Coquette: The ultra-girly movement sparking debate
Nylah Lee/BBC:
In 2024, makeup is coquette; our dogs are coquette; rooms are coquette. From the office to the gym, bows are appearing in places where they wouldn’t dare before. It’s as if Gen Z and younger millennials have found a way to wear Sofia Coppola films, from the pastels, lace and A-line silhouettes of 2006’s Marie Antoinette to the stockings, Mary Janes and Peter Pan collars of 2023’s Priscilla. Now, musicians like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan are confidently taking the stage in pearls, lace and corseted tops, while other celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker, Sydney Sweeney, and Cardi B have casually nodded to the coquette aesthetic with a simple bow.
With its high-profile reach and its longevity, coquette has arguably surpassed the status of a micro-trend and become, if not quite a movement, then a community – and a topic of controversy.Before we step ballet-flat first into this trend, what is it, exactly?
A coquette is defined by the Oxford English dictionary as “a woman who trifles with men’s affections” or “a woman given to flirting or coquetry”. However, according to influencer and stylist Maree Ellard, the movement separates itself from its literal definition, in a sort of reclamation of femininity, especially for its Gen-Z audience. “I think people who are not aware of coquette are going to think that it means wearing flirtatious, promiscuous and hyper-sexualised pieces for attention. However, if you are in the coquette community, or understanding of it, you realise that it is an incredibly hyper-feminised, almost nostalgic view of girlhood and youth, before things became so complex,” Ellard tells the BBC.
“We are also in this kind of political climate in which the sexualisation of female bodies is so front of mind. That’s why I think that it’s a big thing for Gen Z. It’s them [fighting] back and saying, ‘I’m not dressing for you, I’m dressing for me. But dressing for me doesn’t necessarily mean that I cover every inch of myself.'”Still, the trend has had trouble escaping not only the implications of its definition, but also the historical associations of the look. Coquette exists at a crossroads of being, on the one hand, problematic, and on the other, empowering. Its proponents view coquette as a triumph over the male gaze, and a reclamation of femininity. But critics point to a lack of inclusivity and undercurrents of infantilisation and docility.
“Many fashion trends that stand out as being something a bit ‘different’, [tend to] exclude let’s say fat bodies, hairy bodies, black bodies, non-binary bodies. They’re usually pinned to templates of thin, cisgendered female whiteness. It’s almost as if having that body gives you the right to play around with anything you want. Then, in order for other bodies to take it on, they’re doing something ‘extra’. Then it becomes little bit more difficult, and it’s also then little bit more ‘radical’,” says Meredith Jones, professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at Brunel University London.”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 the 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.” And it seems as though 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 has also expressed concern for an “extreme [disordered eating, often referred to as ED] community” that she’s seen grow alongside coquette. “It is not everybody in this community that is like this. In fact, it was always a vocal minority that ruin it for the majority,” she adds. Blair, another TikTok creator, has shared a similar experience and sentiments in a TikTok video: “If I were to try to get into that community and not just watch from far back… I have a very deep feeling that I would be used as ‘fatspo’. Unfortunately, I would look at things like ED Tumblr and ED Twitter years ago and they pretty much all were coquette girlies… I know everyone with that style isn’t like that, but it is definitely a big, unfortunate part of it. There’s also a very limited collection of plus-sized clothing in that type of style.”
What these creators and commentators have observed as trends within the community lend themselves to an even more prominent piece of the coquette conversation. Such a strained emphasis on petiteness, and seemingly stereotypical “girliness”, has led many to draw parallels to darker themes.
“I was around in the Tumblr era, which is really where [coquette] has its origins. You really have two sides of the fold there. You had the coquette, which was the bows, the frilly, the girly, the romanticisation of girlhood leading into womanhood and all its complexities. And then you have the other side, which was very much glorifying age gaps, using sexuality as power and unfortunately glorifying the movie and book Lolita, which is quite a troubling thing.” Ellard explains.
Ellard is referring to Lolita – not the Japanese subculture inspired by Victorian-era fashions – but the 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov in which a middle-aged literature professor (and unreliable narrator) grows obsessed with a 12-year-old girl. The novel led to pop culture references that glorify some of the ideas presented in the book.
The online community known as “nymphette”, a sub-category of the coquette aesthetic, has also led to debate. The community claims no associations with 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 the University of Oxford’s Cherwell student newspaper, in a piece titled The dark side of coquette. Roman also adds that coquette aesthetics that champion innocence and hyper femininity are in danger of being criticised as catering to the “male gaze”.”Looking further back historically, we can identify when particular components of this fashion mood were previously fashionable,” Amy de la Haye, professor of Dress History and Curatorship and joint director of Centre for Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion, UAL, tells the BBC. “If we take just one element – the neck choker – these were being worn in portraits of Anne Boleyn (1507-1536) and, in a very different vein, during the French Revolution when blood red chokers were worn by anti-revolutionary Merveilleuses as a sartorial protest for those sent to the guillotine.
“They were the height of chic in Victorian and Edwardian times and revived again in the 1930s. Diana Vreeland famously wore a black velvet ribbon choker with a red rose bud tucked into it to accessorise her new black sequin trouser suit from Chanel in 1937. Many other elements – lace, lingerie styles as outerwear, corsetry, bows – were all very fashionable in the late 1930s, as was the dinner suit, which this style also references.”
There have really always been these kind of ultra-girly, ultra-feminine modes for women and girls to choose to present themselves in – Professor Meredith Jones
Jones adds that some more contemporary adaptions of the coquette style draw inspiration not only from Rococo fashion, but from other artistic media of the era. She references Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing (1767), an oil painting in which a woman donning pastels, lace and bows is depicted kicking off a kitten heel at the apex of a velvet-cushioned swing.
“To me, it looks like nothing new. Maybe it’s new for some of the young women who are doing it. But there have really always been these kind of ultra-girly, ultra-feminine modes for women and girls to choose to present themselves in. I don’t imagine that the current meanings are any different to what they’ve been for at least 100, if not 200 years,” she adds.
Coquette is a fashion mainstay, and the key to its popularity, and to its relative longevity, may lie in its simplicity. According to Ellard, real coquette should have no hard-and-fast rules, specific brands or price points. It should simply mould to whatever the wearer likes and has access to.