What 2026’s Obsession With 2016 Reveals About the Fashion Archive

Fashion is cyclical. We all know it; we’ve all heard it.

Yet this particular moment feels especially ripe for reflection. With the growing discourse around 2026 being the new 2016, feeds are flooded with throwbacks of everyone and their mothers revisiting what they wore, listened to, and cared about back then. A year defined by very specific fashion and lifestyle markers: Tumblr aesthetics, skinny jeans, chokers, Snapchat’s dog and Instagram’s Rio de Janeiro filter.

What we are witnessing is not a “new” trend per se, but the natural unfolding of trend lifecycles: accelerated, compressed, and amplified.

For years, fashion has leaned on the idea of a roughly twenty-year cycle. While never exact, it once aligned fairly closely. Today, however, with the rise of fast fashion and an industry operating at breakneck speed, that rule feels increasingly obsolete. Trends no longer reappear organically; they are resurrected, repackaged, and redistributed almost on demand.

This is precisely where archives — not trends — begin to matter.

You can learn a great deal about what society will deem “trendy” by understanding why certain aesthetics emerged in the first place. Trends do not exist in isolation; they are responses to sociocultural, economic, and political conditions. As Lynn Yaeger once recalled, Sally Singer’s advice was simple:

“If you’re interested in fashion, learn about everything except fashion.”

When the sociopolitical climate of the present mirrors that of the past, it is hardly surprising that similar visual languages resurface; not only in dress, but across culture at large.

This is why fashion archives matter more than trends. Not because trends are irrelevant, but because archives offer context, meaning, and continuity. They allow us to understand why something resonates now, rather than simply accepting that it does. Fashion, after all, is never just clothing; it is a reflection of the lives we are living. What we wear tells a story, and understanding the archive gives us the means to decide which story we want to tell.

Take the ongoing debate around skinny jeans. Over the past year, their supposed “comeback” has been met with both enthusiasm and resistance. Some have embraced slimmer silhouettes once again, while others insist they will never return. Yet as the rhetoric of 2026 as the new 2016 gains traction, jeans are visibly narrowing. On runways and in the streets, what once seemed unthinkable is quietly becoming normal again. It is rarely a question of if — only when.

Celine SS26, @anoukyve, Gucci Pre-Fall 26, @by_eva_

What makes this return intelligible is not the passage of time alone, but the parallels between then and now. In 2016, the world was already grappling with political instability — the Brexit referendum, Donald Trump’s first presidential victory — events that disrupted collective notions of certainty. Speaking to the BBC, psychologist Clay Routledge noted that nostalgia tends to intensify during periods of uncertainty; when the future feels unstable, people instinctively look backwards for comfort and coherence.

Today, the sense of instability is arguably even more pronounced. And while this is not a geopolitics blog, it would be disingenuous to ignore how deeply global unease shapes cultural expression.

This brings us to the role of fashion media in shaping — and sometimes distorting — narratives. Recently, I was struck by a sense of irony while scrolling through Instagram and encountering a headline proclaiming “2026 is the Year of the Cabbage.” 

At first glance, it felt absurd. Then it felt revealing. The media does not simply reflect culture; it frames it. In a moment marked by economic strain, rising living costs, and widespread precarity, elevating one of the cheapest vegetables as a cultural signifier begins to read less like whimsy and more like semiotics.

Layered onto this is the renewed cultural fixation on thinness, bodies growing smaller as resources grow scarcer. Whether intentional or not, visual culture has a way of acclimatising audiences to certain realities before they fully materialise. Is this interpretation a stretch? Perhaps. But fashion has always functioned as an early warning system of sorts.

Returning to 2016, the nostalgia surrounding it is not solely aesthetic. It is emotional. Despite the turmoil of the time, it is remembered as simpler, less performative. Social media existed, but it had not yet reached the turn into today’s hyper-monetised, algorithm-obsessed creator economy. We were not documenting every aspect of our lives; we were posting heavily filtered selfies and silly Vine videos without the pressure of optimisation or virality.

Understanding these shifts and engaging with fashion history through the archive offers something increasingly rare: agency. At a time when trends move faster than ever, attempting to keep up is not only exhausting but environmentally unsustainable. The consequences of this constant consumption are already visible, both socially and ecologically.

This is why cultivating a relationship with the archive — whether institutional or personal — matters. For me, that sometimes takes the form of a vintage silk scarf from the late 1980s, bought years ago not because it was “on trend” but because of its craftsmanship and provenance. It comes out of the wardrobe regardless of whether maximalism or minimalism is in vogue, because its value is not dictated by the algorithmic present. Knowing its history allows it to exist outside trend cycles altogether.

By understanding (perhaps even loving) archive pieces, personal style is allowed to evolve with intention rather than imitation. Clothes become expressions of self, not timestamps of relevance. I have grown increasingly tired of seeing things dismissed as “cheugy” simply because TikTok has moved on. My response remains the same: So what? If I like it, I like it — and that is reason enough.

Perhaps it is time we all started dressing with a little more memory, and a little less urgency.