Every other aesthetic trend is about who girls want to be.

Every other aesthetic trend is about who girls want to be, but the Tuscan Mom trend is about who they think they were supposed to be. Let's talk about why girls want to be Tuscan moms, what these sartorial shifts signify culturally, and what I would tell brands who are listening right now. For the uninitiated, Tuscan Mom has been bubbling in culture since at least last year, but it has officially broken containment in the last couple of weeks. And unlike Mob Wife or Coastal Grandma, Tuscan Mom isn't just a vibe that girls are trying on. Silly as the whole trend seems, there is like some vulnerability to the Tuscan Mom. Linguistically references the Tuscan home style that was very popular in the early 2000s. These were homes that upper-middle-class Americans were buying or building when the upper-middle class still felt attainable. Think terracotta floors, suburbia, wrought iron, fake grapes for some reason, warm neutrals that felt like someone actually lived there. Wealthy, upper-middle-class, yes, but not obscenely so. Financial ascension still had a ladder that you could actually see. The Tuscan home felt like a finish line that seemed reachable. Now, at one point, the general consensus might have been that Tuscan homes represented like a cheugy taste, and older generations certainly seemed to think so. But Gen Z women are yearning for it. They find comfort in it, they want to live in it. So the question is, why? I think that's where the Mom of Tuscan Mom comes in. Tuscan Mom is not a real woman. The Tuscan Mom is a composite of a life that was quietly promised to young women and then revoked without any formal announcement. She's hot, but not in an iPhone face way. She's hot in a way that still feels human. She has money, but not in the kind of way that requires a whole personality behind that wealth. It is certainly not quiet luxury, and simply buy lunch at Panera every day with the other Tuscan moms. She buys candles at Bath and Body Works without irony. But yes, Tuscan Mom might be a little bit tacky, but she absolutely does not care because the internet jury did not exist yet and the ick was not a form of social currency. Tuscan Mom could have kids without risking financial ruin. Her husband may not have been perfect, but at least he wasn't height-maxxing in the manosphere. Tuscan Mom's life wasn't optimized, it was simply livable. So I think the superficial read of this trend is nostalgia. But in these social spaces around Tuscan Mom, there is some of this like weird vulnerability to it. Like most culture today, I think it is a collective earnest sigh. Most of the girls obsessing over Tuscan Mom aesthetic were children in 2004. Simply don't remember that life. They might have been just close enough to see it or could still revisit it through their mothers. And from where they're standing, it now looks like a door that shut just before they got there. And now all they can do is long for it ironically. And I think that's what separates Tuscan Mom from every hyper-specific trend on the aesthetic hamster wheel. Mob Wife was a fantasy, Coastal Grandma was a fantasy. Those trends were about performing a self. Tuscan Mom is almost about mourning one. It's like they yearn for her possibility because at one point she felt possible to a lot of women and girls. It's why the part of this trend that feels so salient is the part of it that also feels so like ironic and weird, like the Panera, the Olive Garden, the polyester going-out tops that are halter tops and in weird like animal prints. Because all of that exists, but the aesthetics behind them we deem to be cringe. So it's not just the aspiration of Tuscan Mom, also the ability to be tacky or cringe without judgment. Obviously for the last 20 years, brands have been making their spaces more sleek and cold to signal a sense of premiumness. Tuscan Mom is the market sending a clear reply. The girls are longing for this maximalist proto-Renaissance spaces that we used to mock. The brands who are paying attention aren't going to ask how do we look more Tuscan Mom, that is missing the entire point. The point is to ask how can we make women feel like they have to stop performing. Cringe is a victimless crime and Tuscan Mom is the very essence of cringe.