Nostalgia is Real
or not.
Brands leaning into nostalgia to connect with consumers? Not new. But it has become more pronounced in recent years, with our infinite digital world and seemingly infinite archive making it much easier to open windows into past eras. Contemporary audiences feel closer to times gone by, connecting with them secondhand, probably romanticising them.
I was pushed to think about this courtesy of a charmingly crafted campaign film this week. No, the fact that it connected to some of my own childhood memories had nothing to do with it.
That very real creative is accompanied by another that makes us question reality, in our increasingly AI-fuelled digital world. That fuel is also the reason I write about a new term that you might see popping up in the comments section more, one that damns AI-generated writing and the shortcuts it symbolises.
A collision of craft, memories, unreality and effort, because this is The Colour Bar.
Attaching The Cord: From the 90s, with love.
▶️ Curated/Cut: The Last Real Man
ai;dr: four letters likely to spread.
➕ · ESPN in APAC· Eurovision Asia ·Wikipedia bans AI · Young 40s · Books to toons ·
☝🏽Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and let me read this to you.
1. Attaching The Cord
From the 90s, with love
Watch this recent campaign film from India.
A quick reaction could be, “Wes Andersen inspired!”, and it might well be. But this is no social trend bandwagon rider. This is no cute piece fuelled by reel templates & viral music.
No, this feels entirely owned and experienced.
Nostalgia is powerful. We have seen many brands leaning in to rose-tinted goodness in recent years. Done well, this taps into our fondest memories, creates emotional warmth, invites trust. Older demos can feel ‘seen’, younger audiences seem happy to tap into inherited memories. Throw in the instability most of us often feel in an uncertain world, and the remembered- real or secondhand- can become a source of reassurance.
But nostalgia must find its tribe, and this one knows its homies well.
Indian slow fashion crafters Cord Studio embraces all this with Album ‘91, their 2026 Spring Summer collection. This is very much in line with what the young brand says they set out to do back in 2015- approach “vintage design with fresh energy”, with contemporary clothes “rooted in nostalgia.”
Yet, Album ‘91 does not feel like some convenient comfort, provided by the familiar or the once-lived. There is enough here- in style and substance- to gently jolt you out of any soft stupor that nostalgia could induce.
Here’s where the individual eye comes in. The unique take of an art director- embracing the feel of a studio set, heightening it to connect to another very Indian past, of photo studios. The palette is bright, but not going full desi maximalism. The distinct choices made by the directors- minimal movement, droll expressions, static frames, block shots that enhance the ‘posing in a photo studio’ feel… the primacy of sound.
The use of audio is delectable, a main character. Announcements, train tracks, clinking cutlery, vendors, a stray radio. With one of the train announcements, I almost thought I could smell that train smell. That not always pleasant smell mixed with so much else, specifically when the train has stopped at a station.
This is all led, or backed up, or framed… by the styling (you choose which one). The clothes are the product of course, and we can’t really forget that. Because the clothes are not cookie-cutter, not just mildly pushing some boundaries. They heighten that sense of being somehow both vaguely familiar, and purposefully distinct.
There are many little videos. That main film (if I can even call it that- social assets tend to dismantle or blur such hierarchies) is accompanied by shorter pieces, relying entirely on ambient sound- station, carriage, train, announcer, even strains of the Doordarshan opening music! I suppose these must be classified as teasers, but really- they all feel like different corners of the same painting.
While the nostalgia is very Indian, the aesthetic and creative execution are striking in a much border way. Bold enough to stand on their own and resonate beyond borders, if social media takes from around the world are anything to go by.
The clothes themselves? I leave it to you to see if they feel warmly familiar, reinvented, dated or distinct, hanging outside of time.
There was a time when summer meant one thing — a family holiday.
It was the excitement of waking up before sunrise for a train journey. Sharing the window. Watching the landscape change slowly outside — fields, rivers, small towns rushing past. There were no screens. No rush. No constant stimulation.
Spring Summer 26 is an ode to those core memories — the simple, sweet joy of being somewhere new with the people you love most.
For co-founder Neha Singh moving cities every few years was normal as a child, while for her partner Pranav Guglani, train journeys meant summer holidays to the hills. To marry these memories to their new line and bring them to life, they collaborated with:
· photographer Pranoy Sarkar · stylist James Lalthanzuala · videography Rishabh Kumar · makeup Vishu Sinha · Production design: Abhishek Kanade · Production & Art Elements Production ·
For nostalgia to be done well, and not be seen as shallow, it must borrow from the past while reinterpreting for the present.
Does it feel like Cord does that for you?
2. Curated/Cut · The Last Real Man ·
Struggling with authenticity in a world of performance and AI? No worries, take a moment here and you will feel just at home- struggle away!
This is from an online luxury reseller called The RealReal. Its pretty entertaining in its tongue-in cheek real human narrative, till the point when (yes you guessed right) some AI VFX kick in. Wait, that’s not real, you say.
The Last Real Man. · Team One · CDs: Sabina Hesse · Carlo Barreto ·
Production Lipstick · directors Sebastian Strasser · Niklas Weise ·
3. ai;dr
Let’s talk about a term you may or may not have come across, representing an idea you might have toyed with, and a behaviour you can be pretty sure is going to become more common.
Say hello to ai;dr
“artificial Intelligence, didn’t read.”
This is, of course, a riff off the very useful internet acronym TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) which often precedes a short summary of something that is… erm, too long. But be sure- ai;dr does not refer to an AI recap.
Instead, people are using it to quickly and disdainfully dismiss something they couldn’t be bothered reading… because it was AI-generated.
Four letters.
Four letters that stand for a thought that, slowly but surely, seems to be spreading :
“if someone didn’t think it was worth their time to write this, it is not worth my time to read it”, or
“why should I bother reading something someone else didn’t bother writing?”, or
“If they didn’t respect me enough to actually write it, why should I be expected to read it?”
Let’s face it- most of us are now inundated with AI-powered communication- emails, articles, social posts, carousels, threads, comments, forums, even Whatsapp messages.
This ‘communication’- writing, for the most part- is a window. We communicate to share & receive thoughts, opinions, requests, feedback, feelings. Someone endeavours to transfer a thought or piece of information- from their mind to ours, from their awareness, their perspective… to ours.
If we can broadly agree on this, consider the central element here- one individual’s effort at communicating, another’s effort in receiving.
Once this very act or process is outsourced, the pact is broken. Or at least chipped. Like an old coffee mug. Now do we drink the coffee anyway, or fix the beloved mug?
Shoutout: Last week I featured the Gorillaz’ short film which accompanied their new album, The Mountain. While I loved the short, how it became a gateway to the album was equally resonant.
I wrote about the animation as well as the album over in my other substack, Coffee & Conversations. If you like new music, check it out.
Or watch my little videos : the film & the album.
➕Quick Hits
HarperCollins & Toonstar announced a multi-year partnership to adapt a slate of book titles into original YouTube series. They will co-produce animation series with 2-10min long episodes. Authors “will be consulted and receive royalties.”
Eurovision Song Contest Asia 2026- that’s a mouthful; but this Asian extension to the Eurovision ‘IP’ was announced last week. Broadcasters from 10 countries across Asia are confirmed with more expected in coming months.
Disney announced the launch of ESPN on Disney+ in Europe and select Asia-Pacific markets. This is great (my positive predisposition to ESPN is built on years working with the brand), but as always with sports- we must wait to gauge the regional relevance of the content mix.
Wikipedia has banned the use of LLMs. This comes after a period of intense debate between the editors. While it is neither definitive nor irrevocable, it “does show the Wikipedia community is less optimistic about the benefit of AI-generated content, and taking a stand against it.“
“Young 40s.” This is amusing. And random, as ‘trends’ often seem to be in this decade. In South Korea, Gen Z has apparently decided to mock millennials for their style. The term has been around as a marketing description for youthful older consumers, but now it is used to deride those in their forties for “shoehorning their way into styles associated with Gen Z and younger millennials.”
“It’s too soon to say whether we can fall in love with (AI).
It’s like Mao, when he was asked about the French Revolution,
he said, ‘It’s too soon to tell.’ ”
_Damon Albarn of The Gorillaz