I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately! I think it’s also because of what lasts in a historical record.
There’s no fossil record of the quiet desperation of housewives and the gross feeling of using febreze to try to get years of cigarette smoke out of the fabric seats of a Chevy convertible.
Because there was such shame, it was tucked away and undocumented.
So all that survives is the glossy Marlboro ads and the sexy shiny ads pushing the lifestyle. That’s what Gen Z found.
That is such a great point! The historical record is biased, and we don’t talk about that enough. I’ve seen some notes on here recently about the importance of writing and documenting reality in the midst of what’s currently happening, precisely for that reason, as we are now far too reliant on unstable social platforms as archives, and they are not actually reliable.
Great piece! Thank you for connecting all the dots on this. I’m optimistic that at the very least there will be a big move towards creative rebellion and an awakening in art in response to this regression. Much like grunge was a response to the excesses of the 1980s. One can hope 🙏
Thank you for this. You have managed to articulate something that has been nagging me for months now. Connecting the dots between those seemingly innocent instagram trends and the broader cultural shifts.
However, every time the pendulum swings this hard it tends to spark some something in our collective creativity. 🤞
This is so great! And as a gen x person and a prof to young gen z, I think you’re on to something re: younger generations don’t have the full set of facts abt how bad the options were for non white men. Presumably tho younger gens are raised by gen x and boomers? Fascinating ideas here
Thank you! Yes I think my conjecture is that Gen Z was mostly raised by Gen X, and in many Gen X households the mother worked full-time (at least, moreso than in Boomer households). So Gen Z saw mothers struggling to manage "doing it all," making the idea of being a "stay-at-home" mom/housewife seem more aspirational than being a working mother.
Just got referred back to this from another link, but my partner and I have speculated that who was President when you came of age/into political consciousness matters a lot: for my parents, it was Reagan. For my youngest siblings, it was Trump.
In contrast, Obama was President for my formative years, and my oldest aunts are old enough to remember the assassinations of Kennedy and MLK. You can take a guess where all our politics fall.
Regressive Nostalgia is a branding minefield. It’s not just an aesthetic trend—it’s a cultural shift rooted in economic anxiety and generational memory gaps. Brands can’t just ignore it, but engaging requires careful navigation.
50s Idealism and 80s Aspirations both yearn for stability, power, and pre-social media simplicity. That’s why we’re seeing the rise of tradwife influencers, old-money aesthetics, and indulgent consumerism. But nostalgia without context is dangerous—leaning too hard into these aesthetics risks aligning with regressive values, even unintentionally.
The real question is: How do brands acknowledge the sentiment driving this trend without endorsing its ideology? Positioning matters. Luxury brands can play into exclusivity without veering into hyper-conservatism. Wellness brands need to recognize the Unwellness push and rethink how they market “optimization.” Lifestyle brands should be wary of romanticizing past eras without modernizing them.
Ignoring the shift isn’t an option. The challenge is understanding why Gen Z is embracing these aesthetics and meeting them where they are—without getting stuck in the past with them.
Incredible analysis. I loved reading it. I’ve noticed and covered generational nostalgia mainly in my political reporting of Gen Z voters. Your thoughts on how that very nostalgia, reflected in an appreciation for tradwife culture to 80’s-era conservatisim, is largely ignored in most of today's branding strategy or trend forecasting is really fascinating.
From what I understand about young people who see themselves as part of the new conservative movement, feeling left out from mainstream culture and conversation only further fuels the fire under their bellies and makes it even more *cool* to exist outside the realm of most public discourse.
Thank you Rachel! I went down a rabbit hole of your work last night, and it was very insightful. I really loved your post on nostalgia. It was so poignant and made me realize this mindset goes far deeper than perhaps I had even imagined. I'll be including a reference to your post in a followup email going out tomorrow, and moving it here at the end of this post afterwards too.
Oh, thank you so much! I'm excited to continue reading your insights and would love to connect to chat trends like nostalgia anytime :) I think we're only starting to see how pervasive it is in shaping youth sentiment
Very interesting. The section on “visual thinking” made me remember how my husband and I would fantasize about living in a cute farmhouse out in the countryside whenever we passed one before the rigors and isolation of farm life snapped us back to reality.
As for footnote 2 on youth and holocaust denial, Pew Research points to “bogus respondents” for online opt-in surveys. The motive MAY be financial, as they zoom through answering yes to everything to get paid sooner.
“For example, in a February 2022 survey experiment, we asked opt-in respondents if they were licensed to operate a class SSGN (nuclear) submarine. In the opt-in survey, 12% of adults under 30 claimed this qualification, significantly higher than the share among older respondents. In reality, the share of Americans with this type of submarine license rounds to 0%.”
I actually did not know until now that Nara’s husband was a trumper?? That discovery aside this piece was so incredible I’m glad you recently resurfaced it!!!
Yes, definitely on the punk coming next... I think your article shows that we're seeing "Double nostalgia." - What I mean is that usually a trend comes back in about 30 years. So I remember martinis making a comeback (30 years from the early 60's cocktail culture). But now you're showing we're double dipping with 50's culture AND 80's culture... So, I would say that yes, punk will come back, but also, what came out 30 years after punk that will come with it?
Great piece. We see the 1950s style trend go Hollywood too. The past red-carpet season we saw a lot of female celebrity's wear dresses inspired by old Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s. They are romancing the Hollywood starlets of the time period. We could see more actresses have roles similar to those towards the end of Golden Age Hollywood.
Excellent deep dive! I’ve thought about this piece often. Other culture threads that feel tied to regressive nostalgia include Diet Coke becoming the new symbol of masculinity and the current rise in Cowboy Culture a symbol of Americana.
Due to the rise of BLM, the pendulum is swinging hard in the opposite direction in alignment with a Trump presidency.
I've never been one to jump on the bandwagon—it's why I launched @nobodyknowswellnessclub on IG, a cheeky middle finger to the "sporty & rich" crowd. Honestly, 2015-2017 was the era when everything I believed in got distilled into a bland, copy-paste trend.
Yeah this makes sense to me but we’re overall talking about a cool minority moving in this direction, rather than everyone in Gen Z. Of course, aspires to the cool minority except outcasts.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately! I think it’s also because of what lasts in a historical record.
There’s no fossil record of the quiet desperation of housewives and the gross feeling of using febreze to try to get years of cigarette smoke out of the fabric seats of a Chevy convertible.
Because there was such shame, it was tucked away and undocumented.
So all that survives is the glossy Marlboro ads and the sexy shiny ads pushing the lifestyle. That’s what Gen Z found.
That is such a great point! The historical record is biased, and we don’t talk about that enough. I’ve seen some notes on here recently about the importance of writing and documenting reality in the midst of what’s currently happening, precisely for that reason, as we are now far too reliant on unstable social platforms as archives, and they are not actually reliable.
Great piece! Thank you for connecting all the dots on this. I’m optimistic that at the very least there will be a big move towards creative rebellion and an awakening in art in response to this regression. Much like grunge was a response to the excesses of the 1980s. One can hope 🙏
Thank you! Agreed - we've got to hold onto that hope 🤞🏽
I think you're onto something with a potential creative rebellion. Maybe people en masse logging off (less likely).... one can hope.
I think it will be a response but not necessarily anti-consumer culture like grunge. It never repeats the same
Thank you for this. You have managed to articulate something that has been nagging me for months now. Connecting the dots between those seemingly innocent instagram trends and the broader cultural shifts.
However, every time the pendulum swings this hard it tends to spark some something in our collective creativity. 🤞
Thank you! I totally agree. Creativity is a powerful tool 🙏🏽
This is so great! And as a gen x person and a prof to young gen z, I think you’re on to something re: younger generations don’t have the full set of facts abt how bad the options were for non white men. Presumably tho younger gens are raised by gen x and boomers? Fascinating ideas here
Thank you! Yes I think my conjecture is that Gen Z was mostly raised by Gen X, and in many Gen X households the mother worked full-time (at least, moreso than in Boomer households). So Gen Z saw mothers struggling to manage "doing it all," making the idea of being a "stay-at-home" mom/housewife seem more aspirational than being a working mother.
Yes totally, I see this! It’s still shocking to me Gen X is not more politically radical! Idk what happened to my peeps.
Just got referred back to this from another link, but my partner and I have speculated that who was President when you came of age/into political consciousness matters a lot: for my parents, it was Reagan. For my youngest siblings, it was Trump.
In contrast, Obama was President for my formative years, and my oldest aunts are old enough to remember the assassinations of Kennedy and MLK. You can take a guess where all our politics fall.
Regressive Nostalgia is a branding minefield. It’s not just an aesthetic trend—it’s a cultural shift rooted in economic anxiety and generational memory gaps. Brands can’t just ignore it, but engaging requires careful navigation.
50s Idealism and 80s Aspirations both yearn for stability, power, and pre-social media simplicity. That’s why we’re seeing the rise of tradwife influencers, old-money aesthetics, and indulgent consumerism. But nostalgia without context is dangerous—leaning too hard into these aesthetics risks aligning with regressive values, even unintentionally.
The real question is: How do brands acknowledge the sentiment driving this trend without endorsing its ideology? Positioning matters. Luxury brands can play into exclusivity without veering into hyper-conservatism. Wellness brands need to recognize the Unwellness push and rethink how they market “optimization.” Lifestyle brands should be wary of romanticizing past eras without modernizing them.
Ignoring the shift isn’t an option. The challenge is understanding why Gen Z is embracing these aesthetics and meeting them where they are—without getting stuck in the past with them.
Incredible analysis. I loved reading it. I’ve noticed and covered generational nostalgia mainly in my political reporting of Gen Z voters. Your thoughts on how that very nostalgia, reflected in an appreciation for tradwife culture to 80’s-era conservatisim, is largely ignored in most of today's branding strategy or trend forecasting is really fascinating.
From what I understand about young people who see themselves as part of the new conservative movement, feeling left out from mainstream culture and conversation only further fuels the fire under their bellies and makes it even more *cool* to exist outside the realm of most public discourse.
Thank you Rachel! I went down a rabbit hole of your work last night, and it was very insightful. I really loved your post on nostalgia. It was so poignant and made me realize this mindset goes far deeper than perhaps I had even imagined. I'll be including a reference to your post in a followup email going out tomorrow, and moving it here at the end of this post afterwards too.
Oh, thank you so much! I'm excited to continue reading your insights and would love to connect to chat trends like nostalgia anytime :) I think we're only starting to see how pervasive it is in shaping youth sentiment
Very interesting. The section on “visual thinking” made me remember how my husband and I would fantasize about living in a cute farmhouse out in the countryside whenever we passed one before the rigors and isolation of farm life snapped us back to reality.
As for footnote 2 on youth and holocaust denial, Pew Research points to “bogus respondents” for online opt-in surveys. The motive MAY be financial, as they zoom through answering yes to everything to get paid sooner.
“For example, in a February 2022 survey experiment, we asked opt-in respondents if they were licensed to operate a class SSGN (nuclear) submarine. In the opt-in survey, 12% of adults under 30 claimed this qualification, significantly higher than the share among older respondents. In reality, the share of Americans with this type of submarine license rounds to 0%.”
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/
They say the % of Holocaust denial is probably closer to 3%, the same as other age groups. Whew! (Not that any % is good!)
Omg thank you for this insight!! A huge relief tbh. And the submarines lmao ☠️
Yes, apparently some people will claim anything. 😛
I actually did not know until now that Nara’s husband was a trumper?? That discovery aside this piece was so incredible I’m glad you recently resurfaced it!!!
Aw thank you!! Yeah they are quiteeee the rabbit hole to dig into lol
BRILLIANT read, thank you so much for this!
Yes, definitely on the punk coming next... I think your article shows that we're seeing "Double nostalgia." - What I mean is that usually a trend comes back in about 30 years. So I remember martinis making a comeback (30 years from the early 60's cocktail culture). But now you're showing we're double dipping with 50's culture AND 80's culture... So, I would say that yes, punk will come back, but also, what came out 30 years after punk that will come with it?
Great piece. We see the 1950s style trend go Hollywood too. The past red-carpet season we saw a lot of female celebrity's wear dresses inspired by old Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s. They are romancing the Hollywood starlets of the time period. We could see more actresses have roles similar to those towards the end of Golden Age Hollywood.
Excellent deep dive! I’ve thought about this piece often. Other culture threads that feel tied to regressive nostalgia include Diet Coke becoming the new symbol of masculinity and the current rise in Cowboy Culture a symbol of Americana.
Due to the rise of BLM, the pendulum is swinging hard in the opposite direction in alignment with a Trump presidency.
I've never been one to jump on the bandwagon—it's why I launched @nobodyknowswellnessclub on IG, a cheeky middle finger to the "sporty & rich" crowd. Honestly, 2015-2017 was the era when everything I believed in got distilled into a bland, copy-paste trend.
Now that you mention it, Sporty & Rich might be one of the earliest manifestations of this trend
I think JJJOUND would the first to me, but she definitely geared a movement forsure
The term “regressive nostalgia” perfectly encapsulates the vibe shift towards counter-counter cultural values and behaviors.
Tradwives, cottagecore, homesteading, quiet luxury, old money, soft girl, girl math, i’m just a girl, stay at home girlfriend, office siren…
It’s never just about the clothes.
BRILLIANT! thanks so much for doing this work and adding subtext. Gen Z will FAFO as they say.
Thank you! and yesss FAFO rings true once again
Yeah this makes sense to me but we’re overall talking about a cool minority moving in this direction, rather than everyone in Gen Z. Of course, aspires to the cool minority except outcasts.