Trending How: Coquette pt.2
- Lauren
- Feb 3
- 3 min read
Hello again!
I am finally making good on my word and covering Coquette again! In a previous blog, I went over the history behind this aesthetic, including its roots in Nymphet.
As previously discussed, the word "Coquette" means a flirtatious young woman.
So, what does this look like?
I have found out that in recent years, the meaning behind this aesthetic has... shifted. I do not support this shift. Today, I am going to BRIEFLY discuss the new vision of coquette and then dive deeper into the evolution and prior aspects of this aesthetic. But we will go about this in chronological order!
Alright guys, fr this time, what is coquette?
Basically, this aesthetic is like Nymphet, but without as much of the sexual aspect. Wanting to get away from the "daddy issues" and pedophilic undertones, people used the term coquette to stay within the nymphet-like aesthetic, still being able to dress very feminine and reminisce on childhood wonder. Girlhood.
It blew up around 2016-18, growing exponentially after Tumblr's purge in 2018/19, getting rid of a lot of NSFW or NSFW-like content. This being said, most of the Nymphet posts that were not taken down were reposted/tagged as Coquette or as "Coquette/Vintage Americana".
What does this look like?
Well, similar to Nymphet, Lana Del Rey is a huge source of inspiration. It also has a similar pull of the 50s and 60s aesthetic, but with elements of Rococo and Regency fashion and slightly less male gaze-y.
Lace
Bows
Pearls
Frills
Satin
While it is meant to be more innocent than Nymphet, it is not without darker themes. Some of the film and book inspirations are The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antonette by Sofia Coppola, as well as Lolita. You have to remember, these blew up on Tumblr in the 2010s, nothing here was completely innocent and without undertones of mental illness and risky behavior.
Along with Lana, and Marina, Melanie Martinez's music and music videos were huge.
Coquette is also an umbrella term for many other aesthetics. Or, like a jumping off point. In my pervious blog I talked about dark coquette/nymphet, and now I wanted to share some others!
One of these other aesthetics is Dollette!
Dollette is very similar, but I would say it is a bit more cutesty. It leans a little more 50s and Rococo, also taking inspiration from Balettecore, getting even softer than Coquette. It is the 2020/2021 interpretation of Coquette and what many people now just call Coquette (even the photos I showed above may lean more Dollette, Coquette is essentially Nymphet with a re-brand and slightly softer)
There are so many so I'm going to show some of my favorites and some I find interesting and mainly let the photos speak for themselves! (They are also very similar and overlap A LOT as they all kinda take inspiration from the same things, just with slight variation)
Gloomy Coquette
Japanese Horror Game Protagonist
Preacher's Daughter/Tradcath Coquette
Waif
What does coquette look like today? Well, I was really brave, and because I love you so much, I looked up coquette on Pinterest, and here are some photos of what I found from someone's board. This is no hate to them. Aesthetics change (or can be misinterpreted...) and, from what I have found, coquette today means lots of pink and... yeah, pretty much anything that has pink.
Pinterest- "Couette Aesthetic" by Darla
And again, I am not trying to hate. Do I like that this aesthetic has been interpreted this way? Not particularly, but then again, these things aren't real and are highly debated and ever-changing. Like music genres.
But I'm not going to lie, this confuses me. To some extent, I understand, because a large part of this aesthetic is hyper-feminine. Pink is often used to represent femininity, along with certain fabrics such as velvet and satin, and florals. These do still carry over, but the shape and types of clothing have largely changed.
My guess is that the "Clean Girl" aesthetic got combined or confused a little with coquette. Clean girl includes more casual clothing, sweat suits, cotton pants, hoodies, leisure or gym clothes. Some of the photos I found do not fully fit into my hypothesis, and I cannot explain it.
Thank you so much for reading!
I really like this aesthetic and have a lot of fun talking about it. I definitely wanna dive deeper into more aesthetics so please let me know!
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