Extravagant Luxury Is Coming For Your Picnic In The Park
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You can learn a lot about a person by what TikTok rabbit hole they can't help but follow. Perhaps you're on a need-to-know basis with the next big cottage cheese recipe. Or maybe you recreate everything that Stanley Tucci cooks. For me? It's all about the luxury picnics.
I'm not sure when or how this movement started, but it's a trend that just keeps snowballing, and I can't look away. During the pandemic, we created whole new ways to dine al fresco. Unwilling to forgo the necessary normalcy of a shared meal, restaurants (and the diners who missed them) got super-creative with how we literally and figuratively broke bread safely amongst friends. While it was easy to imagine that, once we could inch back to Normal Times, we'd break down all the outdoor gazebos and makeshift plastic igloos we ate in street-side and return inside as if it was just all some weird dream. Instead, a whole new industry (and even a career) emerged and remains popular in our post-Covid lives: luxury picnics and their luxury picnic planners.
Much like other strange, Covid-adopted hobbies, the picnicking industry has all kinds of exciting gear. There are $180 convertible picnic table-baskets, handcrafted French knife sets specifically for picnics, and deluxe picnic kits complete with compact royal goblets.
Prices for a luxe picnic planner range anywhere from $250 to $10,000; that can include brass cutlery and elaborate linen teepees, but not the food. In most cases, a quick grocery run and a loose bed sheet are all you need, but if goblets are a part of your budget, I see no reason to yuck anyone's yum.
The trending hashtags for #picnics has amassed 4.9 billion views alone. It might be easy to dismiss this activity as frivolous or excessive, but I think there's just so much more to it. In times of scarcity, we do often lurch back toward excess, and luxury picnics can certainly be proof of that. Historically, picnics were a popular activity that the middle class adapted from the aristocracy, who had more gluttonous, elaborate indoor "picnics." Taking the picnics outside was one way the middle class could create a more idyllic, simplified, and almost child-like purity during a lunch shared amongst friends.
No matter if you think picnics have gotten a bit too out of hand, luxury picnics do, at least for an afternoon, allow us to cosplay a lot of different realities: a fun, go-with-the-flow Coastal Grandmother, a trip through a Marie Antoinette-infused daydream, a meal that breaks up the routine of your table-top lunches. I'm invested in these set-ups like someone might be emotionally invested in BamaRush, or all the tarot readers who have a message "just for me." Even if they are the only "meal out" that week, the simple act of picnicking is a delightful way to be crafty amongst inflationary restaurant prices.
Picnickers today still display an earnestness for an activity that's altogether accessible, joyful, and creative, and one that can be adjusted by budget. If TikTok is one way we learn to romanticize our lives on the internet, that same romance becomes true offline as well, whether your Prosecco is sipped out of brass goblets or red Solo cups. These picnickers have their cake and they (along with some ants) are certainly eating it, too.
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