Nostalgia is fuzzy and utopian, privileging an imagined past over a real one. And indeed, nostalgia can be kitsch - playing on the collective recollections of a generation and teasing the psyche through the occasional retro replay - but why can’t it be more than this? Big branding conceits - Old Navy bringing back '60s hip-huggers, for instance - is one way to mobilize nostalgia as a catalyst for sales, but it's a collective memory and besides, we’re all sort of "in" on the irony. Can’t the use of personal memory in the public realm be more transcendant, more emotionally raw than this?

Intressant om design och nostalgi på Design observer. Se även Jessica Helfars Cease and design.