Avoiding the Nostalgia Trap

Bringing a 90s Staple into the Future

Welcome to November, CLOTHO fam! A time when nature reminds us how beautiful…and how essential…it can be to let go of the old to clear a path for the new. Trees change, leaves fall, and our primal instincts urge us to retreat, to slow, and to reflect. As someone reflective to a fault, the messages of autumn have inspired me this edition.

It started when I was scrolling Instagram, and saw a very interesting post from none other than Crayola.

Yes, the crayon company. See, Crayola did something really interesting. Over weeks, they surveyed people across 183 countries worldwide to determine the world’s favorite colors in the first-ever Global Color Vote. I was thrilled to see that the winners were Cerulean, Robin’s Egg Blue, and Wisteria, though, not all that surprised considering the prevalence of bold blues in the fashion spotlight of late. (I wrote about it in the last Style Guide…check it out if you haven’t yet!)

Seeing these three colors next to each other immediately transported me back to a time when violet and teal dominated the aesthetic plane. And I wasn’t alone. The comments were overwhelmed with others who recognized this color palette as synonymous with the 1990s.

It’s not unexpected considering the surge of nostalgia marketing over the past several years, just as the Millennial Generation (those born between 1982-1996) come into midlife.

Millennial and Gen X Nostalgia-core dominate digital media. From social media accounts dedicated solely to reminiscing on what life was like in our younger years, to full-fledged conventions celebrating all things 90s. As a Serial Reflect-er, I’ve been ruminating over this phenomenon lately. It makes sense, of course, for this to come about as we settle into the complete and utter chaos that comes along with being the current “sandwich generation,” in which you find yourself sandwiched between rocks and hard places galore, navigating not only building a career, caring for children, while also caring for aging parents, oh and dealing with a new unprecedented event every day.

It’s completely understandable that that pressure would drive anyone to seek refuge in nostalgia, remembering a time when those stressors didn’t overtake our entire days. But, the Nostalgia Trap is just that, a trap. If we’re not careful, it can begin to convince us that society was truly “better” in a different era. When in reality, that romanticizing of the past clouds our ability to recall events objectively and accurately.

It’s not that the 90s were objectively “better.” There was still violence on a global scale, rights for marginalized groups were even more challenged, and the “Sandwich Generation” of that time was also stressed and craving nostalgia of their own. What we’re actually romanticizing isn’t the time itself, but how life felt for us at that time, when our biggest concern was making it home in time to catch TRL and see if our crush was on AIM.

There’s nothing wrong with indulging in nostalgia every once in a while, but I do think we need to be cautious of our relationship with it. Escapism can be a wonderful, and necessary, aspect of caring for our mental health, as long as we don’t fall into the trap of dwelling in the past so completely that we wind up willfully erasing the negative aspects of any given period of time.

There are absolutely ways to honor our love for the past while keeping an eye on creating a better future. I love that turquoise and teal, colors so indicative of my childhood in the 90s, are experiencing a resurgence in global popularity.

In color symbolism, teal, a hybrid of blue and green, blends the steadfastness of blue with the abundance of green, meaning teal represents lush new growth, anchored in honesty and trustworthiness. And that is definitely energy we should be taking into the future.

To find the balance of carrying this nostalgic hue with us in a grown-up way, these are some of my absolute favorite modern color combinations.