lovers and just like living your best life another term we will be using in this video a lot is pastoralism but i'm gonna check if that's how you say it pastoralism and pastoral lit pastoral litera oh my god how many more r's and else in a close proximity are we going to get in this video because i'm not going to survive pastor literature and art is what i personally believe to be like a direct predecessor of the cottage queer movement because according to encyclopedia britannica pastoral literature is basically a class of literature that presents the society of shepherds as free from the complexity and corruption of city life many of the idols written in its name are far remote from the realities of any life rustic or urban so it's basically like a fantasy about what rich people in the cities imagined the rustic life could be like and they dreamed of it and they thought wow this stuff sucks city is stinky i really want to be a shepherd which who doesn't like baby i do it every day now if that doesn't sound like cottage court to you i don't know what does and just listen to this description of arcadia by lopez vega lope de vega this was written in 1598 i'm gonna go full on declamation here does not the pleasantness of this place carrying itself sufficient reward for any time lost in it or for any such danger that might ensue do you not see how everything conspires together to make this place a heavenly dwelling is it is not every echo here a perfect music so basically no bugs nothing smells wrong quite literally sunshine and roses and of course pastoral literature wasn't always tied to the topic of arcadia a lot of people romanticized the whole idea of like being a peasant and christopher marlowe's poem from 1599 sounds to me 100 percent like it's your local cottage core lesbian friend asking you to move in with her and like tell me i'm wrong come live with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove that hills and valleys dale and field and all the craggy mountains yield there will we sit upon the rocks and see the shepherds feed their flocks by shallow rivers to host falls melodios birds sing madrigals okay this one is a bit more complex but basically let's sit on rocks together and watch shepherds work while we are basically two love birds together and we were relaxed it's chill we're not doing anything it's just all together pretty anyway fashion wise i don't think a particular pastoral inspired style emerged until the 17th and 18th centuries so let's move on to the visual female shepherdesses were sort of idealized for a long time in art history especially but up until 17th century they appeared in art mostly as background or in a landscape scenes and scenarios while noble women would much rather be presented in a dignified way you know maybe in classically inspired garments but like as a shepherd ah so with the age of enlightenment and with the birth of rococo being portrayed in a shepherd disinspired outfit was not only a fashionable thing to do but it also signaled that your your mind is fashionable too like you're a woman acquainted with the modern philosophies of like joy pleasure being surrounded by beautiful things and in those portraits you can notice that a common feature in a lot of those garments is some sort of white puffy sleeves that is because early 18th century shepherdess costumes and outfits where a modified version of the fashionable garment but in a sort of undress there was also the smexy element to it like watch me in my serve underwear but not really because it's a shepherd's costume so it doesn't count so the decorative bodices were often sleeveless and then you could see something like this which actually was made as an 18th century undergarment so the sleeves of shift were exposed underneath those pretty bodices and you can also notice the full skirts and aprons and flowers and of course the pastel color palette i think that rococo as an artistic movement can be credited for a lot of cottage core inspiration especially when you look at things like paintings and sculptures and porcelain figures you know there's the color palette there's the floral motifs and greenery everywhere the rural but idealistic landscapes that look nothing like the french countryside probably looked at the time and then he had the fascination with peasantry so then jean-jacques rousseau was hot and his philosophies embraced nature everyone read jean-jacques rousseau it was like the thing to do so not only that but also french people became increasingly interested in the english way of life even though they were like mortal enemies but they were still like okay english people have figured this out they spent a lot of time outdoors they seemed much more chilled than us how do they do it so there was a fashion for the simple life or like the natural way of life does that mean that all the aristocratic ladies left their palaces and and bought cottages in the middle of nowhere to pursue their goals of being a simple shepherd is well absolutely not of course the only solution to make your cottage core dreams come true while remaining your social position was to build your own disneyland the most famous example of this is amol de la ren which is a whole damn village that marie antoinette built to satisfy her pastoral needs and it has to be said though that similarly to a lot of other marie antoinette myths the whole existence and purpose of this village was like misinterpreted later because of the uh propaganda of the revolution so no it was not a village that she would like reenact a peasant in and have actors pretend there are other peasants and she wouldn't be dressed like a peasant there it was like a legit farm and it was a place where she could like hide having her every move constantly monitored at the palace of her save so she would supervise everything at the farm in the village herself maybe not everything but like as much as she wanted to she could have like authority over the stuff that happened at the village and she would just invite her friends there and they could live their cottage core goals together in a peaceful village rather than at a strict palace full of people that hated them and judged them all the time so like i totally get that and marie antoinette wasn't actually the first one that came up with this idea she was inspired by a similar creation at the chateau de chantilly but similar villages or cottages were also built at other castles in france and possibly outside of france too similar cottages were also created in public parks across france there is just something about this idealization of countryside and dreaming of just escaping to a cottage with friends and like living your best life there that basically smells very cottage card to me and let's see how this translated into fashion so because of the informal setting of her cottage core village marie antoinette and her friends would be allowed to wear much less formal gowns there but because it was still high society it wasn't like they were just running around in their pajamas because you know you had to look your best except you could like maybe tone it down a bit so instead of court gowns they most likely chose the loosely fitting robe aleppolones or robe ella turk which sometimes was worn with lightly stiffened stays like softer stays instead of the structure stays worn at court there is some speculations that in some cases there might even not be any states at all but there is little documentation of that and it also depends on the person's comfort and in later years they also possibly warned the famous or infamous chemist loren again english why why the hell do you pronounce these two words differently english makes no sense thank you for coming to my ted talk oh my god did you just hear my stomach that was violent so the whole idea of dressing down in comfortable garments but at the same time remaining like stylish and a bit lavish and conventionally feminine i think works very well with cottage core ideas so when you look at the cottage core inspiration photos a lot of them feature outfits that might not necessarily work in an actual rural setting like flowy dresses puffy sleeves um pretty prints like cottons those are things that are not necessarily something i imagine would be great for like milking a cow or tending to your garden so it is in many ways a fantasy based on the juxtaposition of like the romantic delicate garments and a kind of rough but natural setting there are several cottage core clothing trends that i think can be traced to 18th century i've noticed a trend to pair a big sleeved shirt with a corset style bodice which i'm not wearing right now but you must have seen those like kind of like modern versions of 18th century stays and this is basically a modern version of the shepherd style and the shepherdess outfit of the 18th century that i mentioned earlier which is pretty interesting generally speaking there is a certain layering of garments which i think is something that was obviously very prevalent in 18th century as it was in like almost all eras you had a lot of layers going on there were petticoats there were aprons there were skirts shawls you had shifts and then stays and then bodices and there's a lot of that going on in cottage core like you had you have a nice dress but you're also wearing a shirt underneath and then there is also a scarf and something you know what i mean there is also a lot of lace elements a lot of delicate lace thingies and that as well i think was it was very characteristic for female fashion in general for a long time but with the 18th century elements such as the modern states and stuff and then the sleep chemise i think it gets even more into the 18th century fashion area and then you also have the large straw hats which is definitely something that marie antoinette and her friends would have worn at the amo de la hin so late 18th century was an era of white cotton gowns in general like i'm not even saying chemisa loren there was a lot of that stuff going on so i feel like cottage core plays a lot on that garment like just white cotton dresses it looks nice it it looks nice in a greenery setting as well but a gathered bodice or neckline an accentuated bust a flowy skirt and a puffy sleeves these are all the features that were really popular at the end of the 18th century and for me personally 18th century style sits so close to the modern cottage core not only because it's basically visually similar and it has the similar aesthetic and ideas but also because of the way it was sort of idealized and commercialized like let's face it half of what you see in the shops nowadays it's labeled colored core like people have picked up on this trend and i i feel like people building the villages and like basically doing fashionable things because they represent the rural ideas it's kind of a similar thing to do so next time your mom doesn't want you to get a cottage court dress just tell her that you could have wanted to build a village instead but you didn't so when it comes to the 19th century abby cox made a great video exploring like the way kaddish core and other modern aesthetics intertwine with the victorian aestheticism such a long word so if you want to explore more about that just go to her video and then in that video she also mentioned the artistic dress and the artistic dress of the 19th century can be basically traced to all the women that accompanied the artist like they were obviously parts of the artistic circles but they're not always credited as such they're usually like muses it can also be traced to dressing form but for this we're gonna focus on the artistic circles like the prerapholite brotherhood or the holland park circle and for example women associated with the prerapholite movement they were often portrayed in those like loose classically medieval inspired dresses they wore wide-sleeved garments in subtle natural hues and from what i've seen on photographs though this may not be the best source of information especially if the photographs were used to paint the paintings they also sometimes opted for similar dresses for daily use and the artistic dresses were often worn it seems like they were worn without corsets and they also had a slightly raised waist which could be a result of like the fashion at the time and they had a lot a lot of volume especially in the skirt and the sleeves which again look kind of like cottage core i don't know um and something that i noticed that both the aesthetic dresses and the artistic dresses had in common was that they were often made from a single colored like a plain fabric there was no crazy patterns there was cell fabric trim is that how you call it or they were not trimmed at all and an era of like color contrast frills and flounces and basically using four types of fabric at once this must have stood out as something like completely different and there was also a lot of light white fabric involved which again um i'm not saying it does i'm not saying it doesn't smell like cottage core and like i know okay i get it like visually they might not look very cottage core like modern cottage cork but i think the whole idea of an artistic comfy a little fantasy inspired garment especially worn as an alternative to more constrictive and formal styles that were produced by the industrial revolution that sounds very familiar doesn't it we then have the edwardian fashion which i'm i'd rather jump forward to the 1970s and the edwardian fashion revival because i feel like it's visually and aesthetically closer to the cottage core style than the actual edward in fashion in 1970s fashion exploded before the fashion was very homogeneous meaning that there was one prevalent style that everyone basically followed there was a single silhouette like there was a mainstream silhouette that was like the norm for most of like western fashion it's not like everyone is trying out a completely different style which is what happens in fashion nowadays i feel and which is what started in late 60s and early 70s so basically fashion went from this one giant stream and it just exploded into thousands of smaller streams where you had like folk fashion and disco fashion and then you had the hippies and then you had the elegant mainstream designers that had no idea what to do in this situation and a lot of the newly established styles explored historical styles and inspirations so we had 1930s style garments in 1970s and we had 1970s doing 1920s and then we also had edwardian revival or like early 20th century styles and the 70s rendition of edwardian fashion could be more literal so you had people finding and buying and wearing actual edwardian garments or it could be loosely inspired like edwardian-style blouses and envarian styles skirts and edwardian style accessories and because the 1970s edwardian revival can be partially credit credited credited to the popularity of peter weir's picnic at hanging rock the edward is their clothes were often associated with nature and walks and green grass and and picnics and picnicking with your friends or girlfriends while dressing pretty comfortable sometimes edwardian style clothes seems like a very common cottage cord troll and mix all that and add some heavy asian style inspiration especially the maori girl style or a little bit of lolita style and you have cottage car at least that's what i think considering all of these inspirations combined i i think it wouldn't be correct to suggest that cottage course suddenly emerged a couple of years ago or even during the pandemic and it's just a result of people being disappointed with modern life and bored with city life and i don't think that's true because people have fantasized about rural life for thousands of years and similarly to today those fantasies often translated into romanticized rural inspired clothing that that didn't have much to do with the actual lifestyle of people living on the countryside so i don't really know how to end this because because basically everything in fashion history can usually be traced to like ancient times and that's not necessarily the point you don't have to talk about jeans and go like did you know that um denim existed in 17th century like that's probably not the point and i don't think people designing cottage cork clothes nowadays are reading jean-jacques rousseau that's not what i'm saying but i think it's interesting to explore how old these ideas actually are and how many elements that people used to associate with like rural life back then made it back to fashion nowadays probably by accident i don't think it was on purpose like i don't think people are like i want to look like a 17th century shepherdess but at the same time they actually do look like 17th century shepherdess so let me know your thoughts maybe you know some other crucial inspirations that i've actually missed because my research wasn't thorough enough uh anyway i need to do something with that stomach because this is concerning so bye

Channel: Karolina Żebrowska

Views: 528,413

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Id: nnsxwJKxkJ8

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021