What’s the deal with Trad Nouveau?
The hemline index is at maxi.
In the ad for Sydney Sweeney’s new lingerie brand an image jumps out: a shrub pruned in the shape of a woman’s ass. It wears Syd’s frilly new SYRN briefs. The ad includes classic suburban pastoral motifs: a cute little cottage, red roses a plenty, a manicured lawn, a set that feels ripped out of Stepford Wives. About the lingerie brand, Page Six declares, “She’s taking the role of housewife to a new level.”
Over the past couple years Sweeney’s become a vocal advocate for…not being a vocal advocate. After a rise to stardom in the adolescent sex-crazed world of Euphoria, Sweeney’s made a career dining out on morally ambiguous brand deals. Her new lingerie brand solidifies her modus operandi.
Sweeny’s shtick falls under a strain of tradwivery I’m going to refer to as Trad Nouveau, a camp take on something that’s already campy. Tradwivery, afterall, is already a form of cosplay inspired by a revisionist past; Trad Nouveau takes it to the next level, trad drag done by people who are as far away from trad as you can get—like enterprising starlets with business acumen. These are women who work in direct opposition to the housewife veneers they’re wearing!
An amplified version of is the new Melania documentary, a nasty piece of propaganda created to humanize a woman whose indifference is the horrific ying to our brutish president’s yang. Grace Byron reviews the movie in her Substack, calling attention to the vacuous glamour Melania strives so hard to project, “Melania, as much as she may want to exude Old Hollywood glamour, does not have the wit or charm of Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe.”
Or their politics. Monroe was a founding member of the Hollywood branch of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy; she was also an alternate delegate with Connecticut’s Democratic caucus. She was pro-Castro and pro-civil rights. Audrey Hepburn literally carried notes for the Dutch Resistance during Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In her recent Cosmopolitan cover interview Sweeney said, “I’m not a political person. I’m in the arts. I’m not here to speak on politics.”
Trad Nouveau can be successful when it’s accompanied by an awareness of the aesthetic’s absurdity. Think of pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter, who has taken good girl camp to extreme levels and still fights against the White House when it uses her music, or Olivia Dean, with her 1940s starlet waves, who is proudly anti-ICE. In the case of both Sweeney and Melania, making a highly political style apolitical strips it of the context that gives it force. The looks fall flat, the concept impotent. To paraphrase Toni Morrison: Anyone trying to sell you the line that art is apolitical is making bad art. The same stands for clothing. Anyone trying to tell you fashion isn’t political…
While I’m reading the tea leaves, here are some of the other cultural trends I’m seeing this winter.
For the past three years I’ve been inadvertently tracking the cost of Hervé Léger dresses out of my own selfish desire to buy one. Last year you could buy a vintage dress for 40 buckeronis on Poshmark (which I didn’t). Now? The cheapest you’ll get is $120! The Hervé Légerissance is nigh. Initially popularized by Azzedine Alaïa in the 1980s, the bandage dress became synonymous with Hervé Léger when he debuted his version of the dress (tighter, even more constricting) in the early ’90s. Recently it’s cropped up on everyone from Kaia Gerber to Olivia Dean.
The rise and fall of Odessa A’Zion (that’s a whole other essay) has confirmed something I have felt for a long while: Indie Sleaze is out, boho is in. It’s time to place some lowball offers on Gucci Indys and Isabel Marant Becketts.
Liana Satenstein called it over the summer: Vintage Sportswear will crush your Alo Yoga sets. I’m interested to see how contemporary brands will capitalise on the vintage sportswear craze. LA based H-O-R-S-E very smartly debuted some vintage cuts made with 100% cotton, pleasing both the style conscious and the health conscious.
2026 Tax Season is almost upon us. I’m not telling you this to scare you into sensibility. I am telling you because this is the perfect opportunity to audit something else: your closet.
This year I have embarked on a flaccid “no buy.” What does that mean Nicolaia? It means I’m trying to limit my sartorial spending so that I can actually spend MORE, but on other things—flights, hair glossing, acupuncture, my mom, etc. Anything I want to purchase is subject to a lengthy investigation, and if I do end up purchasing it, then I must get rid of two things.
As a result, I’ve been trying to GET A GODDAMN GRIP on what is already in my closet. I come from a long line of “collectors” (that’s the fancy name for hoarders) and my closet is the stuff of legend. Inside are wonders rare and untold…if you manage to jimmy the door open. I am starting with a full audit of my jeans.
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Loved the Toni Morrison callout about apolitical art. The whole Sweeney thing is so calculated, like shes performing domesticity while building aempire. Reminds me of those Instagram accounts that romanticize cottage core but are actually run by branding agencies. The tradwife aesthetic has always been political whether people admit it or not.
Genuinely think Anora is responsible for the Herve Legerissance