Picture this: you're at a café, matcha latte in hand, scrolling through trend pieces. You land on one flagging Hailey Bieber's so-called "granny" pumps as a must-have of the season. Meanwhile, without even thinking, you've already waved away the straw the server offered - not for environmental reasons, but because somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice whispered something about fine lines around the mouth.
That contradiction? It's basically the defining tension of right now. As Refinery29 recently pointed out, we're living in this fascinating cultural split where grandmacore is genuinely cool - think doilies, sensible block heels, cottage-cosy everything - while simultaneously, anti-aging anxiety is running higher than ever.
What even is grandmacore?
If you've been on any corner of social media lately, you've seen it. Crochet tops. Floral house dresses worn unironically. Kitten heels. The kind of jewellery your actual grandmother might have kept in a velvet box. The aesthetic is warm, nostalgic, a little whimsical - and it's resonating hard with a generation that grew up being told "young" was the only way to be.
There's something genuinely sweet about it. Grandmacore feels like a reclaiming of slowness and softness, a pushback against the relentless polish of, say, quiet luxury or the cold minimalism that dominated the early 2020s.
But here's where it gets interesting
The same people styling themselves in grandma-chic are often the ones quietly panicking about looking their age. The anti-aging industry is booming. Retinol is a personality trait. SPF discourse never ends. Refusing a straw to protect your skin - while wearing a vintage-inspired floral midi - is somehow completely normal behaviour in 2024.
So what does it mean that we're romanticising the visual language of old age while working overtime to avoid the reality of it? Grandmacore lets us play with the aesthetic of ageing - the comfort, the character, the charm - without actually having to confront the thing itself. It's ageing on our own terms, curated and filtered.
Maybe that's okay
There's no moral failing in wanting the cosy cardigan without the crow's feet. Fashion has always been about borrowing from other worlds and time periods. And honestly, if grandmacore gets more people into block heels and away from shoes that destroy their feet, that feels like a genuine win.
But it's worth sitting with the contradiction for a moment. The fact that granny pumps are trending while straw-refusal is a skincare strategy tells us something real about where we are - fond of the idea of aging gracefully, still pretty scared of actually doing it.
