If cabbage needed a mascot, Gerald Stratford just might be the top candidate for the job. On Instagram, you’ll find the 77-year-old proudly showing off a red cabbage from his garden while wearing a cabbage-patterned fleece jacket and hat, or penning an ode to nature’s marbled marvel.
Stratford, who lives in the village of Milton-under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire, England, is a beloved figure online. For an audience of about half a million people across multiple social media platforms, the retiree posts dispatches from his harvests of very large vegetables—or “big veg” as he likes to say, to great delight.
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Since his first brush with virality in 2020 (at the time, his nephew told him, “You’ve gone viral with your spuds, Gerald”), he has become a gardening influencer of sorts—and a fashion muse. That cabbage fleece? It’s McQ by Alexander McQueen.
“Whenever I wear it on screen, it just takes off. I get a million hits every time,” Stratford tells Vogue of the fleece outfit. Stratford was a collaborator on the project, and the label bears his name alongside other creatives. “I feel quite proud, you know,” he says. “I’ve took my vegetables to the fashion world.” (In addition to McQueen, Stratford has worked with Gucci, Burberry, and White Stuff.) He loves slicing vegetables in a way that accentuates their inner beauty, and says that cabbage is one of the best. “Cabbage always seems to get people’s imagination,” Stratford says.
If recent reports are any indication, Stratford is onto something here. The “Pinterest Predicts” trend report said that in 2026, we will collectively reach peak cabbage obsession. You can already find cabbage (and lettuce, if we’re being technical) motifs all over: the Sandy Liang cabbage bag from the designer’s spring 2025 collection, the Dodie Thayer for Tory Burch ceramic line, a sterling silver cabbage centerpiece from Buccellati, and cabbage as decor in floral arrangements and advertising campaigns, like for the Highgrove x Burberry collection.
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In Taiwan, according to CNN, a jadeite cabbage sculpture is the star attraction of the National Palace Museum—so popular it has its own exhibition hall. On TikTok, there have been many “viral” cabbage recipes, like the cabbage boil and the green goddess cabbage salad.
At New York restaurants, you’ll find cabbage on many menus—as a bar snack at Sunken Harbor Club, with crab (“crabbage”) at Bong, and grilled at Zimmi’s. It’s been paired with citrus and dates at Eyval, made “addictive” at Dr. Clark’s and izakayas like Cotra, and of course, stuffed at Veselka. The New York Times called cabbage “the vegetable of the year.” Even Bordallo Pinheiro, the Portuguese ceramics company founded in 1884, has recently seen an increase in demand for their cabbage collection, according to Maria Santana, a representative for the brand.
When Mayor Zohran Mamdani was campaigning, he cradled a cabbage in a video with the food content creators Anna Archibald and Kevin Serai, who are known online by their username Cabagges. The couple tells Vogue that one of their first viral videos was of them making cabbage mille-feuille nabe, a Japanese dish of layered pork and cabbage in a dashi broth. Archibald says that if cabbage is having a moment now, it’s likely because of how accessible and adaptable it is. “Everyone can get their hands on a cabbage,” she says. Serai notes that many different cultures across the world have long made cabbage dishes. Perhaps the difference now is that cabbage may increasingly be the star of the show.
Among the cabbage evangelists is James Beard award-winning chef Sophia Roe, who tells Vogue that cabbage is a “sexy choice” for chefs today. Roe has a popular braised cabbage recipe that has converted at least one nonbeliever to the cabbage way of life, and she loves the vegetable for its versatility. “You can stuff it, you can fry it, you can braise it, you can steam it. You can do anything you can think of,” she says. In other words, cabbage can be a blank canvas, a vehicle for butter or anything else you can dream of.
Plus, Roe adds, cabbage has a shape and texture that makes it ripe for both aesthetic and gustatory pleasures. For her, today’s style of cabbage-as-art feels like part of a trend toward the baroque, and aligns with the tradition of Danish still life paintings that feature cabbages.
“In terms of the optics, cabbages are like big flowers, and people love big flowers,” Roe says. “Move over peonies, cause the cabbage is here.”
