Something Trump, Coach, and Happy Gilmore 2 all have in common: nostalgia

Fashion has always been a steadfast pillar in society, a form of expression that is a wearable representation of cultural trends. When it takes over people in warm washes, when individuals invest their hard-earned money in the same piece as someone in a different country, that item of representation has then gone beyond individual taste and instead emerged as a communal icon of expression. And then, once it reaches the point where we are walking down the street in the same polka dot skirt as someone in Copenhagen, Milan, or rural America, we ask ourselves the same question that every social analyst asks: What does this trend really represent?

In pop culture, love of what was created in the past is inescapable. The return of the vintage Coach and Balenciaga city bags, the hair claw clip, the ‘And Just Like That’ sequel to Sex and the City, the 2010s Tumblr aesthetic, and the resurgence of Lana del Rey’s infamous Priscilla Presley-inspired aesthetic. Even running to the movie theatre, nostalgia will follow you, with just last year's top 10 highest-grossing movies all being sequels 1. Perhaps it’s because Millennials and Gen Z are aging, and with that comes an online expression of reminiscing about what captivated the generation that grew up from the 1990s to the 2010s. But this seems too pervasive, too everywhere you look, to just be boiled down to a healthy love of remembering one’s childhood. In an advertising or branding sense, nostalgia can be divided into two types: personal and historical2 . We are craving historical nostalgia, with the resurgence of trends and concepts once thought lost, online. Producing this type of nostalgia within your content is a valuable tool for companies, as it has been proven to inspire a positive attitude towards the brand behind the ad 3. For individuals with low life satisfaction and a sense of loneliness, engaging with nostalgia offers a means to foster a sense of social connectedness 4. To take it a step further, one theory posits that nostalgia can help foster meaning in life as well as raise self-worth 5. Nostalgia can then be defined as a yearning for the past, an attempt to recreate emotions and social outcomes felt by those in the past (real or imagined) through evocative memories. When experienced collectively, this is known as collective nostalgia. Perhaps the reason we feel so much nostalgia is due to the underlying feeling of dread. The sense is that we miss the idea that after a catastrophe, our leaders will guide us into growth. Greater job opportunities, economic prosperity, sustainable innovation, and strong regulatory frameworks that prioritise the well-being of its citizens. We miss the prospect of the generational promise that you will be better off than your parents, that the generation after us will live in a world of abundance and have truly invaluable, intimate human experiences. Moreover, we miss the feeling that we didn’t even think we could forget when we had it: trust in our democratic systems. That we didn’t have to think about government that much because it always worked itself out, and systematic corruption was not constantly (literally constantly) in the news. For most of modern history, right-wing conservatives have used collective nostalgia to rationalise resistance to change and progressivism (e.g., the Nationalist Front in France, UKIP’s “Take back Control” slogan in the U.K., and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” in the U.S.), implying what once was. But interestingly, left-wing liberalists (particularly in the U.S.) have begun to use nostalgia to embolden left-wing views and movements online. The nostalgia is closer to the present, showing itself in the renaissance of the early 2010s or the ‘Obama-era’, when the internet wasn’t monetised on the mass scale it is now, merely a symbol of interconnectedness. When climate action was promised, Dubsmash was a sleepover essential, and parents didn’t have to worry about putting extensive parental locks on devices yet. Globally, we are witnessing a growing resistance to the “corrupt elite” and their handling of government. What that looks like is different to each political swaying. To the left, it’s looking more like nostalgia for the recent past of government, which was led by the left and leaders with more traditional leadership values, before the complete upending of what we knew to be reality in politics in 2016, with the first election of Trump and a transformation of the political media landscape. On the right, well, that’s a whole other beast. Nostalgia of industrialism, the traditional nuclear family, and oversimplification of the past, to name a few. In response, the left is looking to collective memories of pop culture’s past as a source of comfort, a warm blanket of security amidst the uncertainty of upholding democratic institutions. Nostalgia is more powerful than you may think, particularly when it takes hold of a collective. Whilst deprivation is a strong determinant in how one votes (particularly in a populist sense)6, nostalgia is a powerful tool to help people get there by reminding them of what they once had. In a political sense, we are experiencing collective historical nostalgia for leadership that once was. This is seeping into the same longing for nostalgic sources of happiness in pop culture. In Happy Gilmore 2, the vintage Chanel ballet flats, the ‘Born to Die’ Lana Del Rey album. Nostalgia, whether used for positive or negative purposes, is a powerful means for people, on both individual and group levels, to strengthen their identities. Nostalgia will inevitably become more pervasive as we transition into a more technology-driven society—AI-assisted learning, driving, researching, management, finances, and therapy. But we will not get any less human. In many ways, the nostalgia of the 2010s is already a nostalgia for a young, globalised online culture full of diverse references that were difficult to find, personally curated. Our reliance on symbols of the past, full of laughter and life, will continue. Policymakers and tech-lords must take note that this genuine love of the past is representative of something much more meaningful and philosophical about the human condition. Humans will never stop craving interpersonal connections and the excitement of a trend that represents a more profound sense of identity. Focusing on nurturing that sense of longing, the human connection sense, is the key to general relatability and the long-lasting success of any product, person, or political idea.

1 https://variety.com/2024/film/columns/is-hollywoods-addiction-to-sequels-cannibalizing-its-future-inside-out-2-moana-2-1236231263/ 2, 3 Srivastava, E., Sivakumaran, B., Maheswarappa, S. S., & Paul, J. (2022). Nostalgia: A Review, Propositions, and Future Research Agenda. Journal of Advertising, 52(4), 613–632. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2022.2101036 4 Bowlby, J. 1982. “Attachment and Loss: retrospect and Prospect.” The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry52 (4):664–78. doi:10.1111/j.1939-0025.1982.tb01456.x 5Greenberg, J., T. Pyszczynski, and S. Solomon. 1986. “The Causes and Consequences of a Need for Self-Esteem: A Terror Management Theory.” In Public Self and Private Self, 189–212. New York, NY: Springer. 6 FERWERDA, J., GEST, J. and RENY, T. (2025), Nostalgic deprivation and populism: Evidence from 19 European countries. European Journal of Political Research, 64: 1506-1518. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12738