the moment
Lauren Cochrane has long loved all things cute. This season, she discovers, designers are onboard, and they’re bringing a new subversion to the look
ON MY SIXTH BIRTHDAY, IWOKE UP IN MY BUNK BED TO APRESENT hanging, in pink crepe paper, on the back of my bedroom door. Inside was a dress that any six-year-old would dream of. It was frilled, with ribbons, a sash and puffed sleeves – the very picture of cuteness.
The problem is that, many birthdays on, this dress is still an ideal for me. I might now be grown-up, with a mortgage and a Wordle habit, but my aesthetic still leans to cute. As a child, I loved Hello Kitty and Little Twin Stars stationery from Sanrio, anything pink and as many cartoon characters as possible about my person. Not that much has changed. I still love pink. I still feel an affinity to cartoon characters, one that emboldens me to buy Online Ceramics shorts with a massive smiley starfish or a pair of trousers covered in bears. Meanwhile, on Instagram, I have a very active message group entirely dedicated to cute animal videos.
If, for a long time, I have had to downplay this tendency beyond my nearest and dearest, cute is transforming from something that society dismisses as childish to something that can signal everything from a new take on feminism to TikTok’s favourite coquette-style to – quite simply – a kind of unapologetic joy.
The cute movement has been on the catwalk for a while – thanks to, notably, female designers Cecilie Bahnsen, Simone Rocha and Molly Goddard. Clothes that could be worn by a particularly sweet china doll are twisted so the ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’ of sweet little girls is reworked for a generation steeped in the fourth wave of feminism. In these designers’ hands, cute looks positively subversive.
The cute revolution is growing. See this season’s Chopova Lowena collection replete with ribbons, puffed sleeves and Peter Pan collars worn by a diverse cast, many of whom had tattoos. Or Ashley Williams’ bow tights and bonnets paired with baseball caps and gimp masks. Sandy Liang, meanwhile, amped up the spoils of cute, with bows, pink and gingham included, along with a dress not unlike that one on the back of my bedroom door.
Culture is onboard. The explosion of pink – the official colour of cute – post-Barbie movie can’t be ignored. Sofia Coppola’s films that lean to cute and girlie – Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides – are gaining renewed interest as references. Sonny Angel dolls, the tiny Japanese toys, have become a sensation online, with Bella Hadid only one of thousands of collectors. And Olivia Rodrigo has embraced pastels and stickers in her album imagery.
This month, Somerset House will have an exhibition, Cute, exp
