Meet the real grandmas behind grannycore influencers

In the gauzy, ruffle-curtained corner of social media known as #grannycore, the past is very much present. Whether it’s in the form of a familiar tufted settee, a floral couch or groovy hook-and-latch rugs, nostalgia has been quietly coalescing into a design trend fueled by the pandemic-era clamor for coziness and aided by a glut of brown furniture and china in secondhand stores.

Not every granny-core influencer comes from a line of bakers and homemakers; there are as many types of grandmas as there are women. To understand what makes grannycore distinct from other cottage-adjacent trends, we asked five influencers about the grandmothers (and mothers) at the core of their style.

The house keeper

Cindy Magoon’s great-grandmother Helen Korell was a German immigrant who dusted, cleaned and polished every inch of John Jacob Schmitt’s five-story brownstone on Lexington Avenue in New York for more than four decades. When the real estate mogul and philanthropist died in 1940, he left the home and everything in it to Korell. Many of the brownstone’s Gilded Age treasures, including hand-carved tables, an antique bed and a cache of bronze figurines and ceramic vases, now occupy the fishing cottage that Magoon, 62, shares with her husband, Jack, in New Milford, Conn.

In the mid-1950s, Korell and her daughter, Helen Gegner, sold the brownstone and moved the mansion’s treasures to a Tudor-style house in Westchester County, where Magoon played among them.

“My great-grandmother came here with almost nothing and this mansion became her home, a foundation for our family. They revered the man who bequeathed it to them - and now, I cherish it just as much,” she says.

The influence of the mansion and the Helens is evident throughout Magoon’s 2,540-square-foot lake cottage, built in 1939, whether it’s the 120-year-old bed that occupies their loft or the claw-footed kitchen table.

In a recent post featuring Schmitt’s walnut and maple hutches and dressers, Magoon wrote: “Pieces from the past ground me, give me a sense of peace and admiration for the way things were. … If the dear folks we love are no longer with us, what better way to keep them close than to care for something they cherished.

The aspirational great-great-grandma

Emily Connolly inherited neither inspiration nor heirlooms from her grandmothers.

“My mom loves to say that her mother had a floral sofa, but kept it covered with a white sheet all the time - that was the extent of her decorating, and that my dad’s mom decorated with cobwebs and not much else,” says Connolly, 42, who describes her style as English country meets romantic cottage. The original pine floors and arched doorways of her 1880s farmhouse in Berks County, Pa., provide the perfect foundation for her throw-it-way-back vibe.

Connolly’s grandmothers may have left a blank slate, but she is inspired by her mother, Patricia Ann Munroe, and by the generations of women who have made a house a home over the past 144 years. She and her mom spent countless weekends antiquing in the 1990s.

Connolly’s four children are already fighting over a 1920s-era Victrola (scored for $185) they named Victor, in keeping with the family’s tradition of bestowing their antiques with human monikers. “When the kids ask where something is, I’ll say, ‘Go look in Charlotte,’ or, ‘Check in Evelyn,’” Connolly says.

The kids have embraced the history of the farmhouse since the family moved in seven years ago. They specifically requested a “one-room schoolhouse” for their home schooling. Connolly delivered a space fit for Laura Ingalls and her lunch pail, with antique desks that the kids promise are comfy.

His own spin

It’s one thing to create granny land when your canvas is a 19th-century farmhouse, but it’s a whole other endeavor when you’re living in a 1,200-square-foot apartment in Chicago’s West Loop. Good thing many of Wesley Taylor’s memories of Grandma Starks’s house are sensory, rather than tied to large pieces furniture.

“No matter what we were doing, there was always music playing on her six-CD player, especially if we were cooking, playing Scrabble after dinner and having coffee,” says Taylor, 33. “That energy is also something I really strive to create in my space - laid back, good tunes playing - where you just want to hang out.”

Grandma Starks collected bells, then switched to tiny cows. Taylor collects records, but he’s also been drawn to tea sets, music festival posters and incense holders on recent treasure hunts. He just scored a Stevie Wonder album, live at the Rainbow Room, bringing his Wonder collection to just one shy of the full discography.

“Music is a huge part of the visual real estate of my house because my whole family is musical. My mom is one of nine. I sing, my mom and her siblings sang in church,” Taylor says. “Your home is a reflection of who you are and the things you love.”

Life out loud

Three years ago, Lauren Leyenaar moved out of the home outside Toronto she shared with her husband of 16 years, came out as a lesbian and moved into a townhouse in London, Ontario. She was determined to fill every inch of it with an unedited and unapologetic expression of who she is.

She’s making up for lost time in the 1,838-square-foot space she now shares with her 14-year-old twins and partner. “For the first time, with no one or no inner voice stopping me - I just started collecting,” she says. She started by sourcing vintage clothing from the ‘60s and ‘70s - with a particular interest in all things crocheted - to minimize waste. Hook-and-latch rugs, mushroom-adorned melamine pots, macramé hanging planters and funky lamps followed, in a mod rainbow of green, yellow and orange. The shapes are groovy and floral; layered texture abounds.

Leyenaar, 40, traces her aesthetic to her step-grandmother, who loved creating little vignettes everywhere to showcase her handiwork and anything else she deemed precious. Leyenaar has replicated that approach, even curating displays of her latest vintage clothing finds.

“I see myself and I see past generations of women because I’m collecting their things, their kitchen tools, their blenders, their books, their dresses,” she says. “It’s an honor to express their tastes.”

The eternal maternal

Any time Shoshanna Criswell, 51, visited her grandparents’ Chicago home, the statue of the Virgin Mary sitting atop her grandmother Patricia Hackworth’s dresser captured her eyes and imagination.

She’s let that statue - which now resides in her aunt’s home - go. But she fiercely holds on to the sense of family and love, as well as her share of the heirlooms from Grandma Pat’s home. Criswell inherited several holy water holders, silver-plated salt and pepper shakers, a set of china (for display, but not for use) and a treasured afghan. There’s also an oft-stripped antique table with peeling paint that occupies a premium spot in the 3,000-square-foot Lowcountry build she shares with her husband in Charleston, S.C.

“I truly loved going to visit my grandmother, because it was just a really warm, loving place to be and surrounded by all these beautiful things - high and low end but all worth so much to my family who just had a love for beautiful things with a history,” Criswell says. “I’ve latched on to that. I guess it’s in the genes.”

Not everyone is on the grannycore wagon, as she often is reminded in the comments on her social media posts. “I had someone insult me on Instagram and inadvertently didn’t realize she was giving me a compliment when she said, ‘I feel like I’m walking into my grandmother’s home,’” Criswell says. “That’s how I know I’m doing it right.”

A frilly escape

Outside her home, Megan Coggins, 26, hustles between a part-time job at Panera, another as a pharmacy tech and running her princess party event company. But inside, she’s created a “slow-life” haven in the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her mom and brother in Lanham, Md. If her paternal grandma, Rosalie Coggins, were alive, she’d find Megan surrounded by the sort of cozy collectibles and lacy doilies that filled Rosalie’s home and engaged in her hobbies: knitting and baking.

She always felt at home amid Rosalie’s knickknacks or cuddled up on her quilt-covered couch. “No matter what time of the year, it was always warm and cozy with the sweet aroma of something baking, black and white reruns on the TV, or jazz and classical music in the background,” Megan says.

She thinks Grandma Rosalie would feel right at home in her space, and she’s grateful for her influence.

“Grandmas - they’ve lived life and have some wisdom, all that giving and caring and making sure you eat and never taking the small things for granted,” she says. “This is really important, especially for people my age. I work two jobs, have my own business; grannycore helps me to slow down.”

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Amanda Long is a writer and massage therapist living in Falls Church, Va.