Cottagecore has been simultaneously celebrated and rolled its eyes at, which is what happens to anything that becomes popular quickly. Strip away the aesthetic layer, though, and what sits underneath is much older and much more serious. Folklore. A relationship to land, season and making that predates most of what we now call lifestyle. The people below treat that older layer with real care.
Rebecca Stice
Rebecca Stice writes A Clotheshorse from Belfast, and her long-running blog has done one of the most thankless pieces of work in this corner of the internet — rounding up lesser-known sustainable cottagecore brands, one careful round-up at a time. That kind of curatorial generosity keeps small makers findable. Without writers like Rebecca, a lot of us would simply be invisible to the readers who would love our work most. I am quietly grateful for her every time a small brand finds its people.
Lia Leendertz
Lia Leendertz's Almanac — a Sunday Times bestseller now continuing as a monthly newsletter — is a piece of seasonal, folkloric, rural writing that I return to at the start of every month. She maps the year. Moon, tide, sky, hedgerow. What strikes me about her is how practical her folklore is. It is not decorative. It is a calendar, a weather eye, a way of remembering when to do what. I think linen belongs on an almanac shelf somewhere, right next to seed packets.
Petal + Hearth
The Petal + Hearth Substack writes cottagecore essays and slow-living guides that treat the aesthetic as a genuine orientation rather than a wardrobe tag. The voice there is warm and committed, and reading it feels like permission to slow down a little further than you had meant to. That kind of permission is a service.
The dresses we make in Bulgaria sit comfortably in a wardrobe that also contains a seed packet and an almanac. Linen is a folklore cloth, whether or not it is called that.