#38 The Simple Life
Everything you like, I liked 20 years ago.
Hiiii. Remember two weeks ago1 when I said I was rewatching the O.C.? It’s not confirmation bias when I say all indicators point to Y2K nostalgia. According to the Guardian, Noughties nostalgia trends on TikTok as fans revisit music and TV favourites, with TikTok’s #noughtiesnostalgia content is up 36% year over year, driven by Gen Z’s obsession with 2000s-era TV and music. Meanwhile, Everything Millennial Is Cool Again, according to the New York Times. Today, we’re examining what’s literally making a comeback, and what 20-year-old item has found a 2025 equivalent. xoxo Esther 💋
Literal comeback kids
Barneys New York. The defunct department store gets the TV treatment: a new Amazon series from producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (creators of Gossip Girl/The O.C.).
Abercrombie & Fitch. Rebranded for a woke Gen Z with docu-series redemption arc and a 2025 cultural reframing.
Von Dutch + Ed Hardy + UGG Boots + Juicy Couture. Worn by influencers again, either in the form of new releases/collabs, or… found at the thrift store.
Chain restaurants. Rainforest Cafe, Red Lobster, Chili’s.
Dumb tech. The kids are yearning for the BlackBerry. And digital cameras. And iPods.
screenshot via After School What’s old is new
Lancôme’s Juicy Tubes → Rhode Peptide Lip Treatment + Glossier. Gloss rebrands as skincare.
Jersey Shore (MTV) → Barstool Beach House. Bro culture turns into a post-ironic content factory.
Hervé Léger Bandage Dress → House of CB bodycon dresses. Hyper-feminine glamour2 returns.
Frappuccino era → Matcha lattes, mushroom coffee, Olipop. Function and gut health are today’s status symbols.
Imagine if the Olsen twins had stock in Starbucks… they’d be even richer. Tamagotchi → AI pets (Replika, Peridot). The fake companion gets an AI brain… but still no heart :(
MTV Cribs → Architectural Digest Open Door + TikTok home tours. Aspirational homes get a ‘tasteful’ rebrand.
Jackass + X Games → YouTuber boxing (Logan Paul), Nitro Circus Stunts. Creators are just as dumb, they probably make more $$ now.
Bonus idea: I’ve been saying loud and clear for years that a David + Cathy Guetta biopic would make an excellent movie. Romance and the nightlife underworld from the South of France to Ibiza to the international stage. My DMs are open if anyone wants to produce it.
📈 Bullish news
It’s Balenciaga, bitch: Demna bids farewell with a Britney Spears collab (Dazed). He’s a millennial, too, after all.
Snap’s Spiegel: Company Is on ‘Cusp’ of Computing Transformation (The Information). About time.
Why Bumble and Tinder are suddenly scrambling to keep up with Hinge (Fast Company). As most dating apps struggle with declining engagement and user loss, Hinge is the rare outlier, with revenue jumping 39% last year. What sets it apart is its friction-first design, which slows down the experience to prioritise real connection. More on why friction matters here.
Tariffs raise prices. It's textbook economics, and we're starting to see it happen now, anecdotally at least. It's politically toxic, as Democrats recently learned. Yesterday's 25% is today's 50%. Increases have yet to show up in the official inflation data. (Axios)
Circle shares more than doubled last week after an IPO valuing the company at almost $7 billion, showing that investors have an appetite to get exposure to the nascent stablecoin economy. The bet is that stablecoins will only get bigger once the U.S. properly gives a green light to issuers. (Axios)
China now owns 20% of global ad market (Axios)
Vivrelle, the luxury accessories rental membership business, raised a $62M Series C round led by Protagonist.
According to Capgemini’s annual World Wealth Report, there were 562,000 new millionaires in the US last year, largely thanks to strong tech stock returns (Bloomberg).
Sicily—Yes, Sicily—Has Become Italy’s Hottest New Luxury Playground (Robb Report). Great news per me!!
📉 Bearish news
Archivists Aren’t Ready for the ‘Very Online’ Era (The Atlantic). Archivists are scrambling to preserve the digital footprints of the “very online” era, where Gen Z’s ephemera (Snapchat streaks, Notes app to-do lists, TikTok likes, etc.) often vanish before they can be saved, creating what experts call a looming “digital dark age.”
Are Sleep Trackers Making Us Ontologically Insecure? Doctors say patients fixate on their Oura Ring data even though it doesn’t help them rest. (Intelligencer)
Rotten Apple: are we finally watching the death of the iPhone? (Standard) See above re: BlackBerry.
If you’re looking for me, here’s my Instagram and my Sicilian house’s Insta. Here’s my LinkedIn. Choose wisely, or don’t.
if not, get checked for dementia :)
frappucino, tamagotchi, juicy tub... I FEEL SEEN. and old when I see their rebranded comeback ahah!