Oh, no. Now we’re a style, an inspo, a trend.

by Colin W. Sargent

When Vanity Fair wrote, “Is America Finally Over Its Maine Moment?” in 2013, who knew that the answer ten years later would still be no. It’s not just the J. Crew catalog shoot cited by the magazine, or the influential Ralph Lauren spread we covered at the Kennebunk River Club [“The Lobster That Ate Manhattan”] in 2007. It’s more a feeling-driven style. Everywhere we turn, we’re seeing a maniacal love for Maine. 

Not cottagecore. (You’ve seen the ubiquitous shelter catalogs.)

Not Barbiecore. (The 2022 trend that turned the world pink.)

But Mainecore—a branding bonanza. After all, we invented the ‘she’ shed (we just called it the bait shed). Or is it our glamor ice-fishing shacks? As we write this, there’s a big green light for some of the most authentic and lovable aspects of Maine culture, and it’s getting brighter. Log cabins, chickadee curtains, knotty pine, lobster images, and gulls, gulls, gulls.