Cottagecore isn’t just an aesthetic. It’s an ethos—one embodying wholesome isolation, creative crafting, love of nature, and nostalgia for an idealized version of the past. It’s anti-modern, yet it exists and thrives in modern spaces. It champions solitary retreat, yet through public sharing on social media, online communities, and even video games. The Cottagecore ethos isn’t a total rejection of capitalist, online society, but it is an assertion that as human beings we also need activities that relax the mind and nurture the spirit. It’s a belief that, in our chaotic and frequently unsatisfying daily lives, doing less can be more. Here’s our Take on how Cottagecore just might be a bridge from the past to a more sustainable future.
TRANSCRIPT
Cottagecore isn’t just an aesthetic. It’s an ethos—one embodying wholesome isolation, creative crafting, love of nature, and nostalgia for an idealized version of the past. But it’s also a paradox. It’s anti-modern, yet it exists and thrives in modern spaces. It champions solitary retreat, yet through public sharing on social media, online communities, and even video games. Maybe, though, that contradictoriness is one of Cottagecore’s greatest strengths. Rather than making unrealistic demands that we all throw away our modern devices, the trend subtly encourages a reassessment of modern values. Like past movements where people flocked to the country in droves to slow down from an increasingly fast-paced life, Cottagecore speaks to a growing rejection of hustle culture and the “performative workaholism” that peaked in the 2010s.
Here’s our take on how Cottagecore just might be a bridge from the past to a more sustainable future.
Jack Antonoff: “In the dismantling of all of our systems of life that we’ve known in the pandemic. You either cling to it and try to make it work, or you just say ‘well, I guess I’m just gonna chart a new path.’” - The Long Pond Studio Session
BACK TO THE LAND
Cottagecore began in the late 2010s as a trend on Tumblr and TikTok, an aesthetic defined by rural, countryside living, and a love of activities like crafting, gardening, and baking. This vibe seemed to be the antidote to our fast-paced technological, globalized world, and 2020 provided the perfect conditions for cottagecore to explode into the mainstream: the Covid-19 pandemic abruptly took that fast-paced life away from many. Isolation became the norm, while Taylor Swift’s surprise 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore appeared to provide the perfect soundtrack.
Adding to its appeal for people tired of a specifically urban or suburban grind, Cottagecore is a rural aesthetic. Speaking to Architectural Digest, Davina Ogilvie defines it as a “nod to the traditional English countryside style, romantic and nostalgic,” while HuffPost’s Ambar Pardilla sums it up as “gardening, greenery, floral prints, flowy dresses, and animals. You want to feel like you would fit in on a farm.” It’s based on the timeless belief that the natural world is spiritually nourishing. This is far from the first time people have sought solace in nature as a tonic for the anxieties of modern life. During the 1800s, writers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson espoused the philosophy of transcendentalism.
David Reynolds: “Transcend means the idea of the spirit transcending matter. In the hands of Emerson, transcendentalism focuses on the individual and the great potential for every individual.” - NBC News
Transcendentalism was also—according to historian Stephen Saunders—“a resistance movement against the Industrial Revolution which introduced a life of complexity, endless monotonous toil, the ugliness of factories, and the defilement of nature by urbanization.” Thoreau famously spent two years living in a small log cabin by Walden Pond, eating wild food and meditating, while writing Walden. Transcendentalism was about experiencing God through nature. “I need solitude,” Thoreau wrote. “I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon—to behold and commune with something grander than man.” Emerson’s famous 1841 essay “Self-Reliance” meditated on the virtues of listening to your inner self and not worrying about what others think. Quote: “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” Essentially, Emerson tells us: look inward, and you’ll find everything you need.
In the 20th century, aspects of the Transcendentalist philosophy reemerged. Romantic accounts of moving to the country became influential in the ‘30s on. And in the Back to the Land Movement, which peaked in the 1960s and ‘70s, up to a million Americans left cities behind in search of a more sustainable country life.
Gary Snyder: “If we’ve lived in this country away from the major urban centres, we’ve seen the process, the gradual destruction of the natural systems around us.” - Brockport Writers Forum
While it overlapped with the greater counterculture movement, “back to the land” was more specifically a desire to get back in touch with nature. It was a reaction to suburban or urban lifestyles that felt increasingly disconnected from the fundamentals. And it may also have stemmed from negative anxieties about the state of the world, from disillusionment brought on by the Vietnam War and Watergate to budding awareness of the devastating environmental destruction being wrought by humankind. It’s telling that some of the most popular television series reflecting the time’s Back to the Land ethos – like The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie – are influences on Cottagecore, especially in the related trend of “Prairiecore.”
In the 2010s, many of the same conditions that drove these past movements can be seen kicking into overdrive. Between growing understanding that climate change is becoming an existential crisis and “rise and grind” obsessive work culture driving burnout,
Steve Paikin: “The World Health Organization recently added burnout to its classification of diseases as quote an occupational phenomenon.” - The Agenda
The stage was set for the forced collective isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic to accelerate the rise of Cottagecore.
As the world grows bigger and scarier, it makes sense that we’re witnessing a resurgence of this nostalgic pursuit of a back-to-basics escape. And on a deeper level, like predecessors, Cottagecore challenges the assumed narrative that all forward ‘progress’ is good—especially as we’re faced with mounting evidence of how much damage capitalism and globalization are doing both to the planet and to our personal well-being.
SPLENDID ISOLATION
The isolation that cottagecore celebrates has a built-in creative element. The BBC’s Anita Rao Kashi reports that a “Singapore-based artificial-intelligence company Quilt.AI … analysed more than 300 Instagram posts with the hashtag cottagecore, and concluded that the top emotion was creativity at 28%.”
One name that’s become synonymous with cottagecore over the past year is Taylor Swift, whose Folklore and Evermore were products of the isolation of quarantine and came complete with an aesthetic of flowing dresses, homespun cardigans, and bucolic tranquility. Swift wrote of Folklore, “In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness.” More than a decade earlier, Bon Iver championed this creativity in isolation with debut album For Emma, Forever Ago, which singer-songwriter Justin Vernon largely recorded isolated in a cabin in the woods. So it’s fitting that Bon Iver features both in one of Folklore’s most prominent singles—Exile, about the perspective that comes from reflective distance—and the title track of Evermore.
If we can’t all be Taylor Swift or Justin Vernon, we can experience the creative benefits of isolation. Moreover, we even need relaxation in order to function productively in any field of work. We can even see this truth in stories like 1989 Studio Ghibli gem Kiki’s Delivery Service, where a young witch suffering from burnout discovers a healthier form of work ethic through a period of rest.
Ursula: “Why don’t you come and stay at my cabin?”
Kiki: “Huh?”
Ursula: “It’ll probably make you feel better.” - Kiki’s Delivery Service
The growing popularity of “digital detoxes” and unplugging through off-the-grid vacations—or even Airbnb “cuddle a goat” “experiences”—shows just how many people are currently looking to reassess their relationship with the modern world.
But this brings us to why the ‘escape from the world’ element of cottagecore has been ridiculed as shallow. Are you really getting off the grid if you’re uploading evidence of your spiritual fulfillment to social media? The common accusation is that Cottagecore is merely a silly performance seeking congratulation on a faux-alternative lifestyle. The series Dickinson likewise takes aim at cottagecore granddaddy Henry David Thoreau by joking that he was his time’s equivalent of a phony hipster. While it’s clearly exaggerated for laughs, it’s true that Thoreau wasn’t quite the hermit in the woods he’s remembered as. As W. Barksdale Maynard writes: “[Thoreau’s] intention was not to inhabit a wilderness, but to find wildness in a suburban setting less than thirty minutes’ walk from Concord village in a landscape heavily used for human purposes.”
What’s most interesting about cottagecore is that it doesn’t fight this contradiction. Cottagecore doesn’t advocate ditching our wifi routers; instead, it embraces technology as a tool to allow like-minded people to connect over their shared values and offer each other new ideas.
Ruby Granger: “The great thing about online aesthetics and kind of the growth of this, which we’ve seen so much you know this last year, is that you’re able to see yourself in them and you’re able to get inspiration and connect with like-minded people” - YouTube
This is supported by the fact that Cottagecore took off during the pandemic when the only communities we could access were online.
SAFE SPACES
Another common criticism of Cottagecore has been that it’s an exclusive space, built from cultural references that are white and heteronormative: heritage movies and period dramas in which marginalized communities are absent. Its influences are mostly stories focused on the lives of wealthy white people, who are never asked to interrogate their privilege. The back-to-the-landers of the ‘60s and ‘70s were also dismissed as a bunch of entitled rich kids. And as Dickinson’s send-up of Thoreau gets at, it’s long been a luxury to be able to escape modern pressures and go back to nature. But perhaps surprisingly, cottagecore is appealing to members of marginalized communities who are looking to engage with the aesthetic in a way that helps empower them.
Many members of LGBTQ+ community, especially lesbian women, have found a home in the cozy world of cottagecore, reclaiming rural spaces which may have previously felt threatening.
Rowan Ellis: “It allows them to imagine a space without homophobia, fear and judgment that doesn’t feel like a banishment, but instead a specifically curated paradise.” - YouTube
Speaking to i-D, one queer cottagecorer named Reid says: “Unfortunately, my hometown, like many rural areas, is very anti-LGBTQ+...It especially makes me feel like the things I loved in childhood, like having farm animals and picking blackberries in the fields and getting lost in the woods, are cis- and hetero-coded…Cottagecore is an ideal where I can be visibly queer in rural spaces.”
Diversity has a more complicated place within the movement. As Bethan Kapur points out, “A video of white women draped in long cotton dresses and wandering romantically through fields connotes something else when your history is shaped by enslavement and exploitation.” And writer Yannise Jean notes that “frilly dresses and bright flowers are symbolic of an era built upon white-supremacist ideology that glamorizes pastoral and settler living”—i.e., a reminder of the Antebellum South. Still, diverse voices are breaking through this inherent whiteness. Influencer Noemie Sérieux, who started @cottagecoreblackfolks, explains, “The reason I wanted a vision board with Black women living the cottagecore aesthetic, is that there’s almost a message in seeing images of people who don’t look like you enjoying the life you want and that message is: You don’t belong here.” Black content creators are carving out space in a place that’s not usually reserved for them and challenging the narrative of what black womanhood can be.
Ash Tanby: “Cannot this be a sort of reclamation of that, like reimagining a time where you would have previously been in suffering as just peaceful?” -YouTube
At its best, cottagecore can be a safe space in which to express a marginalized identity, away from what society thinks that identity should look like. On the other hand, Cottagecore’s semi-fictional, performative nature risks reducing it to a passing entertainment trend that fades away as post-pandemic life gets back to “normal.” To disprove the accusations of frivolity, the Cottagecore ethos has to prove that it’s more than just diverting escape for individuals to temporarily forget their capitalist discontent.
CONCLUSION
Cottagecore testifies to a deep desire to have a more direct connection between what we make and what we consume—to recover certain aspects of life that have been lost with all our progress and increased comforts.
In the wake of a globe-altering pandemic, Cottagecore’s values do seem to have a greater chance of being incorporated into mainstream life. The exhaustion many of us have felt, as our work and home lives have blurred, raises questions about how we want to spend our time in a post-pandemic world. Would we all be happier—and more productive—if we had more time for ourselves? As Jenny Odell writes in How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, “To capitalist logic, which thrives on myopia and dissatisfaction, there may indeed be something dangerous about something as pedestrian as doing nothing: escaping laterally toward each other, we might just find that everything we wanted is already here.”
More than ever, the urgent need to address climate change demands a widespread shift toward sustainability and a questioning of the growth-obsessed assumptions of our corporation-ruled society. Emerson once wrote: “Leave this military hurry and adopt the pace of Nature. Her secret is patience.” Cottagecore has adopted that mantra—now, maybe it’s time the rest of us followed suit.
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