Speaker 1: Hello, Wilder listeners, Thank you so much for listening to
Speaker 1: our podcast. We've been working really hard on this and
Speaker 1: we're so grateful for all the feedback you've been sending us.
Speaker 1: We want to address some of that feedback in a
Speaker 1: few weeks in the final episode. So please consider this
Speaker 1: both an invitation and a reminder that if you have
Speaker 1: thoughts on Wilder to please let us know. All of
Speaker 1: our contact information can be found in the notes to
Speaker 1: each episode. In the meantime, we're going to bring you
Speaker 1: some episodes that are a little different, some very special episodes,
Speaker 1: if you will.
Speaker 2: This week, Joe is.
Speaker 1: Going to be walking you through some of the industry
Speaker 1: that Laura has inspired. As anyone who listened to her
Speaker 1: podcast Under the Influence knows, Joe is the expert in
Speaker 1: influencers and Laura is arguably one of the original influencers.
Speaker 2: Now I'm giving you over to Joe.
Speaker 3: Hi, Glynn, good morning.
Speaker 2: I'm passing the pigs bladder baton.
Speaker 3: We should get one of them. Oh, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'll bet someone makes one and sells it for like
Speaker 3: seventy dollars.
Speaker 1: I'm sure if we went on Etsy right now we
Speaker 1: would find a number of pigs bladders that were branded
Speaker 1: with Little House.
Speaker 3: By the end of the episode we will find out
Speaker 3: where to buy a pigs bladder baton, and with that,
Speaker 3: the business of Laura just just thank you.
Speaker 4: We have cups, we have t shirts of course, the
Speaker 4: books always goal and I mean I've had almost eleven
Speaker 4: hundred dollars sales today.
Speaker 3: Really, when you're on the road going from Laura Ingles
Speaker 3: Museum to Laura Ingles Museum, you're inevitably going to go
Speaker 3: to a lot of Laura gift shops.
Speaker 1: Those little porcelain jack dobs for ten dollars I got, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's Laura Ingles Wilder homies.
Speaker 2: I mean, have to get a coffee cup.
Speaker 5: That's the kid. Yeah, coffee cups we love. I like
Speaker 5: these too.
Speaker 3: The shops have everything. They're so not just books, but mugs, dolls, bonnets, candy,
Speaker 3: pretty much anything you might need to cosplay the prairie life.
Speaker 1: That's the biggest cellar in the store.
Speaker 6: Usually tin cups. Everybody like says oh yes, because you
Speaker 6: know that was the very first episode Laura and Mary
Speaker 6: got their own tin cups.
Speaker 3: When Glynnis, Emily and I were on the road last summer,
Speaker 3: we spend a lot of money on gifts. Tin cups included.
Speaker 1: Little tin cups, Young, They're cute.
Speaker 2: Those are one of the most popular.
Speaker 6: And then our slates with.
Speaker 3: And it's not just us, hords of people do this
Speaker 3: every summer.
Speaker 2: Over the whole year.
Speaker 6: We can get up between ten thousand to probably twelve
Speaker 6: thousand a year. We've had twenty thousand in one year.
Speaker 3: They come from all over the world.
Speaker 2: Out Look at all of these people today.
Speaker 3: This is all today.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, today.
Speaker 3: Are should we name the states through here today?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Here, Minnesota, Kansas, Nevada, New York, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, California,
Speaker 8: North Dakota, Germany, Oregon, Oregon, Norway, now Texas, Virginia.
Speaker 3: Maybe we've got all the states right now. Except when
Speaker 3: Laura Ingles Wilder set out to write her life story
Speaker 3: into the Little House series, she wanted to be a writer,
Speaker 3: an author, a successful one. Today, almost a century later,
Speaker 3: between the books, TV show and the intense tourism culture
Speaker 3: around her, Laura is undoubtedly a brand anyone who writes
Speaker 3: books today, much like Glennis and I do know that
Speaker 3: writers have to become a sort of brand in order
Speaker 3: to survive, to build an audience and to sell enough
Speaker 3: books to keep their careers going. And the most successful
Speaker 3: writers spawn entire industries around their stories, industries of movies,
Speaker 3: television and media companies, magazines, and sometimes even stuff goods
Speaker 3: and services. That wasn't the case when Laura sat down
Speaker 3: to write. She just wanted to get those books out there.
Speaker 3: I actually don't believe that she could have even imagined
Speaker 3: the many products and platforms that she inspired, both directly
Speaker 3: and indirectly. If you are struggling with what where this summer,
Speaker 3: this esthetic is for you.
Speaker 1: So I like to call this look clean, romantic, prairie cottage.
Speaker 9: I mean, I think you can just look at the
Speaker 9: popularity of cottage core as an aesthetic on TikTok first
Speaker 9: day of school cottage core.
Speaker 6: Okay, y'all are going to think I'm crazy, but gone
Speaker 6: with a bonnet.
Speaker 9: This dedication to living a very simple, homespun life. People
Speaker 9: are getting millions and millions of followers by almost cosplaying
Speaker 9: as frontiers women.
Speaker 1: To be perfectly honest, when this line hit Target stores,
Speaker 1: I was actually.
Speaker 10: A huge hand of it because one I love Little
Speaker 10: HULLSLM Prairie.
Speaker 5: I grew up with it, and to act.
Speaker 3: It can easily be argued that brands like the American
Speaker 3: Girl Dolls, the Pioneer Woman, Hillhouse Home, and all of
Speaker 3: the Nap Dresses all had Laura to thank for laying
Speaker 3: the groundwork of prairie life nostalgia.
Speaker 11: I think a few brands that come to mine are
Speaker 11: Christy Down, lots of Calico cotton dresses, the Nap Dress
Speaker 11: by Hillhouse Home doan.
Speaker 3: Entire home goods companies have been inspired by prairie nostalgia,
Speaker 3: including one created by TV Laura herself, Melissa Gilbert.
Speaker 12: It really started out as a retail line sort of,
Speaker 12: but there's more to it than that. It's a place
Speaker 12: for women over a certain age, women like me.
Speaker 3: From nap dresses to bonnets, to butter churns, paper dolls,
Speaker 3: tin cups, and many, many, many spinoff books. There is
Speaker 3: an entire industry of Laura that she never could have
Speaker 3: conceived of, though I kind of bet Rose could have
Speaker 3: imagined it. And as always, it thrives when times get hard,
Speaker 3: when people get fed up with their lives and have
Speaker 3: an urge to look back to a simpler era.
Speaker 13: We've had in the past twenty years two pretty big crises.
Speaker 13: One was the financial crisis of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 13: and then, of course there was the pandemic that we
Speaker 13: all lived through, and in each of those cases the
Speaker 13: interest in Little House spite.
Speaker 3: It is not a leap at all to say that
Speaker 3: Laura Ingles Wilder may have been one of the very
Speaker 3: first influencers. What I want to know is how did
Speaker 3: all of this get so popular? How did the fantasy
Speaker 3: of prairie life get sold to millions? I'm Joe Piazza
Speaker 3: and this Isness of Wilder. Hello, I'm Glennis, Lennis and
Speaker 3: Emily Great tomorrow night.
Speaker 1: I know are you from Distory very a long time?
Speaker 4: We just bought the place of February.
Speaker 1: Really, Oh, I'm excited to hear your experience of your
Speaker 1: first pageant season.
Speaker 3: That's Glennys and Emily arriving at the Prairie House manor
Speaker 3: Bed and Breakfast in De Smet, South Dakota. I sadly
Speaker 3: wasn't with them for this part of the trip, and
Speaker 3: I have a lot of fomo about that. But when
Speaker 3: they arrived they found this very unexpected story. You found
Speaker 3: Laura's influence, her sphere of influence, in a place that
Speaker 3: you didn't expect. You found that she had inspired this couple.
Speaker 3: It was Robin Eric Right during COVID. They'd done a
Speaker 3: road trip. They'd come to Smet.
Speaker 1: They had grown up loving Laura Ingalls and decided to
Speaker 1: uproot their life from Denver and take over.
Speaker 3: A big city, A big city, big city, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Where they'd been for years and had uprooted and come
Speaker 1: to Desmet and taken over this bed and breakfast in
Speaker 1: the heart of d Smet. We had to book into
Speaker 1: their months in advance to get that spot to run this,
Speaker 1: and it was And when we talked to them, they
Speaker 1: just went on about how much they'd loved the television
Speaker 1: show Laura and the fond memories of being read the
Speaker 1: books in school, and it just, I mean, we know this,
Speaker 1: but also it never ceases to sort of amazed and
Speaker 1: surprised at like the reach she has, but also like
Speaker 1: the level of devotion.
Speaker 2: Right, if that's a big life change, there's.
Speaker 3: A huge life change, and also a very kind of
Speaker 3: TV movie inspiring one. I'm just uprooting my life in
Speaker 3: the big city to open a little B and B
Speaker 3: centered around Laura Ingles Wilder. So they fled big city life.
Speaker 3: They bought the Prairie manner and now they're running an
Speaker 3: inn together. They have a business that is directly based
Speaker 3: on Laura.
Speaker 10: It seems surreal sometimes, like when we come back from
Speaker 10: the grocery store and I see the house, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 10: that's ours.
Speaker 1: Rob and Eric are just you know, the tip of
Speaker 1: the iceberg in terms of families who've tapped into their
Speaker 1: love of Laura in one way or the other and
Speaker 1: turned it into a huge business. Like we met Anne
Speaker 1: Lash who runs the homestead site, and her family bought
Speaker 1: that in the late nineties, and she talks about growing
Speaker 1: up being read the book.
Speaker 10: My parents and my brothers came on vacation in nineteen
Speaker 10: ninety six and it was for sale and it had
Speaker 10: been farmed for many years, and a family that was
Speaker 10: farming it at that time they were older and wanting to,
Speaker 10: you know, move on and sell it and stuff. And
Speaker 10: so that's really how we came across it. So we
Speaker 10: purchased the homestead in nineteen ninety seven and then have
Speaker 10: over the past twenty five years kind of built it
Speaker 10: up into what it is and welcomed thousands and thousands.
Speaker 3: Of visitors over the years. It's amazing to me that
Speaker 3: there is not just one, but two and probably many
Speaker 3: more of these kinds of stories. That Laura's draw is
Speaker 3: so strong that just one vacation can uproot an entire life.
Speaker 3: And it's worth reminding us that these towns are very,
Speaker 3: very small. Laura isn't just a business in these places,
Speaker 3: she is the main industry. Let me put this in
Speaker 3: perspective for you. The town I'm just met has about
Speaker 3: the same population now as the time when Laura lived there.
Speaker 3: Bur Oak, where the Ingles worked in the hotel, isn't
Speaker 3: even a town anymore. It's an incorporated community, but it
Speaker 3: still gets visitors and foot traffic because of Laura. And
Speaker 3: remember from our very first episode how we told you
Speaker 3: that Walnut Grove seemed like a ghost town until we
Speaker 3: got to the gift shop. It's businesses like that and
Speaker 3: the summer pageants that genuinely helped the town's yearly bottom line.
Speaker 14: It is an economic boost.
Speaker 3: As pageant director Bill Richards explained to us.
Speaker 14: We use a lot of local people for supplies, for lumber,
Speaker 14: for concrete, for construction work, electrical plumbing, all that kind
Speaker 14: of stuff. The businesses that get the biggest boost would
Speaker 14: be probably the convenience store, Nellie's Cafe and the bar
Speaker 14: and things like that. The other ones are more I
Speaker 14: would call secondary effect, where because you have people that
Speaker 14: we hire out here, that has a multiplier effect as well.
Speaker 3: Those houses, museums, and stores are all independently run, and
Speaker 3: then they also sell and profit off the things they're
Speaker 3: license from the books. The books themselves and the many
Speaker 3: many sequels and offshoots of them that came long after
Speaker 3: Laura passed away. And what I keep thinking again and
Speaker 3: again is whether or not Laura would have actually wanted this.
Speaker 3: How did Little House go from just a book series
Speaker 3: to a brand that can actually be licensed? Of course
Speaker 3: I had to talk to Glynnis because she is the
Speaker 3: expert on all things Laura. All Right, So we're looking
Speaker 3: at the big business of Laura, all of the stuff
Speaker 3: that's being sold, all of the TV shows, the extra books.
Speaker 3: Do you think that this is what Laura would have
Speaker 3: wanted for her legacy?
Speaker 1: It's so hard to say, because could Laura have envisioned
Speaker 1: any of this As a question, I wonder, could she
Speaker 1: even envisioned the books having this impact and having this legacy.
Speaker 1: We know that she wanted to leave a significant part
Speaker 1: of the Little House rights to the local Mansfield library.
Speaker 1: And then that feels though like ary in keeping with Laura,
Speaker 1: like sort of a small vision for her afterlife, so
Speaker 1: to speak of, like these could be a nice thing
Speaker 1: for the local library and the town that I've lived
Speaker 1: in for decades that she didn't even really leave after
Speaker 1: the books. She think she left once after the books
Speaker 1: sort of became successful. So that feels like a small
Speaker 1: sweet vision of her giving back. And that's definitely not
Speaker 1: a description as we know of what has actually happened
Speaker 1: right to the legacy.
Speaker 3: And that didn't happen because Rose ignored those wishes and
Speaker 3: granted the literary estate to Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this has to be one of the
Speaker 1: great random inheritances in literary history. I mean, Roger Lee
Speaker 1: McBride's fate intertwining with Little House is wild. And even
Speaker 1: as a kid, I would be like Roger Lee McBride,
Speaker 1: person that keeps getting mentioned on the back cover of
Speaker 1: the book, Laura never met him, which is incredible.
Speaker 3: Don't you think it's incredible?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wild. And at the same time, we know
Speaker 2: from all.
Speaker 1: The episodes we did that Laura and Rose's life emotional
Speaker 1: financial everything life was so enmeshed, so maybe Rose thought
Speaker 1: that she had not just permission, but the right to
Speaker 1: do what she wanted with it.
Speaker 3: I mean, who knows. And it was Roger who ended
Speaker 3: up selling the rights to the Friendly Family, yep.
Speaker 1: I mean we know that Laura and Rose had turned
Speaker 1: down offers from radio to serialize the books. This is
Speaker 1: sort of before TV was such a huge thing, and
Speaker 1: we know they had consistently turned it down. So as
Speaker 1: soon as Rose dies almost immediately, Roger does a one
Speaker 1: tot eighty, takes it to Hollywood to meet with Disney,
Speaker 1: and then fate intervenes and he ends up selling it
Speaker 1: to a Friendly which how we have Michael Landon well,
Speaker 1: which is how we.
Speaker 3: Really have the Business of Laura, because the Friendly Family
Speaker 3: took on the copyrights and they've created a massive industry
Speaker 3: around Laura and Little House that I don't think she
Speaker 3: ever could have imagined.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that I could have imagined
Speaker 1: it as a child. So much of this is Internet
Speaker 1: fueled too. I think I would just like try and
Speaker 1: make these clothes for myself as a kid, or like
Speaker 1: staple brown yarn braids to everything I owned, And now
Speaker 1: you can go to at Sea or to Amazon and
Speaker 1: buy all of the stuff and it all exists. And
Speaker 1: that I think is like the collision of fandom, legacy
Speaker 1: licensing the Internet.
Speaker 2: It's just it's so accessible now.
Speaker 3: When we get back from the break, we are going
Speaker 3: to talk to the family that ended up with the
Speaker 3: rights to all things Little House. How'd they get it,
Speaker 3: and what's their intention with Laura's legacy and finally what
Speaker 3: kind of stuff is being created from it.
Speaker 5: My father and Friendly acquired the rights to the Little
Speaker 5: House books from a man named Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 3: That's Trip Friendly. You heard from him in our TV
Speaker 3: episode telling the story of how his father created the
Speaker 3: Little House television series. These days, Roger Lee McBride's daughter
Speaker 3: still owns the copyrights on the Little House books, but
Speaker 3: the Friendly family owns the licensing for products and media.
Speaker 5: Friendly Family Productions owns film, television, merchandising, theme park and
Speaker 5: other rights to the classic books by Laura Engels Wilder,
Speaker 5: as well as to the Little House on the Prairie trademark.
Speaker 5: When the television program was first broadcast on NBC in
Speaker 5: the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, my father created
Speaker 5: a licensing program which included lunch boxes, dinner plates, beverage ware, posters, puzzles,
Speaker 5: board games, calendars, costumes, McCall patterns, and many other items.
Speaker 3: The Friendlies take their role very seriously. They know that
Speaker 3: Laura holds sentimental value for a lot of people. None
Speaker 3: of us know how Laura would feel about these products today,
Speaker 3: but the things that are licensed definitely feel in line
Speaker 3: with the wholesome, cozy nature of Laura's children's books.
Speaker 5: We've worked with a selective group of licensees that we
Speaker 5: believe reflect the values of the Little House on the
Speaker 5: Prairie brand in which we hoped would resonate with families
Speaker 5: and fans today. So simple, joy, optimism, charm, and craftsmanship,
Speaker 5: I would say, our integral parts. We would probably reject
Speaker 5: any inquiries that are not consistent with the brand values
Speaker 5: or are quote unquote are rated, such as alcohol, gambling.
Speaker 5: They're sort of vice products.
Speaker 3: How much impact can a product actually have when it
Speaker 3: comes to the legacy of Little House, There's so much
Speaker 3: stuff that I wanted to find an example of a
Speaker 3: company truly manufacturing in the spirit of Laura and Goes Wilder.
Speaker 7: The Queen's Treasures, in particular, has been a long time
Speaker 7: licensee and they continue to expand their line of dolls
Speaker 7: and doll accessories.
Speaker 3: That's Rebecca Friendly Trip's daughter and one of the driving
Speaker 3: forces behind continuing Laura's legacy.
Speaker 7: They have some beautiful eighteen inch dolls. We started with Laura,
Speaker 7: then Mary and most recently Nelly. They of course each
Speaker 7: have a variety of outfits and accessories, and there are
Speaker 7: some amazing doll size scenes.
Speaker 15: So we have a obviously a Laura doll, and Laura
Speaker 15: actually comes in a night gown with a cap like
Speaker 15: they used to wear, and her box turns into a bit,
Speaker 15: so even the box can be used.
Speaker 3: That's Joanne Particulia, the president of the Queen's Treasures toy company.
Speaker 3: Queen's Treasures makes pretty much every accessory that you could
Speaker 3: possibly imagine for a little house doll set.
Speaker 15: Mary comes dressed in a pretty blue dress, and she
Speaker 15: has a lunch pail which has the typical things that
Speaker 15: she would have brought to lunch. GE's a hard boiled egg,
Speaker 15: a little molasses cookie, abiscuit, that kind of thing, and
Speaker 15: she comes of course with a little chalkboard. We have
Speaker 15: a black cook stove, we have clothing, we're actually working
Speaker 15: on a Olsen's Mercantile, which is really going to be
Speaker 15: cool that kids can open up and they could play shop.
Speaker 3: Joanne started her toy business in her garage in two
Speaker 3: thousand and three by making doll trunks and accessories. Eventually
Speaker 3: she started focusing on Laura because she thought that story
Speaker 3: would be inspiring to young kids.
Speaker 15: We wanted to do women who change the world, and
Speaker 15: Laura Ingleswilder is literally the first novelist I became obsessed with.
Speaker 15: I have reread those books. I can't tell you how
Speaker 15: many times. It just transports you to a place where
Speaker 15: for me, looking back, children don't go now. You know,
Speaker 15: every child you see has something electronic that they're obsessed
Speaker 15: with and staring at, and they don't have any sense
Speaker 15: of what history is. But Laura, She's just resonates with me.
Speaker 15: She resonates with our customer base. I think people are
Speaker 15: looking for a simpler time for children.
Speaker 3: Joanne's goal isn't just a tap in a demand for
Speaker 3: Laura and Little House, but to use those stories to
Speaker 3: influence people, small people, children.
Speaker 15: We put these imagine this cards in with each product
Speaker 15: that says, imagine life over one hundred years ago, when
Speaker 15: there was no electricity and to cook on a stove
Speaker 15: you had to bring in wood and wait for the
Speaker 15: stove to heat up. And you know, we just go
Speaker 15: through scenarios that maybe children wouldn't even think about today.
Speaker 15: We have a lot of homeschoolers that love our products,
Speaker 15: so we really do try to keep it in an
Speaker 15: educational vein. Laura was all about language, if you think
Speaker 15: about it, and for me, she was I believe sixty
Speaker 15: four when her book got I'm hoping I got a
Speaker 15: few years for that, not that many. I'm hoping at
Speaker 15: sixty four, something really crazy goes on with this company too.
Speaker 15: But until then, I'm going to still keep developing and
Speaker 15: designing toys and trying to bring inspiration to children and
Speaker 15: try to get them to read and play and pretend
Speaker 15: they need their own voices now. So that's my mission,
Speaker 15: not just the.
Speaker 3: Kids who are learning from these dolls. Joanne told me
Speaker 3: herself that she's felt way more connected to Laura and
Speaker 3: the lessons of the Ingles and prairie life while she's
Speaker 3: been building this brand.
Speaker 15: I feel a little bit like a pioneer, if you will,
Speaker 15: you know, persistence and being able to face a problem
Speaker 15: and move on. They had so much adversity that happened
Speaker 15: in their life, and they still smiled at the end
Speaker 15: of the day and appreciated what they had.
Speaker 3: It's the simplicity that we keep coming back to, the
Speaker 3: urge to go back to basics, have real concrete experiences,
Speaker 3: get offline. We hear it over and over and over
Speaker 3: again in our increasingly connected digital age now. So far
Speaker 3: in this episode, we've been looking at businesses that start
Speaker 3: with Laura, but a lot of them go way beyond
Speaker 3: her in the wholesome, cozy feeling of the books into
Speaker 3: our modern world in ways that you might not even notice.
Speaker 3: After the break, we're getting into the products and trends
Speaker 3: that are catching fire all over the internet. Who owe
Speaker 3: their success to promising all of us a taste of
Speaker 3: the prairie lifestyle. Oh, let's go into the done store.
Speaker 1: Is the dog store?
Speaker 7: I've never even heard of it.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, those like flowery prairie dresses that
Speaker 3: I wear all the time?
Speaker 11: Yes, I do.
Speaker 3: Hyeah.
Speaker 7: This is where it all happens.
Speaker 3: This is where that's me and my co author, Christine
Speaker 3: Pride on our book tour in la We had some
Speaker 3: time to kill and naturally, I felt myself drifting towards
Speaker 3: a store that sold prairie dresses. Yet another overpriced prairie dress. Yep,
Speaker 3: I see what you're talking.
Speaker 2: I mean they're cute.
Speaker 3: No, I know, they're like a real shoe. You can
Speaker 3: totally see Laura wearing these.
Speaker 1: Right, she's lavender.
Speaker 3: I have that actually. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 3: Beyond the official Little House products, there is so much
Speaker 3: in our world that seems to be influenced by Laura.
Speaker 3: Her DNA exists in brands all over our social media
Speaker 3: feeds and in the real world. I fall for it
Speaker 3: all the time, and maybe you do too. I bring
Speaker 3: this up to Glennis a lot, a lot, a lot.
Speaker 3: So now I want to talk about things inspired by
Speaker 3: the prairie esthetic. And so I'm thinking the Pioneer Woman.
Speaker 3: Do you remember her read Drummonds. Yeah, her net worth is,
Speaker 3: according to the Internet, something like fifty million dollars. She
Speaker 3: has built a TV show, a magazine, a massively successful
Speaker 3: digital empire based off her prairie life, which I would argue,
Speaker 3: with a direct continuation influenced by Laura Ingles Wilder.
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely, it's hard to see how it's not.
Speaker 3: And then you have things like the American Girl Dolls,
Speaker 3: Kirsten the Prairie, she was my American girl doll, my
Speaker 3: first American girl doll, and her life on the prairie,
Speaker 3: again not directly based on Laura's life, but definitely influenced
Speaker 3: by the prairie nostalgia that is in these books. And
Speaker 3: more recently, you've got the nap dress phenomenon, nap dresses
Speaker 3: and cottage core. And you know what nap dresses are.
Speaker 3: They're just nightgowns. They're just nightgowns. And like these mommy
Speaker 3: prairie dresses that spiked in popularity on social media in
Speaker 3: the past few years, which I have nine of nine
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I looked in my closet and I have been
Speaker 3: suckered into buying nine nine of these.
Speaker 2: What's them? You tell me what's the appeal there?
Speaker 3: I don't know, because I've been influenced by cottage core
Speaker 3: on social media and it makes me feel like a
Speaker 3: beautiful lady running through the prairie. It's but and I'm
Speaker 3: not the only one. I talked to social media and
Speaker 3: branding expert Stephanie McNeil about the fact that during the pandemic,
Speaker 3: Hillhouse nap dresses. Hillhouse is the big nap dress company.
Speaker 3: We're selling over a million in inventory in something like
Speaker 3: twelve minutes.
Speaker 9: Hillhouse is really interesting because the nap dress is a
Speaker 9: very kind of cottage core look.
Speaker 2: They're definitely capitalizing on it.
Speaker 3: That's the author and reporter Stephanie McNeil. She covers influencing
Speaker 3: branding and marketing on social media. I called her up
Speaker 3: because I wanted to run the theory by her that
Speaker 3: cottage core is fueled by longing for a simpler, cozy time,
Speaker 3: just like life on the prairie.
Speaker 2: I could definitely see that.
Speaker 1: I think it's also.
Speaker 9: This idea of unbridled femininity that I think you see
Speaker 9: a lot in cottage core as well, where this embrace
Speaker 9: of a time where women could be very freely and
Speaker 9: dressed up.
Speaker 3: Stephanie has a few theories on why these trends persist.
Speaker 3: It's never just one thing.
Speaker 9: I think that kind of is behind a lot of
Speaker 9: these trends that are based around identity and personal style
Speaker 9: and lifestyle is I think people are really just looking
Speaker 9: for connection, and I think sometimes it's easier to be
Speaker 9: I'm going to go in on a cottage core and
Speaker 9: connect with people online who are really into cottage core
Speaker 9: that it is to I don't know, go to a
Speaker 9: gym class and find a friend.
Speaker 3: Again, we circle back to the idea that these prairie
Speaker 3: inspired trends are just a longing for a perceived simpler time,
Speaker 3: a false nostalgia, and a desire for connection in an
Speaker 3: over connected world. But you all know from listening to
Speaker 3: this podcast that Laura's life wasn't actually that simple. Her
Speaker 3: family lived in poverty, she experienced so much trauma as
Speaker 3: a child. Her ode to a simple, happy, cozy life
Speaker 3: is mostly fiction, but that fiction continues on social media today.
Speaker 1: Often.
Speaker 16: You know, you look at these accounts and it's moralizing
Speaker 16: and prioritizing a type of simplicity that is actually quite
Speaker 16: expensive and quite inaccessible to most of us.
Speaker 3: That's Sarah Peterson, another expert in social media marketing and
Speaker 3: branding and the author of the book Momfluenced.
Speaker 16: I think the construction of this imagery is really interesting
Speaker 16: because often it requires quite a bit of money and
Speaker 16: quite a bit of aesthetic investment, but it's always done
Speaker 16: in this like oh it just happened to be like this,
Speaker 16: And I'm not putting a lot of effort in effort
Speaker 16: seems to be at odds with the performance of this
Speaker 16: type of pioneer femininity.
Speaker 3: Sarah's right, these products are expensive, and it takes a
Speaker 3: lot of disposable income to be able to afford one
Speaker 3: hundred dollars plus prairie dresses and all the sour dough starters,
Speaker 3: pots and mugs that influencers and cottage core companies are
Speaker 3: selling to us these days. And I think it's worth
Speaker 3: taking a second to think about exactly what we're buying into.
Speaker 3: What is this sphere of influence, what are we trying
Speaker 3: to achieve with all of this stuff.
Speaker 16: I think the prairie chic aesthetic is so big on Instagram,
Speaker 16: particularly for momfluencers, because it taps in to our cultural
Speaker 16: understanding of mothers as being connected to the divine feminine,
Speaker 16: as being connected to the earth, being connected to domestic spaces.
Speaker 16: I really think this prairie you nostalgic aesthetic directly taps
Speaker 16: into our cultural construction of the ideal American mother in a.
Speaker 11: Way that makes for, you know, big business.
Speaker 3: I can't stop thinking about this, about what makes the
Speaker 3: ideal American mother, the ideal American woman. How dresses and
Speaker 3: mugs and the collection of all of these trappings of
Speaker 3: prairie life play into our desire to buy our way
Speaker 3: into being more complete and happy women. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of brands these days that are working to create a
Speaker 3: place for women to figure out how to be in
Speaker 3: the world, and one of those is actually called Modern Prairie,
Speaker 3: and it was created by TV Laura Melissa Gilbert herself.
Speaker 3: Who better to encapsulate all the sides of Laura's influence
Speaker 3: than the woman that played her as a little girl.
Speaker 3: Modern Prairie does sell a lot of stuff that we've
Speaker 3: been talking about, but it also promotes healthy ideas for
Speaker 3: how to live in the world as a mature woman,
Speaker 3: something that the world doesn't always recognize as valuable. It's
Speaker 3: genuinely a unique take on the prairie lifestyle brand, but
Speaker 3: I've got to say its beginnings are very similar to
Speaker 3: the other brands we've talked about. Like we've seen time
Speaker 3: and time again, Melissa felt drawn to the ideals of
Speaker 3: Little House during the pandemic.
Speaker 12: I think we all really rediscovered Cozy during Lockdown too.
Speaker 3: Just before twenty twenty, Melissa and her husband Tim bought
Speaker 3: a cabin in the Catskills and renovated it into their
Speaker 3: permanent home. In her memoir about that time back to
Speaker 3: the Prairie, she recounts the joy she felt in letting
Speaker 3: go of the life that she'd built in La She
Speaker 3: let her hair go gray, she took joy in cooking
Speaker 3: and gardening, and essentially rediscovered herself in this genuinely simpler life.
Speaker 3: When she founded Modern Prairie, she wanted to capture this
Speaker 3: simplicity for others.
Speaker 12: I think Modern Prairie's a space to remind people of
Speaker 12: that cozy, basic, woamy warm, those nostalgic feelings Boo brought
Speaker 12: up to the current times.
Speaker 3: The initial idea for the brand started with just one product.
Speaker 12: I have had this sort of little patchling of an
Speaker 12: idea for a couple decades that there's something more to
Speaker 12: do with just the entire sort of prairie ethos It
Speaker 12: all for me starts with them, of all objects, a butterbell.
Speaker 12: It's a ceramic holder for butter. You put the butter
Speaker 12: in it, and you put it in the crock and
Speaker 12: you put it upside down in water, and it keeps
Speaker 12: your butter fresh and soft without having to refrigerate it.
Speaker 12: And I always thought, let's create something around a butterbell
Speaker 12: and go from there and take us back to these sweet,
Speaker 12: simple things, which really are the best things after all,
Speaker 12: just full on lower angles Wilder celebration.
Speaker 3: Modern Prairie now sells that butterbell for forty nine to
Speaker 3: fifty plus. So many other things go on their website.
Speaker 3: There's backyard roofstore, quoted place mats, a Prairie iron stone
Speaker 3: handled one gallon croc potmets, a set of farmhouse aprons,
Speaker 3: pinafoor aprons, tablecloths, and my personal favorite, the deep dish
Speaker 3: baking pan. But what feels special about Modern Prairie is
Speaker 3: that they provide more than just products. They're actually creating
Speaker 3: that sense of community that so many women online are
Speaker 3: looking for.
Speaker 12: It's a place for obviously women over a certain age,
Speaker 12: the mature women like me. And it's not just about
Speaker 12: buying things. It's now grown into a community and we
Speaker 12: have all these workshops and everything from you know, how
Speaker 12: to paint with watercolor, to how to deal with grief
Speaker 12: during the holidays, to how to get unstuck, which is
Speaker 12: a big thing with women over a certain age. You know,
Speaker 12: their kids are gone. We're reassessing what we want to
Speaker 12: do with this last third of our lives, all of
Speaker 12: these things that we're dealing with at this part in
Speaker 12: our lives, there's no space for a community for people
Speaker 12: to talk about these things. So we create this space
Speaker 12: with these workshops. And what's kind of the heart of
Speaker 12: Prairie for me is the community aspect. I love being
Speaker 12: older because I don't feel like I have to do something.
Speaker 12: I can sit at home and learn something.
Speaker 3: What I think is so interesting is that almost everyone
Speaker 3: we spoke to in this cottage core prairie life world
Speaker 3: seems to be striving for a simpler life. The people
Speaker 3: that are making it, the people that are buying it,
Speaker 3: everyone is trying to get to something simpler through commodification.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a strive for simplicity and also self sufficiency
Speaker 1: in a world where neither.
Speaker 3: Of these things really exist. And I think, are we
Speaker 3: all so miserable and overconnected and overworked that will pay
Speaker 3: for simplicity? This feels like a big joke capitalism is
Speaker 3: playing on us, by the way, because I think the
Speaker 3: answer is yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: Though I also think this, like this desire to get
Speaker 1: back to the simpler life, which is so well represented
Speaker 1: by Little House on the Prairie, is not a recent phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Like I'm just thinking of those old commercials we found
Speaker 1: from this eighties being like come home, come home to
Speaker 1: the simpler life.
Speaker 2: Like there's always this fantasy.
Speaker 1: Around getting back to this simple life, which, as we know,
Speaker 1: never existed, right, Like, they did not have a simple.
Speaker 2: Easy life. They had a terrible hard life.
Speaker 1: All of the people who actually lived in this time
Speaker 1: period would kill to live in our time period with
Speaker 1: antibiotics and electricity.
Speaker 7: But like, the.
Speaker 2: Fantasy of that is so pervasive.
Speaker 3: So pervasive. It's so pervasive that people will pay, you know,
Speaker 3: fifty dollars plus for a butterbell or three hundred dollars
Speaker 3: for a prairie dress that is essentially a nightgown. And
Speaker 3: there's entire there are entire stores in Brooklyn to sell
Speaker 3: things that look like they could have been on.
Speaker 2: The prairie exactly.
Speaker 3: And also I kept thinking about how everyone wants to
Speaker 3: use Laura as a gateway to something else, as a
Speaker 3: gateway to simplicity, as a gateway to community, and it
Speaker 3: reminded me that it's always bigger than Laura the human being.
Speaker 3: It's bigger than these prairie stories. It taps into our
Speaker 3: very humanity, what we desire, what we're hungry for, and
Speaker 3: as this episode showed, what people are willing to pay
Speaker 3: for those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pay for a sense of community and safety and
Speaker 1: coziness and simplicity. And maybe you two can make a
Speaker 1: doll out of straw and have just like a direct
Speaker 1: connection to sustainability.
Speaker 3: I'm going to open my own atsy shop after this episode.
Speaker 3: Don't worry. I'll check in with the friendlies and make
Speaker 3: sure that it's kosher. And I'm going to make some
Speaker 3: pig Potter toys. Yes, yeah, we're gonna make so much money.
Speaker 1: I mean, in this episode, we've come up with our
Speaker 1: own business ideas.
Speaker 2: So listen, it's never ending.
Speaker 3: It's never ending. It's never ending. If this episode has
Speaker 3: taught us anything it's that Laura is everywhere. She's ever present,
Speaker 3: no matter what form she happens to be in. Laura
Speaker 3: is going to stick around for a very very long time.
Speaker 3: In fact, I can't wait to see what ai Laura
Speaker 3: does now. That is a business idea. Wilder is written
Speaker 3: and hosted by Me and Glennis McNicol. Our story editors
Speaker 3: are Me and Emily Meronoff. Our senior producer is Emily Maronoff.
Speaker 3: Our producers are Mary Do, Sena Ozaki and Jessica crimechicch
Speaker 3: Our Associate producers Lauren Philip. Sound design and mixing by
Speaker 3: Amanda Rose Smith, and our theme and additional music was
Speaker 3: composed by Alise McCoy. We are executive produced by Glennis mcnickel,
Speaker 3: Nikki Etour, Ali Perry and Me. If you're enjoying Wilder,
Speaker 3: please consider rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts. It
Speaker 3: actually helps us out quite a lot, and remember you too,
Speaker 3: are an influencer. Special thanks for this episode goes to
Speaker 3: the Friendly Family, Melissa Gilbert, Stephanie McNeil, and Sarah Peterson.
Speaker 3: Check out our show notes if you want to know
Speaker 3: more about the people we interviewed, the places we visited,
Speaker 3: and the books that we mentioned. You can also find
Speaker 3: our contact info there. If you want to write to
Speaker 3: us with your own thoughts and questions, we're going to
Speaker 3: be including listener responses in our final episode, so if
Speaker 3: you have thoughts on the Little House series or on
Speaker 3: this series, please send a voice memo to Wilder podcast
Speaker 3: at gmail dot com. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok
Speaker 3: Influence Influence Influence We will be posting all of the
Speaker 3: behind the scenes footage from our travels, and you really
Speaker 3: don't want to miss it. Thanks for listening. Talk to
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