Love them or hate them, there’s no denying that trad wives have captured the zeitgeist. Scroll through TikTok or Instagram, and you’re bound to see a beautiful young mother cooking or baking things from scratch—and doing so dressed in couture, if you’re Nara Smith.
But the trad wife phenomenon goes far beyond social media: old-school staples like apron dresses, headscarves, and elbow-length gloves are dominating the runway, while hit reality TV shows like Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives—which has surpassed The Kardashians in ratings—and Fox’s Farmer Wants a Wife depict the far messier reality of modern women trying to operate within the constraints of traditional gender roles.
