On Dickinson, Cottagecore, and Dressing to Hide Away in the Woods

Last spring, as quarantine days turned into quarantine weeks and then months, cottagecore was ascendant. Instagram feeds were dominated by images of pastoral frolicking; everyone who wasn’t a parent picked up an old-timey craft or two; Taylor Swift released Folklore. We all, it seemed, longed to inhabit the pages of Walden.

But as the gleefully subversive Dickinson reminded us last season, Henry David Thoreau’s alleged self-reliance was a scam—and the bucolic promises of a picturesque rural lifestyle have proved just as vacuous. Ten-odd months of social distancing later, shutting the world out is an impossible, irresponsible task; even if you do happen to have a couple chickens to tend to in a rustic coop, there's no escaping reality. Despite all promises to the contrary, no number of linen frocks or milkmaid tops can ferry us away. In hindsight, we simply chose the wrong literary recluse: being Thoreau isn’t an option, as nice as it would be to have mom do the laundry—but being Emily Dickinson is.

Consider Dickinson the patron saint of self-isolation. Like the famed 19th-century poet, we’re shut in our rooms, ruminating on our mortality. The world outside—particularly the limited tracts of nature that still remain—appears at once beautiful and monstrous. Wandering the halls of a New England manse, carrying an oil lamp and wearing a flowing white nightdress and a brocade robe, is simply the logical way to proceed.

And thanks to Dickinson, there exists a readymade model for Dickinson’s wardrobe. Costume designer John Dunn brought the show’s surreal, gothic world to life with all the boat necks, proto-Laura Ashley dresses, and brocade robes an iconoclastic poet could hope for. Below, how to dress for the part.