What Does it Mean to Dress like a Grandmother?
Madeleine Kaptein
I used to observe my Grandmother plant flowers in her hilltop garden. Contrary to the sweet, soft-spoken grandmother stereotype, she would shove a sketchbook and pencil in my hand and tell me to draw the birds that surrounded her in a thick Dutch accent. Her sun hat tilted over her face and her button-up shirt faded in comparison to the red hydrangeas. She arranged a spread of jam, cheese, butter and bread on the porch table, and then we ate ice cream out of bowls decorated with little hearts.
There is something undeniably desirable about the idea of grandmotherhood: the supposed simplicity of the lifestyle, the luxury of filling your days with genuinely enjoyable hobbies like knitting, reading, cooking, and gardening. If you forget the bad hips, medicaid, and dentures, who would not want to skip their youth and middle aged years to become a grandmother early?
This summer, the “Coastal Grandmother” aesthetic went viral on TikTok. While the trend focuses on clothing, it is also based on a specific lifestyle — that of a wealthy New England woman with a beach house, a little dog to take on walks, and plenty of wine and other Coastal Grandmother friends to invite to dinner parties. The trend’s popularity is inspired by images of Meryl Streep and Nancy Meyers films.
In Delaney Child’s Youtube video “How to Dress like a Coastal Grandmother,” she introduces and tries on individual clothing items that fit the style: linen shirts, flowy pants, satin pants, chunky knit sweaters, cardigans, a blue and white pinstripe button-up, a long and flowy maxi skirt, and a pair of pale yellow overalls. Sunglasses and sun hats are also common. The key is clean, neutral colors with a sparring pop of light pastels. The style is comfortable but chic, fit for lounging but also looking put together.
The pieces Child shows in her video are easy to mix and match with each other, meaning the style does not mandate a large or extensive wardrobe. Certain items, like long skirts and button-ups, can be thrifted fairly easily. After all, how many grandmothers have massive wardrobes full of Shein pieces?
Lexi Nicoleta on TikTok coined the term, and most of her page is dedicated to the aesthetic. Headlines of her videos include “coastal grandmother target finds,” “coastal grandmother wedding registry,” “coastal grandmother book club” and “coastal grandmother H&M finds.” While she is dedicated to her niche, many of her videos include large clothing halls from fast fashion brands like these that negate the trend’s potential for sustainability and repetition of clothing pieces.
Younger people “dressing like grandmothers” began far before this summer’s trend. Even without an original intent to dress in an elderly fashion, the rising popularity of thrifting among Generation Z caused a higher tendency to pick up “grandma-like” pieces, and more creativity in making these pieces stylish. How many times have you picked up an item to laugh at it with your friends in the thrift store? Without thrifting, you would never have even touched that item in the first place. Turning conventionally ugly clothes stylish presents an engaging challenge — this could entail pairing pieces together in an unexpected way, or altering a clothing item itself.
Emma Chamberlain is notorious for up-scaling thrifted clothes. Her frequent thrift hauls and transformation videos began in 2016, and her video entitled “Making Ugly Clothes Cute” from 2020 perfectly embodies her attitude towards developing her style. She enjoys wearing sweater vests and calls it her “cool grandpa” look. In August 2018, her clothing line called High Key included a “Grandma Scrunchie” which sold out in 29 minutes of its release.
The fashion blog “Who What Wear” published an article in 2020 identifying several “Grandma Trends” at the time, including tweed material, babushka scarves, and pearls. The blog also has an article from 2019 citing multiple posts of Instagrammers dressing like grandmothers — these pictures include women in long fur coats, statement necklaces, and printed tights.
Whether it’s the luxurious coastal grandmother aesthetic or just an average grandma outfit, what is the appeal of dressing this way?
There is a classiness but humility to the style that allows young women to contrast themselves with the old-fashioned nature of the clothing they’re wearing. Wearing clothes associated with elderliness accentuates their own youth and beauty. Yet it is not only the garments that are sought after — it is also the romanticized lifestyle of a grandmother. This reflects a desire for peace and a slower pace to an often hectic, technology-controlled and capitalist-driven environment.
If this is truly the case, it is important to think about how we approach this style: instead of imitating large clothing hauls to achieve a purely seasonal version of an aesthetic, we can look to the items already in our own closet, thrift stores, and even “borrowing” from our own grandparents.