The Life and Death of “-core” Aesthetics

Words such as cottagecore, balletcore, royalcore and clowncore may be familiar to you if, like me you are chronically online. The Rise of “-core” aesthetics has been snowballing since just before the start of the pandemic, and have risen to a height of public consciousness that older trends have failed to.

What are these older trends you may ask? Before -core, -chic ruled the aesthetics game; ballet chic, Parisian chic, vintage chic, the list goes on. While the aesthetics that make use of the -core and -chic endings are incredibly varied, the shift from one to the other is more than just a change of linguistic preferences.

‘Chic’ as a word in isolation is defined across dictionaries as some variation of ‘elegant and stylish’. The mentality behind the -chic aesthetics of the 2010s was to take the more put together and stylish part from its inspiration. Parisian chic is not an honest reflection of the Parisian lifestyle, but rather a selected assortment of the more ‘put together’ parts of the inspiration. ‘Core’ on the other hand, is the ‘central and most important part’ of whatever it describes. In this way the -core aesthetics aim to be directly influenced by the whole of whatever their inspiration is. A subtle difference to be sure, but an important one.

This principle is clearer in practice; searching ‘ballet chic’ on Pintrest gets you pictures of smart casual, flowy outfits in neutral tones, that may well include a puffy skirt and flats. Some beautiful looks in their own right, and clearly inspired by ballet dancers, but not something one would ever wear to rehearsal. ‘Balletcore’ , on the other hand, gets you layers, leotards, and dance themed memes; less polished and editorial but far truer to the inspiration theme.

The -chic aesthetics had a long reign dating back to the early ‘00s, with the -cores taking over in the last few years. However, with a logarithmically higher usage volume, comes shorter lifespan, and -core is on its way out.

The general exhaustion with these rapidly expanding and identifiable aesthetics has been growing since early 2022. What was once a handful of trends per decade last century, and a couple a year in the 2000s has become a new trend every week, constantly replacing each other as the internet fashionistas struggle to keep up with fully changing out their wardrobe every other week.

Namecore is the gravestone that marks the death of the -core era. Namecore - a trend of searching your name + core to find your unique-ish aesthetic is one of a barrage of new -core trends, which is probably already outdated as I write this. But what makes namecore so significant? ‘A trend that unifies all trends’ according to The Face, namecore at its roots (its core, if you will) is a collection of all the aesthetics seen in recent years, a kind of meta trend that encompasses all that came before. When every name has a trend there is nowhere left to go.

By definition, trends delineate a space between the old and outdated fashions we are bored of, and things too new and unfamiliar to enjoy. In a time where trends cycle so rapidly, the boundaries of this middle ground become so blurred that there is no longer an ‘in’ and an ‘out’. When everything is trendy, nothing is.

So what’s next? No doubt the -core will take a while to fully dissipate from the cultural consciousness, though it is safe to say few will miss it. While I would love to see the obsession with labelling each and every little thing fade a little from our cultural consciousness, the profitability of concrete labels which make aesthetics so marketable makes this an unlikely outcome. Instead, I present to you the rise of “sleaze”. Headed up by “indie sleaze”, a style long predicted for a resurgence, the -sleaze aesthetics differ from the -cores by adding a messier, more effortless energy to its core inspiration. Yup, that is right. The solution to the aesthetic exhaustion we have been waiting for is nothing but a rebranding.

The long term shift from -chic to -core to -sleaze reflects the shift to the desirability for effortlessness to emerge as a macro-trend among the rubble. This desire for effortlessness seems somewhat proportional to the effort put into ‘personal branding’ over time, particularly on the internet. At the dawn of the world wide web, the style displayed was messy, there was no template for how to be online and therefore no understanding of personal branding. People were effortless in how they presented themselves online, and therefore desired what was hard to attain; sleekness, polish, chic. As social media became an established presence, more people grew up with frameworks of how best to come across online, the concept of personal branding for the everyday man was born. It was no longer common to not put in effort. Chic became the default.

From the exhaustion with sleekness (as well as a pandemic breaking us out of our regularity and traditional social media photo ops) came the desire to be creative and inspired. This marked the era of wide inspiration, where fashion as an art form was increasingly taken out of context of both day to day wear and runways.

But eventually we run out of good ideas. Then we run out of not so good ideas. Then the bottom shelf is empty. Thus, this intense wave of creativity which can only be appreciated for a week before a new thing is found, finds ourselves exhausted. No longer is it desirable to try hard. Everybody tries hard. That is not interesting. Suddenly we find effortlessness and genuinness desirable. We shy away from being polished and actively embrace a messy, unplanned joy.

What does this mean for trend cycles, and fashion as a whole? In the midst of a paradigm shift, we are witnessing the implosion of the trend cycle. The 20 year rule (the idea that the same trends cycle and go in and out of fashion every 20 years) is replaced by the 10 year rule. Then the 10 year rule goes out of the window as everything and nothing is trendy anymore. The immanent future is sleaze, but what after that?

https://www.moodfabrics.com/blog/what-is-fairycore/

My hope is that through the labeled aesthetics of the past, we have learned to embrace the width of human creativity as it applies to fashion, and with the exhaustion of labeled aesthetics, we come to see styles as a wholistic experience for each individual, rather than a blanket identity. While labels are an important tool for understanding oneself and relating to a community, in this context I believe we have outgrown them. I just want to wear my clothes.

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