We thought we would never hear their “clang-clang” on the pavement again. And now they are back, star of the summer of 2021, claim the fashion magazines. In fact, a quick tour of the online shopping sites confirms: out of stock on Swedish models (the most affordable around 50 euros) and soaring prices in their luxury version (750 euros at Céline, Vuitton …).
Wooden clogs, emblematic shoe of the peasant world, brought back to fashion in the 1970s by the hippies, symbolize the craze of the time for “rustic chic”. Urbanites dream of the countryside; failing to go there, or to live there, they endorse its attributes. The peasant look, the imagination of a largely idealized countryside, became the big trend of the confined era.
Apple picking
On social networks, for the past year, it has been a flood of flowers, small farms and country-style all-out. This aesthetic based on the romanticism of a simple life in the countryside, with a very “little house in the meadow” spirit, at its rallying point: the cottagecore, reconciliation of cottage, which can be translated by “country house”, “chalet”, and core (“Core”, “essential”).
Under the hashtag “#cottagecore” (already 5.9 billion references on the TikTok platform), rural life is a romance based on apple picking, horses which frolic, flowery meadows, like Liberty dresses which dry in the wind. Not to mention chickens, wreaths of dried flowers and other freshly baked sourdough breads. A fictionalized version of bucolic occupations, a source of escape and safety in the open air, taken over by the fashion and decoration industry.
In a more down to earth approach, magazines that smell good walks in the forest, local products, and more generally rurality, flourish. Islands, Well in the countryside, Neoruro, to name only the most recent. Without forgetting the pioneer of the genre: the quarterly Regain, launched in 2018 by Daphné Hézard, a former television fashion journalist. She qualifies as a “campaign newspaper” this publication (7.50 euros) with polished aesthetics, which claims some four thousand subscribers and as many number sales, mainly urban and neo-rural readers.
In fact, the content, between the section “Meaningful initiatives” and the promotion of farming professions, is aimed more at owners of second homes and neorurals than at farmers who have been established for a long time. However, the founder and editor in chief ensures not to embellish the campaign. “We try to produce a beautiful magazine, but above all a positive one, showing the vitality of this rural world. ” Contents of the last issue, that of spring, stories of tree bark, a dive among mimosa growers, an interview with astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, a portrait of one of the only farriers in France … but not a hoof on the horizon, except those of horses.