Is Lana del rey actually Coquette?
How Coquette has defined one of the best songwriters of our generation.
Why is Coquette Tok always calling Lana “Coquette”?
If you have ever scrolled on Tik Tok, you will eventually and most likely stumble upon a Lana Del rey audio/song either a snippet or sped up or even slowed down. Maybe it is even an edit of the film “Lolita” and boom your screen is full of lace, cherubs, and pink bows. Lana is associated HEAVILY, if not the poster child of the “Coquette Aesthetic”.
Insert word here + aesthetic
I would say over the past four years starting from 2020 the p*ndemic year, we have seen the rise of “Aesthetics” and “cores”. These styles are curated heavily on places like instagram and tik tok all pleasing to the eye regardless if it is your style or not. The coquette aesthetic in itself seems to have been created by the ideation of what a “coquette woman” would wear.
The definition of coquette itself doesn’t even really describe the aesthetics or even imply that coquette is an aesthetic. So it seems like we just like to put for example coquette + aesthetic = pink bows, frilly dresses, cherubs, and lots of lace. We do this with “cores” as well. Like “kid core” “ballet core” and more recently “office sire core” (what even is that)
2. Lolita and vintage Americana
If you know anything about Lana, it is that she has heavy old hollywood/Americana motifs in her music. Her debut album is where she talks about being an “American” and wanting to go to Bel air. Her early aesthetics consisted of 60s and retro inspired makeup and outfits. She kind dips into various vintage Americana aesthetics like biker chic and clutching her American flag. She also remakes the televised scene of Marilyn Monroe singing to President Kennedy completely in black and white.
If we look at the Americana aesthetic, we find that it can cross over with the coquette aesthetic because it is a sub style for coquette. For me, when I think of coquette I think of the color pink and when I think of Americana, I think of red. Coquette is English borrowed from French in/around the mid 17th century and has since evolved in meaning in today’s 2024 American vernacular.
I wanted to note that at first what is now considered “Coquette” used to be called Nymphette. However due to of course the internet and its sexualization of young girls, it became synonymous with Pedophilia. So, because of this, a lot of those who partook in that aesthetic rebranded to coquette or dollette which is another sub style of the coquette aesthetic.
On tik tok people like to use Lolita as a way to describe Lana’s style as well and it also may be due to the fact that she has a song by the same name. Lolita is a novel written by Vladmir Nabokov who was a Russian - American writer. Of course, this novel came out in 1955, which seems to be a heavy influence on Lana and her earlier music. The book is controversial because of its contents of hebephilia and would eventually be a film in 1962 and 1997.
3. Lana before Lana
If you are familiar with any of the Lana del rey lore, you know of sparkle jump rope queen and Lana del rey a.k.a. Lizzy Grant. Only scraps of her unreleased demos and tapes are up on soundcloud and even youtube, and snippets of put me in a movie went viral on tik tok. One of my favorites is Mermaid motel
A lot of Lana’s older unreleased work tend to be used a lot on tik tok as audios and mash ups of other songs and are most likely always paired with someone showing their coquette outfit. Arguably this may be the start of Lana’s Americana era in which she delves into familiar things like the trailer park and going to motels. Even the cover doesn’t scream coquette of how we know it. It screams more of 2010’s Windsor tops and a borrowed boyfriend’s jacket, but still people say this is “ sooo coquette”.
3. Lana’s current aesthetic
If we look at Lana’s most recent work like Blue Banisters and Did you know there is a tunnel underneath ocean blvd and her newest campaign with skims, it seems like Lana is getting back to her Americana/female fatale roots.
I think Lana embraces her femininity as well as her dark side as we see in her music. She accepts it is okay to be fragile while getting strength in the things that you love. From her born to die era we have seen her grow into a much more happier Lana that feels more light. But of course Born to die will always be iconic, but the growth will never be matched from her recent bodies of work. I think we every artist they go through eras of experimentation. Lana even had discourse about her blue banisters initial cover art looking like it was made on picsart. Not very coquette if you ask me. Whatever you categorize Lana is, it is no doubt she has unintentionally categorized herself in a popular misunderstood aesthetic.