Everyone’s talking about... cluttercore

IS YOUR home an absolute tip? Well now you have the perfect excuse: you’re not messy, but an adherent of the latest interior design trend, ‘cluttercore’. But what exactly is it?

It’s the idea that you should fill your house with objects you love, with walls full of pictures and shelves overflowing with books and knick-knacks. The movement is a backlash against modern minimalists such as tidy queen Marie Kondo, whose ideas tend to make homes feel too cold and clinical for some people. Rooms shouldn’t be randomly untidy, however, but offer a curated collection of curios.

Are there many fans?

Videos with the #cluttercore hashtag have had more than 50million views on TikTok. Addressing its popularity, Architectural Digest writer Hannah Martin has said: ‘Why has the internet convinced us all that clutter is bad? What’s fun about cluttercore is it requires personality to work and it celebrates radical individuality. There’s so much to look at that makes you smile. Isn’t that so much more interesting than a boring white room with some objects and unread books artfully arranged on a shelf?’

Where did it start?

Although the word ‘cluttercore’ was barely used until 2020, collecting stuff has its roots in the 17th Century when the well-travelled would fill ‘cabinets of curiosities’ with their souvenirs, ready to regale visitors with stories about each. Clutter gained popularity in the Victorian era, in which acquiring possessions had a kudos, but waned as consumerism became a dirty word. The revival – sometimes called ‘bricabracomania’ – is partly attributed to people cocooning at home during the pandemic, as well as a natural young-generation rebellion against the clinical, spartan look preferred by thirtysomethings.

Are there any benefits to clutter beyond the aesthetic?

One study found that messy rooms make people think more imaginatively (but also made them less healthy and less generous). Certainly some of Britain’s greatest creative minds, such as Virginia Woolf, Francis Bacon and Iris Murdoch, worked amid chaos. One quote widely – if almost certainly incorrectly – attributed to Albert Einstein, says it best: ‘If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?’