By Alexander Otto, Head of Corporate Relations, Tradebyte
For decades, nostalgia has been a valuable form of currency amongst brands. Heritage labels have relied on emotional memory and the comfort of the familiar to sustain loyalty, justifying their place on both the high street and in consumer consciousness. But in 2025, nostalgia’s value is depreciating.
Its peak came around 2023, when reboots and remakes dominated popular media, culture and design. From street style to cinema, nostalgia was everywhere, from Mattel’s Barbie, to the revival of Y2K aesthetics and HBO’s adaption of The Last of Us to the silver screen. The trend was largely considered a reflection of consumers’ desire for comfort and bygone eras, coupled with brands’ reliance on proven formulas. But two years on, the retro bubble seems to have burst, losing momentum and revealing the limits of familiarity on long-term growth strategies.
Claire’s, the once quintessential tween accessories brand, collapsed into administration earlier this year. UK sales fell 0.8% to £137 million in 2024, while losses totalled £4.08 million. The company’s US arm, burdened by $690 million in debt, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. It’s the latest reminder of how heritage alone is no longer enough to sustain relevance with younger audiences.
Buckling under the weight of legacy
Claire’s success was forged in a pre-digital world of shopping centre culture and high street rituals. Its stores were destinations in their own right, symbolic grounds for first piercings, glitter hair clips, and Saturday afternoons with friends. However, as shopping habits and youth culture evolved, the brand remained anchored in its own past.
This is the paradox of heritage: success breeds inertia. When a brand has enjoyed decades of recognition, reinvention can feel unnecessary, or even risky. Yet younger audiences, especially Gen Z and Gen Alpha, are motivated by entirely different forces than their Millennial predecessors. They are digital natives who value authenticity, diversity, sustainability and creativity. For them, a legacy name means little if the product, messaging and experience fail to reflect the world they live in now.
Whose nostalgia is it anyway?
Older consumers may still romanticise the pre-digital age – a time of slower trends and physical retail experiences. But that nostalgia fails to translate across generations.
Today’s young shoppers have grown up entirely in a digital environment. They live online, express identity through social media and expect brands to be visually dynamic, socially aware and willing to take creative risks. What once felt iconic can now appear static or outdated.
These audiences aren’t wistful for an era before screens, smartphones, and social media – they have no memory of it. Heritage, tradition, and familiarity hold limited meaning unless reinterpreted through the aesthetics, values, and behaviours that define modern youth culture. For this generation, hyper-relevance outweighs legacy every time.
When heritage becomes a hindrance
Many heritage brands underestimate how quickly cultural relevance fades. What once symbolised quality or aspiration can begin to feel uninspired or inaccessible if it doesn’t evolve. Store environments, visual identities, and product assortments that were once aspirational can come to represent everything younger consumers reject – rigidity, sameness or exclusivity.
Digital fluency remains a major barrier. Younger consumers expect brands to live and breathe online; seamlessly integrating content, commerce and culture. When legacy brands treat digital as an add-on rather than a foundation of their strategy, they fail to meet their audience where they are.
The rise of the agile challenger
While legacy brands grapple with reinvention, agile competitors are rewriting the rules. Off-price retailers like TK Maxx have found success by offering experiences that feel fresh and unpredictable. Its ‘treasure hunt’ model, which sees frequent inventory refreshes, limited runs and the thrill of discovery, speaks directly to younger shoppers’ appetite for novelty and immediacy.
These retailers don’t rely on nostalgia; instead, they trade in momentum. Their speed, variety, and value-driven proposition attract attention that heritage brands, constrained by bureaucracy and rigid brand identity, often struggle to capture.
Shifting values, shifting Power
Not to be understated, younger generations approach consumption in vastly different ways. They care about where products come from, how they’re made and what a brand stands for. Sustainability, inclusivity and social responsibility are no longer nice-to-haves; they are central to brand credibility.
Heritage brands that continue to rely on a longstanding reputation risk appearing detached from these expectations. In contrast, those that reinterpret their legacy through a modern lens, combining history with purpose, are better positioned to retain cultural relevance. Nostalgia may create awareness, but conspicuous alignment of values builds trust.
Rewriting the playbook
For heritage brands, survival depends on reframing what nostalgia represents. Instead of treating it as a currency to be spent, it should be reinvested. Heritage provides credibility and authenticity, but only if it evolves alongside its audience.
This means modernising brand identity, streamlining digital infrastructure, and empowering teams to move with cultural and creative agility, in line with the adaptability today’s consumers expect.
Claire’s decline is a cultural story as much as it is a financial one. Its inability to evolve from a physical high street-based model to a digital-first experience left it treading water between generations. Nostalgia kept it visible and recognisable, but not desirable.
In contrast, brands that continue to reinterpret their history – Levi’s, for example, which consistently refreshes its positioning through collaborations and storytelling, collaborating with figures in popular culture such as Beyoncé, Anitta and Hailey Bieber – demonstrate that legacy and relevance can coexist. In 2025, and a culture that moves at digital speed, the only lasting currency is relevance, and relevance demands constant change.
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