Gen Z has fallen in love with the coquette aesthetic but it’s not all ribbons and bows (2024)

Plus, here’s how to get the look in NYC.

No aesthetic trend has gripped the imagination of Gen-Z quite like "coquette," the fashion-slash-lifestyle-slash-vibe that has people on the Internet dressing in all pink and tying tiny little bows on every conceivable object in the name of "girlhood." If you haven’t heard of coquette, imagine if the "soft girl aesthetic" and "cottagecore" had a baby, and then a unicorn bottle fed it pink steroids—in short, it’s girliness taken to its most garish extreme.

Coquette is a French word that means “flirtatious,” but unlike its English translation, it has feminine overtones. Different variations of the coquette aesthetic have been around for a long time and it most notably draws from the Lolita subculture in Japan that started in the 1980s. Lolita, in turn, was inspired by Victorian and Rococo fashion, and some of its main markers are the heavy use of ribbon, lace, and voluminous skirts.

RECOMMENDED: We dressed our cover star, Tiff Baira, in the coquette aesthetic

But coquette really took over this part of the world in recent years via social media. On X and TikTok, people tied bows on everyday objects like sushi, Absolut Vodka, and payment terminals just to call it all coquette. Unlike the hot pink Barbie brand of feminism which validates professional success, sisterhood and fighting the patriarchy, coquette prides itself in its mindlessness: It’s really a form of lobotomy-core, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that is bound to come out of the mind-numbing horrors of a worldwide pandemic.

Isabella Bilous, a fashion blogger based in New York City, feels that part of the allure of coquette is that it allows people to fully escape into their femininity without feeling guilty about it. “[Coquette] allows women to reawaken their childhood selves in a sense that is free to express their creativity without the trepidation of constructing an identity that too closely resembles the ‘stereotypical woman,’” she says. The key to why coquette resonates is not just in its elegance, but also because it's ultimately self-aware and playful. “The sense of innocence that accompanies the trend allows people to both get lost within the fantasy of childhood ideals while also appreciating, and romanticizing, even the smallest and most inconsequential moments of their everyday life.”

In New York, there’s no shortage of places that exemplify the essence of coquette. For Bilous, those places are Ladurée, the French restaurant and pastry shop in Soho, and Alice’s Tea Cup, a vintage-inspired restaurant and tea shop in Lennox Hill. For an outdoor coquette experience, Bilous recommends going to Central Park during cherry blossom season, which tends to happen between late March and early May.

We dressed our February cover star, Tiff Baira, in this aesthetic.

If you want to embody the coquette aesthetic yourself, there are many shops around New York where you could go to start putting together a fit. Sandy Liang in the Lower East Side is a great option as well as Marmalade in Greenpoint. Dolls Kill, which has a storefront in Williamsburg as well as an online store, usually has a good selection of coquette-coded garments.

New York-based designer Emma Gage, who is behind the brand Melke, says she first heard about coquette through TikTok and started incorporating small bows in some of her designs, but that she can trace the first hints of the coquette ethos starting with the Netflix series Bridgerton. Coquette resonated with her because she said it felt like it was embracing femininity and softness without equating it to weakness. “There’s always been a view of something looking soft as not being strong, which is often the view of womanhood in general,” she says. “But underneath that there is a very strong essence to it.” She likes to incorporate traditional indicators of coquette, like the bows, and put them against darker colors like black, to convey the synergy between femininity, softness and strength.

But coquette is, fundamentally, about nostalgia and reverting back to a childlike state of comfort. Part of the allure of coquette is that it can feel counterintuitive to the progress of women, and there isn’t a solid politically-driven reason it exists—it just is. “It’s great to have depth in things and to have a story, but it is also necessary to have things that are lighter and easier and there isn’t a huge meaning behind it,” she says. “I think people are really drawn to that, especially Gen Z.”

If you want to start incorporating coquette into your own style, Gage suggests starting with a bow. It could be as simple as taking a shoelace and tying it into your hair. Another easy and solid place to start is by getting pearls—Gage is a big fan of Vivienne Westwood chokers specifically, although any pearls will do.

Like Gage, Keena Hudson, an Assistant Professor of Fashion at Pratt, says she does see the coquette aesthetic much more on younger people. She says a lot of students in her classes are dressing in coquette or coquette-adjacent styles, but she also wonders how inclusive it is, especially since the trend ultimately draws from French culture and outdated notions of European femininity. When you’re bringing back a style that is inspired by a time that dehumanized entire swaths of people, you can’t help but wonder whether plus-sized women, trans women, or women of color are able to participate in coquette culture at all. “It kind of makes you think who can wear these fashions, and who gets to be this ultra-femme woman or girl, and what their body looks like,” Hudson says. “I also think about accessibility to these types of clothing, since there’s not that many brands that carry larger sizes.”

Ultimately, though, Hudson understands that coquette aesthetics are a response to something larger. “My students have been through a whole pandemic, especially the juniors and seniors, and I think they’re trying to kind of live in this fantasy world,” she says. “And they’re drawn to coquette because of the softness of it all.”

The rise of coquette is not dissimilar to how kawaii culture came out of Japan after the atrocities of World War 2 and also as a response to a culture of rigidity and overwork. In a world where we are witnessing war, disease and a plethora of other horrors—paired with the Internet and an inability to turn any of it off—it’s no wonder that we’re looking to the past for solutions. Coquette takes us to a time before the Internet, and on a micro-level, to a time before adulthood. If we all need meaning in our lives, we forget that sometimes, it’s necessary to have meaninglessness, too.

• Ian Kumamoto
  Staff Writer

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