Cluttercore

Submission 4,033

About

Cluttercore is a design aesthetic that can be described as an organized clutter or mess. Although examples of the aesthetic were first shared on Tumblr in February 2020, the concept became popular on TikTok in July 2020 following the circulation of cottagecore videos on the platform.

Origin

On February 26th, 2020, Tumblr^[1] user two-face uploaded the first known example of cluttercore being used to describe a messy aesthetic (shown below). The image, captioned, "#enhancement #im sure this is someones aesthetic #called like #cluttercore #or something #damnbitchyoulivelikethiscore" which received over 18 notes in six months.

Spread

On March 5th, 2020, Twitter user @morgan_sung^[2] shared a series of images of Bernie Sander's home and captioned it "a masterclass in cluttercore" (shown below).

On July 15th, TikToker mdugy uploaded a video slideshow explaining the aesthetic (shown below, left). The video gained over 378,600 likes in a month. On August 2nd, TikToker virghoexoxo uploaded a video describing her room as cluttercore and garnered over 29,100 likes in 23 days (shown below, right).

On August 19th, Twitter user @skyelovebot^[3] tweeted about island decorating styles used in Animal Crossing saying, "cottagecore is still in, kidcore is just FUN, fairycore will never not be stunning, citycore is mind blowing, cluttercore is STILL cute, island-not-completecore? we still love it!" (shown below). The tweet accumulated over 1,500 likes and 500 retweets in a week. The Daily Dot,^[4] Buzzfeed^[5] and Vice^[6] published articles defining the aesthetic.