The sun poked out of the grey clouds on an early Saturday morning. The air was slightly chilly but warm enough to ditch the heavy coats required to brave the first few months of the year. The sidewalks were still slick with rain.
Spring had finally arrived in Madison after a long Wisconsin winter. And with it, an array of vendors with unique handmade jewelry, crafts, pottery and more were set up at tables wrapping around the Capitol square. Ceramic mushrooms peeked out from bright tablecloths. Mirror balls hanging from crochet fixtures caught the light. Hand-painted tote bags swayed gently in the breeze.
As visitors traveled up State Street toward the Capitol, the upbeat chatter grew louder between sellers and shoppers along with the color that saturated the sidewalks with endless creative offerings. It wasn’t hard to imagine what drew people – from young students to elderly friends – to the market.
But for many of them, the pull ran deeper than pretty things on a table.
Across social media and in real life, a growing number of people are deliberately seeking out whimsy, the pursuit of adding unexpected and lighthearted play into daily life. Examples include incorporating fun colors into everyday objects and engaging in handmade creativity. It’s not just an aesthetic trend. It’s a coping mechanism.
According to a 2023 American Psychiatric Association poll, almost half of Americans partake in creative pursuits to relieve their stress or anxiety, and those who rated their mental health as excellent tended to engage in creative activities more often than those who didn’t. Around the Capitol, that shift was hard to miss.
For some vendors, it started long before it was a trend. Michelle Quigley, who sold jewelry and other handmade items created from trinkets, had been collecting weird and wonderful things since childhood.
“As a kid, our car windows were getting broken out a lot and that glass is kind of tempered, so I used to make crafts out of the broken glass when I was a kid,” Quigley said. For her, whimsy was never an aesthetic choice. It was just how she moved through the world.
For others, it came out of necessity. Xizhou Xie, who painted original works and jewelry while working full-time as a data analyst, started painting to keep her whimsical spirit alive. Because her apartment had no room for a piano, her previous creative outlet, she discovered painting allowed her to express herself with limited space. Xie says she finds it important to pursue what you love, and she loves the whimsy aesthetic.
Abby Welch of Golden Hour Knots arrived at a similar place from a different direction. A mother of three, she started her business three years ago not out of professional ambition, but out of a need to reclaim something for herself.
“I needed something that was just fun and playful just for me,” she said. She noticed quickly that her friends loved what she was making and wanted to spread happiness. “People are really seeking it out right now, especially with the political climate. We all need a little bit of joy.”
The data backed them up. A 2024 study published in Frontiers in Public Health found that engaging in creative activities had as great an influence on participants’ wellbeing and happiness as factors like age and health status.
A systematic review published in early 2025 found that across all 19 studies examined, mood and life satisfaction improved after craft-based interventions – covering activities like pottery, knitting and embroidery. Researchers suggested governments and health services consider socially prescribing creative activities for at-risk populations.
At the market, the evidence was less clinical. A shopper paused at a table of hand-painted earrings, held a pair up to the light, and decided to take them home without much deliberation. At the next stall, someone ran their fingers along a row of custom kitchen towels before carefully selecting one to spice up their home.
The “why now” wasn’t hard to find. According to the 2024 APA annual poll, 43% of U.S. adults said they felt more anxious than the year before, up from 37% in 2023 and 32% in 2022. The study found that a large majority of Americans are increasingly stressed about the news and economy.
Arielle Marmann, who made ceramic planters and mushroom stakes and had been doing the Saturday market for three years, put it plainly. “People are trying to find some magic in the life that they have,”she said. “They can’t afford to buy a house, but they can at least make their apartment feel like home. And that whimsy really helps people feel that.”
Some are cautious about putting all their eggs in the basket of the whimsy trend. Xie argued that all trends ebb and flow, and only consumers’ true interests will last. She noted that for years, the dominant aesthetic has been monochromatic – grey cars, beige homes, minimalist spaces. “Maybe now there’s some subculture of more whimsy,” she said. “But you don’t have to follow the trend just because it’s a trend.”
It was a tension others felt too. Julia Conway, a student shopping the market, said, “I think if you try to incorporate it in a way that’s true to you, then it’s beautiful, it’s amazing. It adds so much fun to your life. But I think people are stuck on [needing] to be different. So then, sometimes, that can stall the creative part of being whimsical. But overall, I think it’s a great thing.”
Tori Morgan Nagel, who runs Tori’s Trinkets, is an avid supporter of whimsy, with her business’s slogan being “healing your inner child one silly accessory or craft workshop at a time.” Beyond her jewelry, she teaches workshops for people who want to make their own crafts. She dreams that the whimsical trend inspires a behavioral shift beyond an aesthetic shift.
“I’m hoping that more people are focusing on their communities and getting out and communicating with people in person,” she said. “Just logging off for a few hours and enjoying being outside.”
On the first Saturday of the season, at least, that seemed to be exactly what was happening. Groups of friends, young and old, had already combed through the stalls and admired the generous selection of handmade objects.
Somewhere down the block, someone was walking away with a ring made of a vintage spoon and a charm bracelet catching the light at their wrist. The grey backdrop of Madison was alight with the brightness of people who had decided, at least for a morning, to add a bit of whimsy to their life.
