If you’re on social media a lot, you might have heard of micro trends. If you’re less tapped in to the psychotic web of the internet, I’ll explain them to you. ‘Micro trend’ is obviously a broad term, but the ones I’m talking about relate specifically to aesthetics and manifest through personal style or decor. They’re always niche and extremely specific. Have you heard of Tomato Girl Summer or Old Money Aesthetic? How about Eclectic Grandpa or Coastal Grandmother? Those are just a few examples….Anyway, the trends mysteriously start somewhere—with a celebrity or clever hashtag—and catch on like wildfire for about 2 seconds until they’re abandoned for another one. You might be thinking that’s not very chouette, and you’d be right. Micro trends are honestly the antithesis of chouette. They’re trendy, for one thing, and short-lived for another. However, I love the idea of putting names to oddly specific aesthetics (wonder where I get that from??) and I thought it would be fun to link some micro trends to periods of art history. Maybe we’ll come to find that while their time in the sun is fleeting, micro trends are actually quite timeless after all…
Coquette
If you want to understand the Coquette aesthetic, just imagine putting delicate pink bows on everything—and I mean everything— and you’ve about got it. Throw in some lace and make it all pastel, and you’re there. No period in art history better reflects coquette style than Rococo. Pale pinks, garden trysts and bedecked everything defined the Rococo style, which reigned from around 1730-1760.
John Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, 1767.
Interior of the Würzberg Residence.
Mob Wife
The Mob Wife style involves a lot of cheetah print and heavy gold jewelry. You might find some Catholic statues thrown in there, too. The Baroque period is the most Mob Wife-adjacent to me. A little more over-the-top than the Renaissance and little less cutesy than Rococo, the Baroque era has that perfect balance of darkness and slightly too much-ness that a Mob Wife embodies. I think Caravaggio in particular is the most Mob Wife artist of the period. His dark, violent pictures, which are still devotional and rooted in the Catholic faith, share all the heightened drama of life in a crime family. Plus, Caravaggio was quite the mobster himself—game certainly recognizes game.
Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes (1602)
Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s baldachin, St. Peter’s Cathedral, the Vatican
Dark Academia
Dark Academia is part goth, part literary, and all moody. It’s your friend who only feels alive in the Fall and carries some Lord Byron or Oscar Wilde around in their worn leather knapsack. While I could take the obvious path and say Dark Academia is most related to the Gothic period, I’m going to get more particular and go with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of the mid-1800s. This group of painters was all for rejecting Modernism to return to Classical art. Sir John Everett Millais’s depiction of Ophelia is truly what all the Dark Academia girlies are going for.
