In Challenging Times, Nostalgia Sells

Big birthdays are always emotionally charged. With London Fashion Week celebrating its 40th year, it was understandable that nostalgia would be a word on everybody’s minds. As attendees waxed lyrical about their favourite memories, designers, too, were in nostalgic mood.

As autumn 2024 inspirations go, ‘1970’s blouses from M&S’ were on nobody’s bingo card, yet these are what JW Anderson cited as a touch point of his new collection. Marques Almeida, meanwhile, invited some of their original models and muses (and their children) to take part in their show. And Burberry didn’t just enlist blast-from-the-past models Lily Cole, Lily Donaldson and Agyness Deyn to walk: the clothes themselves harked back to the halcyon days of Christopher Bailey, when the brand was riding high.

I have a lot of thoughts about this (to paraphrase Oprah: was designer Daniel Lee silent, or was he silenced?) – suffice to say that in challenging times, nostalgia sells, and we should expect to see more of it. As an aside, I find it at best ironic, at worst remiss that so little archive footage or photography appears to exist of the early years of London Fashion Week. If the past is so important, why didn’t we cherish it more? The lesson: tap into nostalgia, inspire real emotion, and connections are made, ones with meaning and – brands hope – longevity, aka loyalty.