Curiosities: Style nostalgia

On following back the intellectual and emotional pull of fashion call-backs to their origin

Are there items in your wardrobe to which you were initially inexplicably drawn? Pieces with no discernible practical value and no obvious aesthetic logic either. And yet they’re so deeply connected to your taste, your emotions and therefore your identity that you find yourself wondering: why is this?

There’s an interesting paradox currently playing out in fashion, specifically for Millennial women. The pervasive reissue of Y2K bags, pulling on an emotional longing for our former selves, our former desires, our former experiences. I find it paradoxical because the pre-loved market has never been more accessible. Vinted is currently the UK’s third-largest fashion retailer, behind only Primark and Next (Retail Week, 2026). So why buy a reissue when you can enjoy the hunt for an original and have a transcendental experience back to where and who you were in your twenties in the process?

There is a flex in being in your thirties or forties and finally affording what you lusted after in a former life. The authority over your own finances. The courage of your convictions about who you are and how you want to present yourself. I have a long list of items I’ve wanted for thirty years+, deeply connected to the women I envisioned myself becoming. And that concept — becoming her — is as present in the cultural conversation as the reissue bags themselves. The overwhelm, overexposure and homogeny are all trying to dismantle our truest sense of self.

The great singular aesthetic we’re assumed to fall into removes tension, flattens complexity and ignores the specific lives, experiences and emotional histories that have shaped our taste. Personal style is as much emotional as it is physical or intellectual. And when we stop being curious about our own response, when we reach for the reissued items because marketing and commercial prowess are playing on our monolithic Millennial nostalgia, we risk dressing as someone else’s idea of who we actually are.

So I wanted to go deeper than the marketing. To move past the nostalgia nudge and ask a more interesting question: why am I drawn to these call-backs? What caused the initial spark?

Using this line of enquiry, I started to consider the more obscure items in my wardrobe. For the Hermès SS2021 show, models clomped down the runway in wooden-heeled clogs — metal rivets, stiff leather, limited practical value, undeniable price. But something about them created a spark. They would add tension, an unconventional and effortless shoe that would be heard before it was seen. The logic wasn’t stacking up. What is causing this spark? Can I trace the genesis of this unexpected and inconvenient want?

Each year in the early 90s, my mum, who was born and raised in Denmark, along with my father could travel to Denmark and Northern Europe. Alas the invite was never extended to us children, however they kindly brought back gifts. Denmark football jerseys, black salty liquorice, and one year, wooden clogs. Black leather. Exceptionally heavy. Perversely loud. They borderline looked like something Huggy Bear would have worn to tend his tulips in Amsterdam.

And yet they were supremely practical for both my parents, even for the most mundane tasks. Clogs for the school run, clogs for the bins, clogs for the dog walks. These clogs, along with a handful of other items from my mum’s wardrobe have stuck with me. The uniqueness of them, the confidence with which both my parents wore them, the questions our friends would ask about them, the fun experiences the clogs were ever-present for. The Hermes clogs call-back was clear, and it was deeply rooted in emotion.

After three years of inquiring online and in boutiques, I finally found a pair pre-loved on Vestiaire. Purchased immediately. Wooden soles, as it turns out, are not only loud but exceptionally slippery so in the interest of not breaking my neck for a piece of childhood nostalgia, I had a rubber sole added at Hermès aftercare. The clogs caused quite the moment in store. Two SAs had never seen these clogs in real life. What had begun as a mundane errand became a conversation about design, about childhood experiences, about why these pared-back, effortless shoes still generate such genuine intrigue. Fashion and personal style is as much about the physical and intellectual as it is about the emotional state.

Hermes Calya clogs

That is what following the emotional pull of fashion call-backs actually gives you — not just the object, but the story behind the want. The memory, the meaning, the thread connecting who you were to who you are now. The reissue offers you the shape of the nostalgia. The inquiry deepens your identity. Be curious about your own responses. Follow them back.

Tova Turkel, A Considered Curiosity founder, wearing Hermes Calya clogs