A recent Land O’ Lakes’ marketing campaign highlighted “Farmcore,” an internet fashion trend based on your old farm work clothes. Is it real?
This past fall, Land O’Lakes launched a multipronged marketing campaign around Farmcore — an identified social media fashion trend. It all culminated in a “Farmcore-to-table” runway show featuring beat-up and stained workwear from Land O’ Lakes dairy farmers in Paris, Wisconsin (get it?). Just like any fashion show, the styles were eventually made available, all sold on Depop — with proceeds going to a non-profit organization dedicated to helping young farmers. The sold-out collection included weatherbeaten and faded Carhartt work pants, vintage Land O’Lakes hats, and of course, some well-loved overalls.
According to Land O’Lakes, the campaign was a success. “The goal was to share the stories of our co-op farmer-owners‘ impact on the world in a way that resonates with everyday consumers,” said Elizabeth Nelson, director of enterprise marketing at Land O’Lakes, adding, “This campaign showed that a brand like Land O’Lakes can participate in these cultural trends in a way that meaningfully contributes to the consumer experience, while staying true to who we are.”
But what exactly Farmcore is and how culturally relevant it is can be harder to pin down.
In the shattered and fractured culture we live in, tastes and trends have become ever smaller and hyper-specific. Some call it the “corefication” of style. Dress like you read books? That’s bookcore. Dress like you like soccer and Guinness, call it Blokecore. These microtrends live and die on social media and are informing an increasing number of young people how to dress.
Blue-collar workwear and aesthetics have been an integral part of popular fashion for decades; they are currently ascendant. Trends like Farmcore, as defined by social media, are mostly about how the general population views farming. What Land O’Lakes stumbled upon is that the cultural consensus on what farmers look like are changing. The Farmcore that Land O’Lakes shows is accurate in its reflection of how farmers and non-farmers dress — even if few real people would ever call it Farmcore.
According to Nelson at Land O’Lakes, Farmcore was “fast becoming a hot cultural trend” in 2023 into 2024. But, besides a smattering of brief trend pieces from mid-2023, “Farmcore,” as a distinct trend, never seemed to coalesce into anything of note. More importantly, the style that was being defined as Farmcore in 2023 looks very different from what the dairy giant says it is.
The Farmcore being peddled on TikTok and In Style was really just a riff on the already popular “Cottagecore” trend. This whimsical idolization of rural life is filled with cozy cardigans, wicker baskets, and sundresses. The Farmcore version really just brought in a few distinctly American touches like wide-brimmed hats and high boots and generally is more Little House on the Prairie.
The Land O’Lakes version could not be more different. First of all, consider the source. To give them credit, they created the campaign using the clothing of actual farmers — stains and all. Their version of Farmcore consists of hardwearing double-knee work pants, rugged insulated jackets, and sweat-stained caps. With the ubiquity of brands like Carhartt in everyday dress for rural and office workers alike, what takes on the significance of Farmcore isn’t the clothing itself — it’s how well-worn it is.
“The urban hipsters are now adopting this idea of what a farmer looks like.”
While the Farmcore of Land O’Lakes may not have looked like the Farmcore of TikTok, Nelson was right — the styles they presented were becoming increasingly popular. “This aesthetic is super hip among the Gen Z Chappell Roan listening kind of demographic,” explained fashion writer and critic Derek Guy, who has gone from niche-internet personality to one of the most influential voices in fashion criticism.
According to Guy, the popularity of workwear is nothing new, but the past 10 years have seen worn and broken-in workwear grwoing fashionable among the young and urban. Authenticity, or the perception of it, plays a role in its popularity. “It’s an aesthetic that says ‘I’m authentic, I’m down-to-earth, I’m working-class, I have a connection to the world outside of digital life,’ even though this is an incredibly digital look,” that is promulgated on social media.
The proof of its popularity is littered across our contemporary culture. While the rural-urban divide seems undeniable, there is a strange mashing up of cultural signifiers and styles that result in examples like RealTree camouflage feeling as at home in a treestand as behind an espresso machine. The result is a feeling like everyone is cosplaying a bit.
“We fetishize the class of people who are not digital drones, and I think that’s where all of this is coming from,” Guy explained. Maybe the most prominent example of this has been the rise and exhaustive documentation of “tradwife” (as in ‘traditional‘) influencers who glamorize traditional gender roles and homemaking — often in a rural setting.
What is undeniably true is that non-farmers are adopting something resembling what you’d call Farmcore. “The urban hipsters are now adopting this idea of what a farmer looks like,” laughed Guy, adding the caveat, “Even though I don’t know if actual farmers dress like this.”
“Land O’Lakes’ Farmcore duds, gathered from farmers who had worn the articles down to aged perfection, can leave some with a feeling of stolen valor.
Farming is, of course, insanely varied, making it hard for there to be one true “Farmcore.“ What makes sense for a dairy farmer in Michigan to wear may share little with the clothing of a row crop farmer in Iowa or a veggie farmer in Vermont. There are constants, though.
“There is almost never a focus on the aesthetics of the thing; it’s functional,” said Elliot Young, a graduate of the UC Davis Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems program. Young has one foot solidly in both the farming and fashion world, putting himself through his program working at the chic men’s specialty store Standard & Strange. What a farmer can never forget though, is a hat. “I don’t know a farmer who doesn’t have a rotation of at least a couple hats of many styles that they’re swapping through year-round,” he said.
But the true Farmcore bonafides aren’t the clothing at all, but rather the condition it’s in. They need to go through the mill. Young finds it hard to see his dirt-caked farm duds as being fashionable anywhere outside the farm. Land O’Lakes’ Farmcore duds, gathered from farmers who had worn the articles down to aged perfection, can leave some with a feeling of stolen valor. As for Young, he loves the high contrast of the dark earth stains and sun-bleached fabric. That doesn’t mean he wants to wear his farm garms outside the fields.
While Land O’Lakes’ Farmcore campaign has come to an end, one wonders if they will release another collection next season. “Farmcore is something that remains a topic of conversation around our offices,” admitted Nelson, though she knows how fast the winds of trends can change.
