Sometime last week I received a text with a link to a TikTok video of a pickle tied with a pretty pink ribbon. These kinds of videos have amassed hundreds of millions of views and likes. It has, after all, been the year of the ribbon. With tiny schoolgirl skirts, pearl-embellished everything, and square-toe pointe ballet flats, brands like Miu Miu, Simone Rocha, and Sandy Liang found a way to bottle and sell girlhood to eager fashion fans, all tied up in a nice bow—a constant motif seen in all of their most recent collections.
Miu Miu adorned its almost-always-sold-out satin ballet flats with bows. At Simone Rocha, models wore ribbons glued to the undersides of their eyes and tied into their long dangling pearl earrings. At Sandy Liang, bows were supersized into large bags, with drooping fabric falling at the shoulder. On TikTok, these three brands have become a holy trinity of sorts for millennials and Gen Z. In fashiontok doctrine, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are diaphanous and dainty in a not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman kind of way.
The obsession with bows feels like a side effect of how women, in large part, have recently embraced the hyperfeminine. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. And youth, in general, is trending in a big way amongst zoomers, who will tell a year-old they look good for their age and brag about the benefits of starting preventative Botox in college. On TikTok, middle schoolers have gone viral for step skincare videos, where they preach the benefits of anti-wrinkle cream. Younger millennials and Gen Zers lost three years of their normal, precedented youth, to Covid.
It made me re-watch the film, and within the first few minutes was a scene I had forgotten entirely about. This movie came out in —two decades ago! It can also be seen as the waving of a white flag. Alongside the rise of videos featuring corncobs adorned with bows are videos of girls expressing their desire for a stay-at-home life, a rich husband, a sugar daddy—no career or work or aspirations.
This world is forcing me to hold your hand. One friend told me she thought ribbons were actually sort of democratic. There is a sense of community. Previously, she was the style writer at InStyle , founding commerce editor at Glamour, and fashion editor at Coveteur.
