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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Photo: Courtesy of Gerald Stratford
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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Photo: Courtesy of Burberry
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.