Tapping Into Nostalgia

FWD Life features four individuals from different walks of life, coming together to tell us what they miss most about their days in exaggerated shoulder pads, spandex, mullets and perms.

- Aishwarya John

Fashion has always been in a love affair with the past. Whether you have crooned to ABBA or the Backstreet Boys, carefully pinned up posters of a dashing Aamir Khan from Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander or young Leonardo DiCaprio from Titanic, we have somehow managed to style ourselves in low-rise jeans, funky fedoras, scrunchies, and other semi-horrific pieces from way back then.

Even though we inwardly cringe and shudder when we think of some of the things we wore back in the day, we’ve always been a nostalgic society. We always tend to look back, especially during moments of unrest, or social anxiety, or concern. It’s when there’s a feeling of uncertainty in the present that nostalgia comes to play, because we tend to look for something safe and familiar in the past.

We caught up with four individuals who have been through the best decades of fashion. Do they miss the good old days? Yes. Would they give anything to go back and rock another bellbottom number or don a georgette polka-dotted sari? Absolutely!

THANKAM GOPINATH, 70 years, homemaker

Most experimental fashion decade: The 1970s was the perfect decade for fashion with its experimental silhouettes and colours Favourite fashion memory: I really miss the variety of beautiful sarees from back in the day, the bell-bottom trousers, and high-waisted skirts Childhood fashion icon: Mumtaz, as she revolutionised the look of the saree in Bollywood