Crafting Cottagecore :
Digital Pastoralism and the Production of an Escapist Fantasy
Leah Brand
Citation: Brand, Leah. “Crafting Cottagecore : Digital Pastoralism and the Production of an Escapist Fantasy.” The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture, June 25, 2021.
Abstract: This paper explores the internet aesthetic “cottagecore” – its historical origins and rise in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as its connection to craft. Cottagecore can be understood as the projection of the core fantasy of escape to a cottage in the woods to live as if it were a simpler time. As such, the desire to make things with one’s hands as a form of self-sufficiency-based self-care has become associated with cottagecore modes of production. This research considers this aesthetic act of making and its inherent digital engagement through the historical lens of the pastoral, Rousseau’s eighteenth- century romanticism, and William Morris’ nineteenth-century neo-Medievalism. The prime objective of this study is to investigate how cottagecore fits into this lineage, and to consider the implications of its digitization.
By examining activity, craft, and digital making, this research reckons with the inherent contradictions of cottagecore: its glorification of the rural idyll, the handmade, and a bucolic isolationism, as well as its coexistence with the technical, the distance from the material through the digital, and the interconnectedness of the internet. These contradictions manifest through social media platforms like TikTok, whereby the most popular of these acts are documented, produced, and circulated, and consumed as content, creating a continuous social loop of escapism. With these key concepts at the helm, this paper will emphasize the ever-growing intersection between production of material culture and the digital age.
Keywords: Cottagecore, craft, social media, digital media, pastoralism, romanticism
On March 10, 2020, The New York Times published an article by Isabel Slone titled, “Escape Into Cottagecore, Calming Ethos for Our Febrile Moment,” examining an emerging aesthetic movement – what the internet has deemed “cottagecore.”[1] Cottagecore can be understood as the projection of a core fantasy of escape to a cottage in the woods to live as if it were a “simpler time.” [2] The desire to make things with one’s hands as a form of self-sufficiency-based self-care has become associated with cottagecore modes of production. Activities of this sort include baking bread, gardening, knitting, crocheting, and other embodied tasks that possess the quaint charm and rustic sensibility one might associate with a secluded cottage.[3] This trend stems from a deeper desire to escape capitalism and the digital age through the veneration of a pre-industrial way of life.
The anti-modern pastoral is nothing new, but cottagecore differs from past iterations due to the immediacy of the internet. This aestheticization of the rural idyll, which implies a certain fascination with the hand-made, has sparked an expansive movement of digital engagement, collecting, and crafting, all loosely connected by the common thread of the pastoral escapist fantasy of an isolated return to nature. The specific kind of craft that presents itself in cottagecore material does so through an aestheticized documentation of making, the performance of process, and individual participation in the making or collecting of crafts. The digital component integral to cottagecore complicates this relationship to craft, whereby the fantasy’s own isolationism is mimicked in the participation mediated through the social media platforms it inhabits. Cottagecore, as it inspires a mode of crafting tied to the digital, creates the dialectic intersections between romantic pastoralism and technology, and between community and isolation.
Because cottagecore sprouted from the internet, the precise origins of the aesthetic are nearly impossible to pin down, though its rising popularity has coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.[4] The Washington Post has reported that “cottagecore content on Tumblr increased by 153 percent between March and April [2020], and “likes” for that content increased by about 550 percent during the same time. On Pinterest, there were eighty percent more searches for cottagecore fashion this [2020] June than there were last [2019] June. Videos with the cottagecore hashtag have been viewed 3.7 billion times on TikTok as of August thirty-first [2020].”[5] This article was released in September of 2020, and as of June 19, 2021, that number has increased to 6.6 billion views on TikTok. The body of cottagecore content is large, varied, and ever-growing – its parameters are elusive. In discussing the material contributions of the movement, this vastness must be kept in consideration. As further testament to its uncertain origins, The Washington Post has reported that the cottagecore hashtag began to appear around 2018, while The New York Times and Architectural Digest both claim it has existed since 2017, and NPR News suggests that the hashtag can be traced as far back as 2014. The one commonality between these sources remains that its main thrust occurred in early 2020.
Figure 1. Instagram user @cottage.witchgoblin, Photograph (unknown photographer), Instagram, November 17, 2020.
Even if one were able to locate the very first use of the term cottagecore, the kind of content that now would be classified as such predates such specific categorical attribution. This condition is further complicated by the intersection of cottagecore with other “core” aesthetics such as “grandmacore,” “faeriecore,” “farmcore,” and “goblincore.”[6] What is understood as cottagecore is to a degree a product of the continued efforts of content creators’ self-cataloguing. This is to say that identifying material as cottagecore via the use of the hashtag actively shapes what is understood as cottagecore. Instagram user @cottage.witchgoblin’s post (figure 1) featuring a photograph of a wooden table holding books, flowers, a woven basket, and a cup of tea, is connected to user @fairies_and_frogs’s photo post (figure 2), depicting the sunlight hitting two white, chemise-like dresses hung on a laundry line, contrasted by a thick coverage of greenery in the background, by their shared use of the cottagecore hashtag. Certain elements repeatedly present themselves on the hasthag, including flowers, teapots, teacups, and diaphanous clothing. They reveal themselves as both icons and roots of cottagecore.
Figure 2. Instagram user @fairies_and_frogs, Photograph (unknown photographer), Instagram, November 30, 2020.
Due to its pastoral quality, cottagecore’s lineage is often traced to Marie Antoinette. In a facetious tweet published to the Museum of English Rural Life’s twitter, digital editor Joe Vaughan crowned French queen Marie Antoinette a so-called “icon” of cottagecore.[7] Her retreat to the hamlet in the greenery outside Versailles, where she would dress in a theatrical approximation of peasant attire and luxuriate in a fantasy of an aestheticized rural simplicity, would seem on paper to be precisely the kind of escape for which people turn to cottagecore. Cottagecore content creators participate in varying degrees of dress-up, ranging from immersive experiences to nostalgic performances of the rural idyll like Marie Antoinette’s own retreats in her infamous white chemise. An article about cottagecore from Today describes cottagecore as a “fashion aesthetic,” and although this unduly narrows the scope of cottagecore to what is arguably a more peripheral component of the aesthetic, it does reflect the common associations made to pastoralism and a specific mode of dress.[8] Clothing can be one portal into this world, as can settings which reflect the feeling of isolation in, or return to, nature, and activities like picnicking and foraging. The documentation of these conditions on social media allows them to comingle in a web of cottagecore activity, and to build onto its aesthetic glossary through hashtag self-categorization. In a way, cottagecore itself is crafted through this active curation of material.
Images and videos alone can capture and communicate the visual quality of cottagecore, but this imagery must exist in its global, digital, and dynamic form to truly become cottagecore, itself. It is the community engagement on social media that proliferates the aesthetic and allows consumers to watch visual motifs of pastoral escape become tangible practices. Though the core fantasy involves a literal escape from societal woes like capitalism, homophobia, misogyny, and racism in the sub-movements like “Black Cottagecore” or the moniker “Cottagecore Lesbian,” the actual practice of cottagecore lies in the application of visual motifs that align with the fantasy of a return to nature – the rural idyll – and to the cultivation of an environment or experience, digital or otherwise. This experience most often manifests in some form of crafting.
It is important to note that cottagecore is not without its criticism, and though the subcategories of Black cottagecore and cottagecore Lesbian are not inherently meant as protest, they are evidence of the overwhelming whiteness and cis-het dominance of cottagecore-labeled content.[9] This, though, seems to be a microcosm of a larger issue on social media whereby thin, white, cis-het bodies are prioritized and given more digital traffic, disproportionally to those of other identities.[10] These sub-hashtags offer a degree of recontextualization, however there is no real deviation from the core aesthetic. Rather, what emerges is a way of digitally cataloging content such that people of similar identities can more easily find and support that which reflects their communities.[11]
The link to Marie Antoinette is also no coincidence, as cottagecore is additionally critiqued for its classicism, offering a limited accessibility to people short on time or money. Scholar Leo Marxx has suggested that class bias was a “peculiarity of the ‘old pastoral,’” and that the post-romantic pastoral, which does away with conventional figures like the shepherd, likewise turns away from class division.[12] However, the class bias to which Marxx refers is more to do with the pastoral’s textual minstrelsy of poverty, such as with the queen’s hamlet, than the class division of participants in pastoralism. The contemporary pastoral evoked by cottagecore has less to do with mimicking poverty, and is more so related to a nostalgic, romantic consideration of pre-industrialized life. Even relieved of the shepherd, however, class bias can become apparent in other, more subtle ways. Though cottagecore’s pastoralism looks towards the pre-industrial past, and not explicitly the peasant, class certainly plays a significant role, as it often does with craft, in who can participate and how.[13]
Though visually, many have compared cottagecore with the pastoralism of the Ancien Régime, ideologically, cottagecore has more in common with the pastoral, return to nature of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s eighteenth-century romanticism and William Morris’ later romantic utopia born from the nineteenth-century anti-industrial movements. Although Rousseau wrote of “nature” as reference to “human nature,” he also would recall nature as a literal “natural environment.”[14] His romantic treatise thus called for a return to nature wherein both human nature and the natural world were inextricably entwined.[15] In this retreat into nature, Rousseau found peace of mind in solitude.[16] This aspect of romanticism, the transcendent relationship between the individual and nature, is certainly recalled in the aesthetic motifs that make up cottagecore. The ideal of unbridled nature in harmony with man is part of the cottagecore appeal as much as its nostalgic yearning for escape.[17] This inherent desire for a relationship with nature, congruous with the “simpler life” for which it is nostalgic, is what puts the “cottage” into cottagecore, so to speak. Though the actual structure of the cottage is not necessary, the reference to such a setting implies isolation, a pastoral vision of a humble self-reliant life, and an environment in harmony with nature.
Though Rousseau’s own romanticism had a contested relationship with the productions of the man-made – or for the purposes of cottagecore, the hand-made – as romanticism evolved into the late nineteenth century, especially within the context of textile designer and socialist thinker William Morris’ neo-medievalism, hand-making became imperative.[18] Morris’ designs themselves assumed “bio-inspired” forms, such as his tulip designs (figure 3), utilizing natural motifs and patterns.[19] Beyond just the look of his designs, however, the philosophical and political perspective Morris applied to said designs took on a utopic tone. Scholar Mark Coeckelbergh refers to this aspect of Morris’ work as the “romantic modern subject,” whereby through a utopian lens, it simultaneously looked back towards the past while also looking forward, and in this way it was “always somewhere else.”[20] The liminal quality to modern romantic temporality is especially prominent in cottagecore, as the aesthetic itself is “presentless,” not of any one distinct time or place.[21]
Figure 3. William Morris, Tulip, Roller printed cotton, 76.1 x 95.3 cm, 1875.
Though similarities can be drawn between the visuality of cottagecore and Marie Antoinette at the queen’s hamlet, cottagecore imagery also references the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, even as far back as the classical period. Thus, unlike other online aesthetic communities that reference specific moments in time, such as those engaged in vintage fashion of a certain decade, cottagecore stands apart as nostalgic for an invented historical moment. Cottagecore is nostalgic for a fluid past. Though cottagecore can sometimes lean more on fantasy genre visuals, it can also appear to mimic historical realities, borrowing from real, tangible artifacts of the past, such as articles of clothing, further narrowing the line between fabrication and reality. The treachery of this nostalgia for a time that never actually existed, aside from its aversion to definite categorization, is that it makes looking with a critical eye difficult. Ultimately, because there is no tangible history to respond to, there is sometimes an acceptability to, or willful ignorance of, cottagecore’s shortcomings, and an ability to overstate its social consequence.
Aside from issues of identity representation, and the class barriers of time and money, cottagecore can become problematic by way of its social impotence. Cottagecore is a fantasy of isolation. Although some might read utopian hopes in its recalling of the romantic aspirations of naturalism, and certainly in its anti-capitalism paralleled by earlier anti-industrialism, which spark a resonance with the social utopias proposed by figures like Morris, ultimately the fantasy serves not the collective, but the individual. As Coeckelbergh notes, Morris’ romanticism was not “merely escapist,” as it prompted the consideration of societal change.[22] Cottagecore is not about the creation of a new society, as is the general aim of a utopia, or even the rehabilitation of our current situation, but rather is pure escapism. With the occasional exception of a companion, as is the case for the “cottagecore lesbian” hashtag, the fantasy is generally one of solitude. Any enrichment one would seek from the fantasy would be an act of self-care or self-maintenance. This is not inherently bad, but it does give pause to the consideration of cottagecore as a practice. Regardless of its latent anti-capitalist sentiments or intentions, there is nothing truly radical about cottagecore. In its purest form, it is about an immediate, self-serving retreat from the ills of the world, not a call to action for change. Crafting, which since at least the late twentieth century has had movements attempting to classify it as a radical practice, likewise can be socially dampened by the cottagecore context.[23]
It is no wonder, given the circumstances the pandemic brought about, that such a fantasy of self-care would take root at the time it did. As “febrile” the moment might have been in March 2020, as over a year has now eclipsed it seems an understatement in retrospect, and the need for escape evermore urgent.[24] The COVID-19 pandemic created a condition where many middle-class people were meant to stay home with an abundance of newfound time on their hands. Though sometimes this “free” time was redirected to more work, the uncertainty of the earlier days of the pandemic especially resulted in a halting of some work-related actions, leaving a vacancy in some people’s daily schedules. Many people looked to fill the void with new, hands-on activities that required an open window of time to participate in, including sourdough bread-baking, knitting or crocheting, and gardening.[25] In the fantasy of cottagecore, time is a crucial component. In its pre-industrial consideration of the rural idyll, there is a reimagining of the personal relationship to labor and by extension, a reconsideration of the time one devotes to laboring for others versus for oneself. In a way, this aspect of cottagecore seems to fulfill the requirements Morris laid out about “useful work.”[26] By re-focusing labor from a monetary end towards the end of personal pleasure and fulfillment, reallocating time to cottagecore activities could then be classified as “worthy work.”[27] However, unlike in Morris’s theoretical conception of utopic working conditions, time is not universally accessible in the current circumstances. This reflects one of the more ardent criticisms of cottagecore as class biased.
Time, even – or especially – during the pandemic, remains a luxury. Having the ability to choose personal pleasure over monetary gain, or, in the specific conditions the early days of the pandemic brought, to not have to make the choice at all; to have the ability to work from home, maintain a salary, and still have more time for cottagecore activities, denotes a distinction in class that is precisely what allows for such participation. However, direct participation in the creation of cottagecore craft is not the only avenue into a cottagecore escape. Digital engagement is central to cottagecore, and on the platforms that house such content, time is not an object, at least not in the same way. Extended participation in a crafting activity can be transfigured into vicarious crafting by way of scrolling through images on Instagram or Pinterest, which have no time constraints or demands. Videos on TikTok reduce the process of crafting to the duration of one minute maximum. Making a hand-bound book with hand-pressed paper is cottagecore; but viewing TikTok user @shelbfart go through the paper-pressing and bookbinding process is also cottagecore. The hands-off participation in cottagecore craft visa-vis the digital circuit of social media can mold itself into the gaps of one’s schedule, allowing a flexibility in involvement and affording participants a modicum of accessibility.
Whether through the curation of digital imagery, the production or consumption of a documentation of making in, or performance of, the rural idyll, the goal in the digital engagement of cottagecore is to create an immersive experience that transports the participant or viewer into the core fantasy in some way. The videos posted to the app TikTok, where cottagecore truly began to flourish, create scenes that often rely on specific settings, such as cozy kitchens, gardens, and open fields, among others, to act as the site of aestheticized gestures of making. To some degree, simply watching these TikToks, or even looking at images on Instagram, is itself an act of escape. As Coeckelbergh has demonstrated, as far back as the 1990s, the internet has been seen as a point of romantic liberation, whereby an individual possesses the ability to go to other worlds and adopt a different self.[28] This romanticism only intensifies as the technologies evolve, and the new devices of the first decades of the twenty-first century, like smartphones, act to merge the digital world with reality, in a way collapsing the romanticized self onto the “true” self.[29] Coeckelbergh notes this is especially the case with the advent of social media, which blurs the line between the virtual and the “real” even further.[30] This then implies that in regard to cottagecore, digital engagement with content that emulates or promotes the escapist fantasy is itself escapism. To take this even further, viewing cottagecore crafting on social media would then be a direct engagement with craft.
In the larger scope of cottagecore participation, content creators are vastly outnumbered by their viewers. Though a significant part of the process of defining the contours of the aesthetic involves the reflexive self-categorization process that the content creator undergoes to identify and promote their work, craft manifests differently in the cottagecore hashtag depending on the platform. Instagram and Pinterest house primarily still images that suggest craft, like in Instagram user @nestfed’s photo post (figure 4) that positions a piece of embroidery in the center of the image. Craft contributes to the aesthetic makeup of the image, where the floral arrangement of the embroidery in @nestfed’s post mimics the dried floral arrangement it is positioned next to. Craft is present in these kinds of photographs, but it is not necessarily the primary focus. Even though @nestfed’s page is in promotion of her “hand embroidered vintage/thrifted rematic attire,” the embroidered subject is always only part of a whole compositional arrangement of artifacts. It is not the craft that is emphasized, but the aesthetic mood it contributes to. Rather, the platform where craft is most central to its cottagecore content is TikTok. The videos posted to this social media site under the cottagecore hashtag do include some of the same visual matter as Instagram, but the ability to demonstrate process in action allows for a particular kind of production that emphasizes hand making.
Figure 4. Instagram user @nestfed, Photograph (unknown photographer), Instagram, December 4, 2020.
Examples of the kinds of TikTok videos one encounters while scrolling through the cottagecore hashtag include a video by user @gaynadia (formerly @feminist_fatale) where she forages violets and turns them into syrup. Another by user @poemsforthemoon_depicts a woman (assumed to be the user) weaving lavender into a wreath among a woodland setting. These manifestations of cottagecore lean into a return to nature in their crafting, as opposed to the posts videos user @erenanaomi where she, dressed in decidedly less natural hot-pink frills, documents her lacemaking process, one she self-identifies as cottagecore. There is no single mode of crafting that is the best suited to the cottagecore aesthetic, and the variety of crafting that appears in the TikTok hashtag is a testament to that. Though these videos document crafting as a performance of the aesthetics’ core fantasy, they allow for participation through viewership, and offer a framework for personal “real-life” application.
However, the many contradictions of such digital content are revealed in these videos. Their base digital condition, and their existence on a social media platform meant to be viewed in the palm of one’s hand, gives the viewer the illusion of a proximity to these moments of crafting, while the tangible experience of the craft object is lost. In this way, the process of making becomes more important than the actual object that is crafted. Sometimes, as in @erenanaomi’s lacemaking video, the finished product is never revealed, emphasizing the process as the subject of the TikTok rather than the product itself. The performance of process has its own lineage in the history of craft production, thinking particularly back to poet and ceramist M. C. Richards’ work at the Black Mountain College. Richards’ treatment of pottery as a medium gave the participatory experience primacy over the object itself, often returning unfired clay to the ground.[31] This dominant position of process seems to echo in cottagecore, though a key distinction lies in the relationship the spectator to said process has with the materiality of the craft. Scholar Richard Sennet notes that the craftsman is “engaged in a continual dialogue with materials.” [32] In the case of Richards, that dialogue extended to her students, who had access to the material nature of the pottery by proximity.[33] However, in the case of the cottagecore craft TikTok, the tactility of the materials is replaced by the physical presence of the smartphone. This simultaneously distances materiality, while keeping it literally close by proximity to the smartphone’s screen.
This then begs the question, is the lack of tactile relationship with materials a deficit in the experience, or does it simply mark a shift in the nature of the experience? The viewer’s hand is still engaged, only not in the actual craft production. The linkage of the hand in video documentation, which is its own layer of crafting, to the hand which holds the transmission of this documentation that mediates the experience of, and participation in, crafting, offers a kind of intimacy that is distinct from traditional craft relationships. The visual still corresponds to the tactile, and the element of proximity remains, although the craft materials are artificially close. There is a chasm between direct experience of production and of the tangible product, but this is a consequence of one’s perspective of what they identify as the subject of observation. The gulf between the viewer and the craft object, or process that is depicted in the video, is wider than that between the viewer and the video itself. The video format adds, through its own crafted production, an aesthetic veneer that further distances the viewer from the actual act of crafting depicted. The additional levels of performativity that can be achieved through the format, further remove the visual from naturalism. This puts the condition of the video as pure documentation into question. Though, as the video further departs from straight documentation, it moves closer to inhabiting the role of craft itself. Regardless, the isolation inherent to this form of participation, whether in terms of a distancing from the materiality of the craft presented, or from the circumstance of individual viewership, mirrors the isolationism at the core of the escapist fantasy.
In another sense, though these videos are often aestheticized in a way that removes them from the realm of daily life, and editing condenses time in an unrealistic manner, having the process of making at the forefront gives the impression of accessibility. Crafts that take individuals years of experience to master, are presented with the illusion of ease. This could set some viewers up for frustration, and it should be noted that the concern of who could have the luxury of time to devote to such learning is echoed once again. However, this further explains why the aesthetic developed so keenly in the early days of the pandemic, when some seemed to have “ample time on their hands” to begin the process of, if not mastery, then at least participation.[34] Though the luxury of time gives cottagecore activity implications of class division, it should be noted that it is also integral to the core fantasy. Steeped into the rural idyll itself is this temporal condition that one has enough time to complete tasks and to reap pleasure from their work. So, in finding, or even only imagining time for crafting, this part of the fantasy is fulfilled.
The specific outputs of these endeavors when done with the visual motifs of nature, as in the embroidery displayed in Instagram user @nestfed’s photo post, become contributions to cottagecore as much as the actions themselves are participatory in the aesthetic. Crocheting a blanket is cottagecore, but the blanket itself is also cottagecore. Theoretically, if a participant, inspired to craft from the process videos posted to TikTok or other similar platforms, were to document their participation through process as video or finished product as photograph, and then share that to a social media platform, a circuit of engagement would then be completed. In this way, cottagecore can become viral in a more literal sense, not only presenting itself as pervasive aesthetic material, but also as a mode of contagious engagement. This, to a degree, is a function of the internet, where hyperconnectivity leads to widespread activity. The breadth of this activity collectivized by the categorical efforts of the hashtag, is in part responsible for the disparate modes of making that occur within cottagecore.
Cottagecore’s aestheticized rural idyl turns on this digital axis. It is reliant on digital production and the immediacy of social media engagement in a way that past iterations of pastoralism were not. The internet is what makes cottagecore distinct, and ultimately what complicates it. This is what is most fascinating about cottagecore: it is constantly in conflict with itself. There is a dialectic relationship between the natural and the technological, whereby the return to nature is facilitated through electronic means. This can lead to contradictions in cottagecore’s aims at escaping the modern world, as that escape is achieved by way of the thoroughly modern portals of social media. There is also the dialectical relationship between seclusion and community building. Cottagecore is a collective fantasy of isolation. The conditions of the pandemic ensured a simultaneous condition of sequestration, thereby making isolation a shared experience. In some ways, the escapist fantasy of cottagecore’s rise in tandem with the pandemic can be viewed as a response to a loss of control over one’s social interaction, whereby seeking isolation on one’s own terms could make the forced seclusion seem more manageable. Crafting within this framework can be seen as an active reframing of isolation as empowering, literally taking the unwieldy situation into one’s hands.
Cottagecore as a digitized pastoral may seem a paradox, but its visual material and connection to craft reflect an essential part of contemporary life in the digital age. Though the circumstances of the 2020 global pandemic certainly exacerbated the need for escape and the collective feeling of isolation, the systems of late-stage capitalism, institutional racism, homophobia, and sexism, which cottagecore seeks an escape from, have been oppressive long before the pandemic, and will likely remain so long after it is over. As a rebellion against these societal ills, cottagecore is rather impotent. For the most part, cottagecore is a purely escapist form of what some participants consider self-care. However, aside from the inherent isolation, cottagecore also has the potential to be a tool of connectivity. Community building is something that craft and social media have always had in common. Where cottagecore offers a return to nature and pre-industrial hand-making as escapism, it also promotes social engagement via the digital. Mediated by technology, the escape has the potential to become collectivized – even in isolation.
Endnotes
[1] Isabel Slone, “Escape Into Cottagecore: Calming Ethos for Our Febrile Moment,” The New York Times, March 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/style/cottagecore.html.
[2] Slone, “Escape Into Cottagecore.”
[3] Danielle Braff, “How the #cottagecore Internet aesthetic dovetails with pandemic travel,” The Washington Post, September 10, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/how-the-cottagecore-internet-aesthetic-dovetails-with-pandemic-travel/2020/09/10/3ae54032-ed39-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29story.html.
[4] Braff, “How the #cottagecore Internet aesthetic dovetails with pandemic travel.”
[5] Braff, “How the #cottagecore Internet aesthetic dovetails with pandemic travel.”
[6] Slone, “Escape Into Cottagecore.”
[7] Emma Bowman, “The Escapist Land Of 'Cottagecore,' From Marie Antoinette To Taylor Swift,” NPR Arts & Life, August 9, 2020, htps://www.npr.org/2020/08/09/900498227/the-escapist-land-of-cottagecore-from-marie-antoinette-to-taylor-swift.
[8] Julie Pennell, “’Cottagecore’ fashion aesthetic brings back a simpler time,” Today, July 21, 2020, https://www.today.com/tmrw/cottagecore-fashion-trend-transports-simpler-time-t186200.
[9]The conjunction of the Latin prefix “cis-,“ as in “cisgender,” or in contrast with “transgender,” and the word “het,” which acts as a short hand to “heterosexual,” into the term “cis-het” or “cishet,” has been used as its own term within queer dialogue to specify that an individual is both cisgender and heterosexual ; Kate Reggev, “What Exactly Is Cottagecore and How Did It Get So Popular?,” Architectural Digest, October 21, 2020, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/what-exactly-is-cottagecore.
[10] Reggev, “What Exactly Is Cottagecore.”
[11] Reggev, “What Exactly Is Cottagecore.”
[12] Leo Marxx, “Does Pastoralism Have a Future?,” Studies in the History of Art 36, 36 (1992), 223.
[13] Braff, “How the #cottagecore Internet aesthetic dovetails with pandemic travel.”
[14] Mark Coeckelbergh, New Romantic Cyborgs: Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017, 24.
[15] Coeckelbergh, New Romantic Cyborgs, 24.
[16] Coeckelbergh, 24
[17] Reggev, “What Exactly Is Cottagecore.”
[18] Coeckelbergh, New Romantic Cyborgs, 57.
[19] Coeckelbergh, 57.
[20] Coeckelbergh, 57.
[21] Coeckelbergh, 57.
[22] Coeckelbergh, 59.
[23] Julia Bryan-Wilson, Introduction to Fray: Art + Textile Politics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017, 4.
[24] Reggev, “What Exactly Is Cottagecore.”
[25] Slone, “Escape Into Cottagecore.”
[26] William Morris, "Useful Work Versus Useless Toil", Pocket Library of Socialism, No. 48, Box 10, Folder 86, American Left Ephemera Collection, 1894-2008, AIS.2007.11, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh, 5.
[27] Morris, 5.
[28] Coeckelbergh, New Romantic Cyborgs, 150.
[29] Coeckelbergh, 157.
[30] Coeckelbergh, 159.
[31] Jenni Sorkin, Live Form: Women, Ceramics, and Community. Chicago; The University of Chicago Press, 2016, 155.
[32] Richard Sennett, The Craftsman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, 125.
[33] Sorkin, Live Form: Women, Ceramics, and Community, 155.
[34] Reggev, “What Exactly Is Cottagecore.”
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