Aesthetic Types: 10 Aesthetics and How to Find Yours

Where it came from: a romantic picture of country life that boomed in the 2020 lockdowns. NPR reported that the hashtag was first used on a blogging site in March 2014 and that its use there jumped 153% between March and April 2020. A museum of rural life pointed out the long history behind it: Marie Antoinette had a rustic hamlet built near Versailles in the 1780s so she could play at farm life. Pieces: cotton and linen dresses, small floral prints, puffed sleeves, cardigans, straw baskets. Colors: cream, sage, butter yellow, soft pink. Rooms: a wooden table, open shelves, dried flowers, jars of things you made. Music: folk and acoustic guitar. The point is doing more than buying: baking, mending, growing.

Where it came from: versions of it spread on image sites in the mid-2010s and took off on short-video apps at the end of 2020, when students stuck at home missed their campuses (CNN, 2022). A historian who studied it describes it as recreating the mood of boarding schools and colleges from the late 1800s to the 1940s: neo-gothic buildings, tweed, wool, leather and Romantic longing (Adriaansen, International Public History, 2022, doi:10.1515/iph-2022-2047). Its favorite books are The Secret History and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the film most often named with them is Dead Poets Society. Pieces: tweed blazers, sweater vests, turtlenecks, pleated skirts, worn loafers. Colors: brown, forest green, burgundy, black. Rooms: books stacked everywhere, a desk lamp, candles, rain on the window. Music: classical piano and string covers of rock songs.

Where it came from: CNN described it in 2022 as a tongue-in-cheek, aspirational style blending vintage and preppy pieces to look like people born into wealth. Under another name, quiet luxury, it flourished on social media in 2023 (CNN, 2024), the year CNN wrote that a television drama's costumes had created an archetype of logo-less "stealth wealth". Pieces: navy blazers, cable knits, cashmere, crisp shirts, loafers, pearls, nothing with a visible logo. Colors: navy, cream, camel, white, bottle green. Rooms: antiques, wood, worn rugs, books that have been read, paintings in heavy frames. Music: jazz standards, classical, a crackling record.

Where it came from: the name belongs to an art movement. Tate dates minimalism to the late 1950s and 1960s in the United States, when artists made work out of simple geometric shapes; the painter Frank Stella summed it up as "What you see is what you see". As a way of living it means owning fewer things and choosing each one. Pieces: plain tees, good trousers, one coat, a small wardrobe where everything goes with everything. Colors: white, black, grey, beige. Rooms: clear surfaces, plain walls, storage that hides things, one plant. Music: ambient, instrumental, quiet electronic.

Where it came from: surf, skate and hip-hop in the 1980s. Time reported in 1991 on a former surfboard maker in California who started his business in 1982 by printing surfboard graphics on T-shirts and shorts, a label hip-hop musicians then adopted. In New York, a fashion museum curator told CBS in 2023 that a Harlem designer who remixed luxury logos into streetwear changed the course of fashion. Pieces: sneakers, hoodies, graphic tees, caps, loose jeans or cargos. Colors: black, white, grey and one loud color. Rooms: sneakers on display, posters, records, a skateboard by the door. Music: hip-hop, and the punk and rock skaters played.

Where it came from: short for bohemian, the old word for artists who lived outside convention. As a fashion label, CNN dates "boho chic" to the early 2000s, a nod to 1960s and 70s hippie clothes: suede fringe, crochet and paisley, made famous by festival outfits around 2004. It later drew criticism when festival-goers wore sacred Native American headdresses as costume, and some festivals banned their sale. Pieces: maxi dresses, fringe, crochet, loose layers, stacked jewelry. Colors: terracotta, mustard, olive, rust. Rooms: rattan, macramé, patterned rugs, more plants than shelves. Music: folk rock and 1970s singer-songwriters.

Where it came from: the rock scene of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Its best-known band wore distressed jeans, tattered sweaters and flannel shirts for most of its career (CNN, 2019). A French designer told a fashion magazine in 1993 that grunge was "nothing more than the way we dress when we have no money." The scene didn't take itself seriously: when a newspaper asked a Seattle record label for a dictionary of grunge slang, an employee made up words on the spot, such as "swingin' on the flippity-flop" for hanging out (NPR, 2009). Pieces: flannel, ripped jeans, band tees, worn boots, oversized cardigans. Colors: faded black, olive, oxblood, washed-out plaid. Rooms: posters, thrifted furniture, a record player. Music: loud 1990s guitars.

Where it came from: the look of the late 1990s and early 2000s, back on a fashion cycle of about twenty years. The founder of the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute, which documents design history, told CNN in 2022 that the era carried over ideas from 1960s space-age design and that "in the Y2K era everything was plastic, shiny". Most of the people reviving it weren't born when it first came round. Pieces: baby tees, low-rise jeans, parachute pants, tinted sunglasses, anything metallic. Colors: silver, chrome, baby blue, hot pink, see-through plastic. Rooms: inflatable or translucent furniture, glitter, a lava lamp. Music: turn-of-the-millennium pop and R&B.

Where it came from: beach-house style got a new name in 2022, when a 26-year-old creator coined "coastal grandmother" for a beachy, romantic look (NPR, 2022). Its reference points: the film Something's Gotta Give, a good cookbook and a cashmere sweater tied over the shoulders. Pieces: linen shirts, striped tops, white jeans, canvas shoes, a straw hat. Colors: white, sand, navy, sea blue. Rooms: light and airy, slipcovered sofas, driftwood, woven baskets, a vase of hydrangeas. Music: soft rock, bossa nova, quiet jazz.

Where it came from: coquette is an old French word for a flirt, and The Coquette was the title of an American novel in 1797. As an aesthetic it's recent. A fashion reporter told NPR in 2024 that recent trends had been "quite girlish", pointing to "the bows, the coquette core", and NBC News listed the "coquettish hyperfeminine" among the short-lived looks of that year. Pieces: bows and ribbons on everything, lace, pearls, ballet flats, slip dresses, frilly socks. Colors: blush pink, cream, pale blue, white. Rooms: something heart-shaped, a canopy or frills, a vanity, handwritten letters. Music: dreamy pop and old romantic ballads.