Coquette, Barbiecore, cowgirls of every kind- the list of distinctly girlish trends could go on forever it feels. Far from the last decade’s tomboy-chic and the Kardashian led grown woman ‘insta-baddie’ look dominating the late 2010s, this past few years has seen girlism fight back to dominate fashion. But why this, why now, and what does it mean for fashion’s own contemporary gender troubles?
How we got here, anyway
Personally, I’d contribute the genius change to lockdown, as it is responsible for the majority of what we are dealing with now. Days of boredom trapped indoors lead to an acceleration in the trend cycle, with the gas pedal remaining fully down today. Trends became micro trends, subdued monochrome matching became dopamine dressing, while explosions of colours and patterns appeared in the stuck-at-home woman’s wardrobe.
‘Kid-core’ was one such micro trend which occurred around the time of the turn, featuring colourful plastic accessories and layered brights. It was a more overt response to a complicated political situation which left us feeling scared and helpless. Now unable to provide for ourselves, we had to rely upon daily government updates and stimulus checks to get by. This sudden state-dependence reverted many wide-eyed young graduates, who had thought they would begin their careers and move up into the prophesied ‘adulthood’ they had been long-fearing, back to their early years having relied on the bank of mum and dad.
For fashion designers as well as online influencers, this reversion to a childhood state seemed to spark a new motion to re-style knee-socks and pigtails on adult women. Suddenly it felt like every outfit posted to IG would be in some way ruffled, bow-ed, and rouged- and we have been eating it up ever since. Thus, the new wave of girlishness was born to fashion, out of the ashes of the covid- generation’s stunted adulthood. After a long absence, the spirit of a naïve child is reborn into the fashion world, with 100 new subtly different ‘aesthetics’, all pointing to an imagined ideal of girlhood.
But if lockdown’s suppressive policies did bring childishness back to fashion, what is so special about its girl-specific iteration, I hear you ask? The tell is in its most camp “core” yet: “Blokette” core.
How skirts became radical again
‘Blokette’ takes girlification up a notch, in channelling Britain’s sectarian culture of football hooliganism and deliberately contrasting its elements to the female-gaze led ‘coquette’ style. It involves a sense of gender conflict, by placing the two mutually exclusive styles, both macho-rowdyism and Lana del rey-esque feminine romanticism, alongside each other in a way which feels situationally impossible. Bows atop football shirts, frills on hoodies: to wear one bars you from true cultural assimilation of the other. Crucially, its inherent garishness highlights this effect as purposeful.
Previously, to wear hyper-feminine clothing implied a sense of conformity to gender ideals in a way many women found uncomfortable. It symbolised doing what you are told and being a ‘proper’ woman under society’s omnipresent male gaze. To wear clothes meant for men was to be revolutionary and as such, tomboys and butch women were simultaneously reviled and lauded as counterculture. A generation of women were brought up believing that pink made you a try hard, a sell-out, an airhead.
But not now. In a year which saw angry online mobs topple the ingrained ideals of ‘pick me girls’ (supposedly unfeminine girls who subtly act superior to others to appeal to men), the self-conscious femininity of girly coquette styles exposes fashion’s new mode of ironic costume dressing: one which places gender itself on-stage.
Take a bow, embrace performativity
For the contemporary fashionista looking to stand apart from the t-shirt wearing masses, the uniform is as clear as it is flexible. Any vision of girlish ultra-femininity can be sported, necessarily to the nth degree, but never in a way which feels natural. Whether flirty teenage girl à-la-Lolita or simple village peasant girl via cottage core, it must always have a filmic studied quality which can never go unnoticed. It must suggest an aestheticised, unembodied feminine performance, which the act of wearing exposes as insincere.
To wear a girly ‘aesthetic’ today means to call attention to the performative nature of gender and bask in its theatrical glory. Its apparent naivety tells the joke itself, when worn by a 5”9 office worker out for drinks on a Wednesday night, and that is okay.
For us still scarred by the memories of lockdowns and current realities of sky-high rents and unaffordable groceries, it is easy to think that adulthood is not all it is cracked up to be. Self-seriousness will not bring you any flowers, nor pay your bills. Fashion instead tells you to put a bow on your head and accept the joke of it all. Put on a show- you are just a silly little girl anyway.
