A glammed-out 20-something stands before a camera in an earthy-toned top and low-rise denim jeans. Her hair is wavy and voluminous, her eyelids are drenched with warm, smoky shadows and her lips are glazed with a light pink gloss. She shifts from pose to pose, flashing pretty smiles at the camera as a jazzy, feel-good Norah Jones track plays in the background. In this moment, she’s embodied the exact woman her childhood promised she would become: the 2000s Tuscan Mom.

The 2000s Tuscan Mom aesthetic — think Baby Phat founder Kimora Lee Simmons, Gabby Solis (Eva Longoria) in Desperate Housewives and Julie Cooper (Melinda Clarke) in The O.C. — is a Y2K revival trend that’s been making its rounds on TikTok, where Gen Z women have wholeheartedly embraced it. The Tuscan Mom is as over-the-top as the McMansion she lives in — think high ceilings with wooden beams, cozy terracotta walls, opulent wrought-iron lighting fixtures and extravagant furniture.

Evan Collins, a design archivist, believes the 2000s Tuscan Mom aesthetic is heavily inspired by the “McBling” aesthetic, the maximalist, celebrity-fueled Y2K style characterized by logos, rhinestones, trucker hats and velour tracksuits.

“[The] Tuscan Mom is an amalgam of different luxury lifestyle signifiers from that time period in the 2000s,” he tells Yahoo, referencing the rich textures, warm colors and heavily maximalist graphics associated with the niche aesthetic. “Those Tuscan Mom posts are always showing the various luxurious activities and spaces from the time, from the spa days, shopping for very loud ostentatious clothing at emerging ‘lifestyle town centers’ to eating at the most 2000s luxury-coded restaurant in existence, the Cheesecake Factory, with its 50-page menu and extravagant decor.”

So how did this very niche, hyperspecific aesthetic become so popular among TikTok Zoomers? Lauren Downing Peters, a fashion studies professor at Columbia College, tells Yahoo that the Tuscan Mom resurgence is a result of two key factors: the 20-year-trend cycle and the rejection of millennial-induced minimalism.

“[It’s] just the fact that 20 years have passed since the original kind of, like, Sonoma County, Tuscany, Olive Garden aesthetic was popular,” she explains. “Enough time has passed that it feels fresh and new.” But the cyclical nature of fashion isn’t the only thing at play here. There’s also a “demographic war.”

According to Downing Peters, “The richness and the texture and the nostalgia of the Tuscan Mom aesthetic is very much a rejection of the calculated sterility of millennial fashion and interior design aesthetics.”

In contrast to monochromatic spaces drenched in a soft millennial pink or “sad” millennial gray, the Tuscan Mom aesthetic is eclectic, warm and inviting.

“It’s kind of also a reduction of high technology and this condition of living our lives online to something that’s a little bit more lived in, textured, tactile, imperfect,” Downing Peters adds. “Even the visual clutter, the fashion aesthetic of layering on the belts and the tank tops. It’s all a little bit richer and multi-layered than what’s been in fashion recently.”

If it wasn’t already obvious, the Tuscan Mom aesthetic isn’t an accurate representation of Tuscany — or “moms.” It’s an Americanized, Y2K-ified interpretation of an aspirational Italian lifestyle.

“This aesthetic is plucked from the rolling hills of Tuscany, rendered through the lens of capitalism and then further abstracted through Gen Z aesthetics,” Peters says. “They’ve taken all those references and reinterpreted them on their own terms.”

Winemakers in Tuscany, for instance, aren’t rocking manicures, bedazzled sunglasses, or tank tops. They’re getting their hands dirty and favoring organic, light-weight fibers. Their homes aren’t gaudy and expansive, either.

“There’s a weird contradiction in this style; because it’s pulling from actual Tuscan style, there’s that unpretentious, inviting, humble element, but then it’s kinda warped and blown up to McMansion proportions and filled to the brim with hyper-consumerist imitations,” Collins says. It’s Chianti by way of Calabasas.

These inaccuracies and muddled references to actual Tuscany are nonissues for the aesthetic’s loyal subscribers. For the Gen Z women on TikTok creating these Tuscan Mom videos, this aesthetic is more than a microtrend — it’s a way of life.

“It just makes me feel more like myself and appreciate my looks more,” Megki, a TikTok creator who subscribes to the Tuscan Mom aesthetic, says in an email. “But the main thing is how it makes you feel. It brings out this feminine, confident energy. The heels, the hair, the makeup, it’s all part of it. It reminds me of the kind of women I looked up to growing up, including my mom, and how they always took care of themselves and carried themselves with confidence.”

“It is definitely a lifestyle rather than a TikTok microtrend for me. I wear these clothes every day,” Hana, a Tuscan Mom-loving TikTok creator, shares. “I define the ‘Tuscan Mom’ aesthetic as bold. … I always live by, ‘I never fit in, I stand out.’ This aesthetic means everything to me because it sums me up as the person I am.”

Beyond its gaudiness and loose references to Tuscany, the style is optimistic, experts say.

“Gen Z is craving texture and authenticity and nostalgia. There’s this aspiration wrapped up in all of it for something — a lifestyle, interiors, fashion that they may never be able to afford in this economic climate,” Downing Peters says. For Zoomers, the aesthetic is more about the comfort that wealth can bring.

“Being able to escape back into this and have this imagined world of what you thought your adulthood would look like and all these luxury, sophisticated signifiers of that — the more opulent, very consumerist lifestyles — I think that’s comforting to people,” Collins agrees.

The Tuscan Mom aesthetic offers Gen Z-ers an opportunity to cosplay the lifestyles they expected to have.

“The mums were always put together,” Ruby Sloan, a Tuscan Mom-inspired content creator based in Australia, says of the women she admired growing up.  “I loved the heels (usually peep-toe), low-rise jeans, a designer bag, oversize sunglasses, French tip nails and a big blowout. Always a glossy lip, a bit of bronzer, maybe those subtle streaks in their hair. And somehow they were always driving a convertible.”

Sloan adds, “I feel like in another life I was a Tuscan mum in the 2000s.”