How #cottagecore are you? How the country aesthetic took off

Nice outfit. Off to a barn dance?

Actually, my ignorant friend, I’m channelling cottagecore.

What’s that — a rural sexual kink? Haytime gone bad?

Mind out of the gutter please, it’s an internet aesthetic.

Where you dress like you live in a cottage?

Exactly! Think a look that says you got up early to let the hens out and prune your late-flowering clematis before nipping indoors to remove your apple pie from the Aga. Even if you actually live in Clapton.

When did it start?

Ironically for a movement that’s all about embracing wholesome, screen-free activities, cottagecore was grown on social media.

Earlier this year, Tumblr and Tik Tok users (mostly women) began sharing clips of themselves in prairie dresses and comfortable knitwear doing things such as lying around in long grass, threading a daisy chain or baking bread.

Sounds very pleasant. Why now?

Well, for a variety of reasons. On a basic level, with everyone stuck indoors for so long this year, channelling a rural lifestyle — even if that’s just posing on the balcony of your high rise in Denmark Hill with some dried flowers — has never seemed so appealing. Lockdown caused a flight of young Londoners to the countryside, as the reality of their 400 sq ft flat and two housemates sunk in and they bunked off to a nice converted barn near Bristol, never to return. Not forgetting, of course, the self-sufficiency side of it — sewing, baking, growing your own tomatoes (or at least dressing like you might) — which appeals to gen Z-ers anxious about the future of the planet. And for the LGBTQ+ community, cottagecore has become a way to reclaim a traditional countryside world that has often felt hostile to them in real life. So look, don’t sniff, there’s a lot going on here.

Interesting. Are the celebs doing it?

Not Kylie Jenner, obviously. Famous cottagecore adopters include Halsey — who declared herself a “cottagecore queer” in a milkmaid-ish off-the-shoulder polka dot dress — and Millie Bobby Brown, who built herself a greenhouse. David Beckham even gave it a menswear spin with a baker boy cap and shepherd's crook as he locked down in the Cotswolds. A lot of people also think the whole look of Taylor Swift’s latest album, folklore, was inspired by the aesthetic. There’s nothing more cottagecore than an old cardigan…

…under someone’s bed.

Very funny.

OK I’m in. What do I need?

Your oldest piece of bobbly knitwear, a prairie dress (see Rixo or The Vampire's Wife) a wide-brimmed hat and a local patch of grass / woodland as your canvas. Oh, and a fully charged phone so you can document it all on Instagram — like the simple country folkster you are…