Emily Ratajkowski stepped out on September 21 in a cottagecore look—or did she?
The term cottagecore sits within a very specific idea of sexiness: the sensuality of the soil; baskets of rotund fruits; milk. Built on abundant fantasies of pastoral life, it offers an alternative to mainstream fashion’s hard-and-fast eroticism. And yet it’s easy to picture the proponents of cottagecore (all smocked dresses and lace-up bustiers) draped across the cover of a Mills & Boon romance novel.
This tends to be a point of contention among those who were perhaps attracted to the movement for its more traditional and modest values. “Is sexy cottagecore in the spirit of cottagecore?” one Reddit post from 2021 asks. “I’ve seen some bloggers wear floral dresses with more boob than any legit milkmaid would ever show! It might undermine the pure and whimsical aesthetic.”
I imagine that person might baulk at Emily Ratajkowski’s risqué interpretation of the cottagecore look: a high-neck, floral-lace column with visible black underwear and leather Ganni boots. The model wore that outfit while strolling around Manhattan on Thursday afternoon. Though she might not have enrolled herself in the puff-sleeved sisterhood, EmRata did look like a cottagecore Pinocchio (an old-fashioned doily bewitched with life—and a modeling contract).
This article first appeared on British Vogue.
