How To Slay Your Dragons: The Princess/Coquette Core Way 🎀💅🏽👑

It’s the year of the dragon y’all! I finally understand why I kept seeing dragons in my tea cups readings now. I’m learning that this princess is saving herself! This year is all about slaying my dragons (and slaying my make up 😜). So join me on this journey of finding love and joy. I want to teach you how to face those inner demons and dragons— the coquette way! We’ll be boosting our auras, changing our aesthetics, and learning how to become more alluring overall.  So what IS coquette fashion and what does it mean? Personally, I think it’s frilly, it’s flirty, it’s the divine femme! Coquette fashion, regardless of how you gender identify, is a reminder that you deserve to be pampered, feel pretty, and wear pink! If you ask TimeOut journalist Ian Kumamoto, he describes coquette style as if “soft girl aesthetics and cottage-core had a baby, and then a unicorn bottle fed it pink steroids.” And if you look at French etymology, coquette simply means “flirtatious.” But where is the clothing style REALLY from? If y’all know me by now, I’m a BIG history buff, so before I give you any of my magical methods to slaying your dragons the coquette way, I’ll give you its historical backgrounds. Remember: knowledge is power!  (Buuuuut if you don’t want to read all that you can skip to the end I guess 🙄) History of coquette fashion Coquette clothing is heavily inspired by Rococo British/French aesthetic and the Victorian Era. The Rococo Era was popular in the 18th century (1700-1799). It was an architectural rebellion against King Louis XIV’s “formal and geometric” French classicism style that was influenced by Ancient Greek and Roman culture. One could argue that rococo designs facetiously mocked yet admittedly admired the 14th-16th century Renaissance allure Louis XIV was going for. Rococo gave big and dramatic twist to architecture, and it incorporated more curves and pastel colors to art. The style spread through Europe and influenced other mediums such as “sculpting, furniture, silverware, glassware, painting, music, theatre, and more.” However, the style was condemned, it died out, and it was considered “out of date” by 1820. And why did the Rococo style die? It’s possibly because Queen Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France (for very obvious reasons), scared people away from clothes and art that was extravagant, luxurious, and lavish. Her excessive spending habits is one of the things that lead us to the inevitable French Revolution. She took money from the proletariats pockets and left them famished, but Marie Antoinette didn’t care, as long as she was fashionable. So people refrained from big, embroidered clothes afterward in fear of personally reliving her execution fate.  By 1830, during the Victorian era, there were major changes in European fashion because of the Industrial Revolution. A mass production of sewing machines lead to changes in trends, thus marking the beginnings of “fast fashion.” Prior to the Industrial Revolution, women were expected to preform more laborious duties along their side their husbands and brothers, such as being in the field farming. However, after these technological advancements, more women were able to take on domestic/homemaking work or stop working completely. This free time allowed women to dress freely again. They went back to the big, dramatized dresses that were condemned over the last 30 years. They traded in utilitarian lifestyles for sedentary looks.  The Sedentary style was ever evolving and depended on the decade, so there’s no one look; however, the more popular dress pieces for women included: corsets over a bodice, skirts adorned in lace and embroidery, low necklines with exposed shoulders, fitted or engageantes (false) sleeves, and crinolines (a petticoat added under skirts to give them a “bee hive” shape, give the body an illusion of hourglass figure, and give the dress flare). By the 1860, the general idea of these dresses stayed the same but it had some changes. For example, necklines were raised, the size of crinolines shrunk, trains were added to the ends of dresses, and they experimented with more dress colors since synthetic dyes were invented around this time. Victorian clothing saw a couple more changes over the decades before it completely fizzled out of style. We did see many designers pay homage to the style over the 20th and 21st century, including Christian Diors “New Look” of 1947, Vivian Westwoods “mini crini” of 1980, and Alexander McQueen crinoline line of 2005.  Coquette fashion is also believed to have inspired feminine fashion trends outside of westernized countries, including Japanese Lolita fashion. I HIGHLY recommend doing a deep dive on Lolita fashion itself because it’s so intriguing, especially if you’re also into kawaii, Alice in Wonderland, and Gothicism styles (because coquette is like punk but make it pink!). The style has returned to us once again in the 2020 decade. It started with a rising popularity on the social media blog site “tumblr” in 2020, and has garnered even more popularity on apps such as Tiktok, Twitter, and Instagram since 2022. It’s the parent style to co-aesthetics such as Ballet-core, Cottage-core, and Princess-core. My personal favorite core is princess core meets punk rock (and if you know me you know, this is how I’ve looked my whole life haha). So again, what is coquette? It’s pretty, it’s playful, and it’s a reminder that you are in fact a princess! But in todays day and age, it’s deeper than that. It’s also daring! It defies societal norms. In the words of journalist Isabella Bilous, “it allows people to fully escape into their femininity without feeling guilty about it.” In the words of Jay (me), it’s a way to say “yes, I embrace my inner femme. I’m not afraid of being a baddie, and I’m so proud of her/them for not caring what people think.” Coquette style also eliminates the idea that empowerment = masculinization. And considering if you were part of the proletariat, you weren’t even allowed to fully participate in the style. You had