With bows everywhere, coquette style is becoming more trendy. Does it look problematic or joyful and empowering?
Our dogs, rooms, and makeup are coquette in 2024. Bows are appearing in previously unthinkable settings including the office and gym. Gen Z and younger millennials have found a way to wear Sofia Coppola films, from Marie Antoinette’s pastels, lace, and A-line shapes in 2006 to Priscilla’s stockings, Mary Janes, and Peter Pan collars in 2023. Now, singers like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan fearlessly perform in pearls, lace, and corseted shirts, while celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker, Sydney Sweeney, and Cardi B nonchalantly wink to coquette with a bow.
Coquette, what? How can we define this trend before diving in?
The Oxford English dictionary defines a coquette as “a woman who trifles with men’s affections” or “a woman given to flirting or coquetry”. Influencer and stylist Maree Ellard says the movement reclaims femininity, especially for Gen-Z.
People unfamiliar with coquette may think it means wearing flirty, promiscuous, and hyper-sexualized clothes seeking attention. If you understand the coquette culture, you realize it is a hyper-feminized, almost nostalgic picture of girlhood and childhood before things got so complicated “Ellard tells the BBC.
“We also live in a political milieu that prioritizes female sexualization. So it’s important for Gen Z. ‘I’m dressing for me,’ they remark. I don’t have to cover everything when I dress for me.”
Coquette touts its triumph over the masculine gaze, but others note its lack of inclusivity and infantilization and docility.
Still, the tendency has struggled to escape its definition and historical ties. Coquette is both problematic and powerful. Coquette advocates see it as a victory over the masculine gaze and a reclaim of femininity. Critics note a lack of diversity and infantilization and docility.
“Many ‘diverse’ fashion trends exclude overweight, hairy, black, and non-binary bodies. Thin, cisgendered female whiteness is frequently their model. It seems like having that body lets you play with anything. Other bodies must do something ‘extra’ to take it on. Meredith Jones, Brunel University London’s Gender and Cultural Studies professor, believes it gets harder and more ‘radical’
“So if a thin, white 18-year-old dresses in ribbons and bows, it’s going to be a tiny bit controversial, but not hugely,” Professor Jones tells BBC. “But if her fat, black counterpart, does it, then she’s got a whole lot more work to do around answering people who say this is unacceptable.”
It appears many influencers agree.
“As somebody who perused a lot of darker sides of Tumblr when they were a teenager who was very confused and self-conscious, I can tell you just from memory that a lot of the inspiration content for losing weight was inadvertently very much themed like this: very dainty, very pastel, very pearlescent,” says TikToker Addy Harajuku, who worries about the “extreme [disordered eating, often referred to as ED] community” that has grown alongside “Not everyone in our community is like this. “A vocal minority always ruined it for the majority,” she says.
Blair, another TikTok maker, expressed similar thoughts in a video: “I want to join the community, not just observe. I strongly suspect I’ll be ‘fatspo’. Sadly, ED Tumblr and Twitter were dominated by coquette girlies years ago. I know not everyone with that style is like that, but it’s a significant, unfortunate component. Plus-sized apparel in that style is scarce.”
Trends in the community that these producers and pundits have noticed contribute to the coquette conversation. Many have drawn comparisons to darker themes due of the excessive emphasis on petiteness and stereotyped “girliness”.
“I was around when [coquette] started on Tumblr. There are two fold sides. The coquette was bows, frills, girliness, and romanticizing girlhood into womanhood and its complexity. The other side glorified age gaps, sexuality as power, and Lolita, which is unsettling.” Ellard explains.
Ellard is referring to Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita, in which a middle-aged literature professor (and unreliable narrator) becomes enamored with a 12-year-old girl. The work inspired pop culture allusions that exalt its themes.
The online “nymphette” community, a coquette subcategory, has also caused criticism. The community denies any connection to Nabokov’s novel, but “is not far from paedophilia through buying into and sometimes sexualising childish fashion trends, and romanticising related topics,” writes Iustina Roman in Oxford’s Cherwell student newspaper, The dark side of coquette. Roman also warns that coquette aesthetics that promote innocence and hyperfeminism risk being seen as “male gaze”-oriented.
She and many influencers argue that this should not be blamed on individuals who participate in the movement, but on those whose oversexualization of women has become so overbearing and persistent that it spurred this subversion.
It’s an aesthetic, something we dress up and enjoy. Ultimately, you blame women for the male gaze. Sophia Hernandez, a content producer, said in a recent video that it’s a return to girlhood and that we shouldn’t be blamed for men’s issues.
“I think there’s merit to any criticism,” says Professor Jones. “It’s worth addressing these things, but something as intricate as what many diverse individuals wear can never be boiled down. It’s not so simple to state whether this is feminist or non-feminist, good for girls or terrible for females, a means to attract or repel boys. Playing with different looks and identities. Freedom to attempt new things.”
Defense of coquette
Critics may compare coquette with Lolita since Nymphette likes bows, lace, and ankle socks, but Ellard maintains that coquette is an umbrella term for a collection of subcultures.
It’s hard to say which trend is its parent. Even punk, emo, and scene have a linear origin. Coquette seems like a true origin. People just dubbed it and ran with it. Girly, young fashion has a specific name. Since that moniker stuck, it’s become the parent title. Then you have the ones below.”
It’s young, girly, lovely, and basic, yet you can easily mix it with different interests. Maree Ellard
Coquette and “cute” aestheticization are nothing new. Sandy Liang, Miu Miu, Shushu/tong, and Selkie have worn coquette-like aspects before coquette was a word. Since 1986’s “Fallen Angels” collection, John Galliano has used puff sleeves, empire waists, and lace embellishment. Late baroque influence has influenced Vivienne Westwood’s designs for decades, including her 1995 Vive la Coquette collection. Later designers including Molly Goddard, Simone Rocha, and Sandy Liang have adopted it.
“Looking further back historically, we can identify when particular components of this fashion mood were previously fashionable,” BBC quotes London College of Fashion, UAL professor of Dress History and Curatorship and joint head of Centre for Fashion Curation Amy de la Haye. “Take the neck choker, which Anne Boleyn (1507-1536) wore in paintings and which anti-revolutionary Merveilleuses wore in protest of the guillotine.
“They were fashionable in Victorian and Edwardian times and again in the 1930s. In 1937, Diana Vreeland used a black velvet ribbon choker with a red rose bud to accessorize her Chanel black sequin trouser suit. Lace, outerwear, corsetry, bows, and the dinner suit, which this design resembles, were also popular in the late 1930s.“
Professor Meredith Jones says women and girls have always had ultra-girly, ultra-feminine styles.
Jones notes that some modern coquettes draw inspiration from Rococo clothes and other art. She references Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing (1767), an oil picture of a woman in pastels, lace, and bows kicking off a kitten heel on a velvet-cushioned swing.
“I see nothing new. Possibly new to some young women practicing it. But women and girls have always had these ultra-girly, ultra-feminine attire options. I doubt the contemporary interpretations are different from those of 100 or 200 years ago “she says.
A fashion staple, coquette’s simplicity may explain its endurance. Ellard believes true coquette has no restrictions, brands, or prices. It should fit whatever the wearer likes and has.
“Doing and adapting is simple. It can be as simple as choosing pinks, lilacs, whites, and ivories “says Ellard. Many had worn them as children or adolescents. It feels familiar and nostalgic. It’s young, girly, lovely, and simple, yet you can easily mix it with different interests. Add bows on things to cover coquette.”
From “dollette”, “cottagecore” and “vintage Americana” gingham to “bloquette” (fusing “bloke core” and coquette), coquette feels like a name for “girly” goods rather than a fad. Participants customize it as they choose.
Ellard says this personalization is usually related to popular culture. Coppola films, Bridgerton, and Euphoria episodes have shaped the coquette movement, and Ellard thinks it will go into sci-fi. This potential and the core coquette community make her think coquette will last a “very, very long time”.
One of two categories describes aesthetics for me. Subcultures include punk and hippy. From movements, they develop communities. They represented comparable principles and views. Ellard contrasts aesthetics with a lack of substance, stating that there is too much stuff to ingest.
I find coquette fascinating since it’s in the middle. Aesthetics are its main focus, not values like punk. It practically comes with built-in hobbies and activities, which I think gives many individuals a sense of belonging. You’ll like movies and music. Journaling and interior design are examples. It nearly sparked the aesthetics without substance we see today. Though it’s not a political movement, it gives a sense of belonging.”
