The Esprit sweatshirt was last seen in circulation in 1987. Its relaunch is causing a frenzy amid Gen X.Esprit/Supplied
It’s neither summer nor fall, but back-to-school. Appearing as reliably as Hilroy coloured pencils on a shopping list of classroom supplies, for adults, it’s a season heady with sentimentality that’s ripe for harvesting.
Nostalgia marketing eventually comes for us all.
A Days of Thunder sequel and throwback Miami Vice ’85 film are in the works. The next generation of 1987 coming-of-age sitcom A Different World is enrolling at Hillman College, and last summer’s Oasis reunion and Pulp tour are this fall’s big concert movies. The lucrative revivals, prequels and reboots underscore the reality that Generation X is now just as susceptible to nostalgia as everyone else.
With the slew of new-old products linked to formative cultural moments, Gen X appears to be shedding its signature skepticism and enthusiastically embracing all of the things we had (or longed to have) in our youth. Those days when the future still looked so bright, you gotta wear shades, as a certain eighties band once said.
A look from the new Esprit collection.Esprit/Supplied
Levi’s fall collection, Loose Prep, draws on the preppy collegiate and hip-hop silhouettes of the 1980s to court those of a younger generation who were not yet born when Gen X first wore these styles. Savvier legacy brands are skipping the coy nods and simply going back to the well itself. The Body Shop Canada, for instance, brought back its popular Dewberry range this past winter. The juicy scent was first launched in 1988 and, according to the company, has been among the products most enthusiastically petitioned for revival.
That also seems to be the strategy behind Gap’s return to beauty. The apparel retailer has been seeking to reposition itself, hiring red carpet designer Zac Posen to elevate its utilitarian staples (khakis, white shirts, jeans) and launch upmarket, fashion-forward line GapStudio. This summer, the brand reimagined its minimalist 1990s fragrances, Dream, Heaven, Om and Grass – the casual-wear company’s profitable answer to unisex scent trailblazer CK One.
Boomers, millennials and Gen Z have long been strategic targets. Now, suddenly, brands are paying attention to the forgotten generation of shrugging cynics who pride themselves on being self-reliant latchkey kids raised by television.
Nostalgia can help regulate emotions and, as studies have noted, boost feelings of social connectedness, Nathalie Atkinson writes.Walmart/Supplied
In the demographic breakdown of the 2021 Statistics Canada census (the most recent data available), Gen X hovers just below 20 per cent of the country’s population. Yet as it enters its peak expenditure years, Gen X has the strongest brand loyalty of any shopping generation, according to a 2025 Nielson IQ study. Its report urged consumer brands to prioritize a Gen X strategy and cash in on the cohort that quietly drives big shifts in spending and will lead global spending through to 2033.
That shift was exemplified by the frenzy around an Esprit sweatshirt last seen in circulation in 1987.
In late July, 14 years after the San Francisco brand shuttered its North American stores, Centric Brands released a licensed Esprit collection at Costco in the U.S. It was soon followed by an Esprit capsule in Canada, sold exclusively at Walmart. The simple fleece sweatshirts bear the apparel company’s iconic wordmark: the distinctive, stencil-cut font of the same vintage as The Go-Gos and the original scrunchie.
Today, the Esprit sweatshirt costs around $30, but it was not inexpensive in its heyday (roughly $115 in 2026 dollars). As a higher-end mall brand that was slightly out of reach for the average consumer, it was coveted, becoming a status symbol of sorts.
The collective, days-long “Squee!” on Threads following the capsule’s release was practically audible as the Gen X algorithm lit up and the retro-inspired pieces sold out, with devotees enthusiastically alerting one another to restocks and swapping addresses to exchange sizes. (Because if you can’t trust a fellow latchkey kid on the internet, who can you trust?)
Nostalgia has a psychological function – it can help regulate emotions and, as studies have noted, boost feelings of social connectedness. The Esprit glee landed during the dog days of summer when, among the bittersweet dusks of fleeting holidays, people are primed to feel sentimental. But it also made the rounds in breathless Threads posts at the same time as a hostile U.S. Senate committee grilled Dr. Anthony Fauci about the pandemic, Europe saw unprecedented wildfire evacuations and tense trade negotiations were underway.
Reaching for familiarity in times of change and leaning into the past are natural responses to global uncertainty. Cultural theorist Svetlana Boym put it best when she wrote, in both her seminal 2001 book on nostalgia and later essays, that nostalgia is a natural reaction to unhappiness with the present and a lack of hope for the future.
Nostalgia is also about longing. Therein lies the paradox of nostalgia marketing: The emotion thrives on never arriving at the desired destination – or acquiring the coveted item. The comfort is in the yearning. What happens, then, when Gen X buys the sweatshirt?