Some scattered thoughts on nostalgia marketing: nostalgia marketing has become huge in Pakistan over the last couple of years with brands such as Khaadi, Generation, Zara Sh and we see billboards, ads and insta pics of models

wearing paranday, churian, elaborate jewellery, surma, all meant to evoke a yearning for the past. Brands that employ nostalgia marketing (and lets be honest, if one does then they all do) position themselves between the 'traditional' and 'the modern' bec their clothes are sold

through campaigns that celebrate this binary. This binary between the traditional and modern is what absolves the fashion industry in Pakistan of the many exploitations that it has built itself on. Fast fashion and the fashion industry

are wholly modern phenomena and fashion as we recognise it today is largely built on the backs of 'others'- women of the wrong ethnicity, religion, class background, who work min wage, cannot unionise, face harassment at the workplace

these are the women who truly feel the burden of the modern while the clothes they make are sold as markers of a tradition that never really existed. the tradition/modern binary is rooted in cruelty towards women and yet, as nostalgia marketing, shows us

being both 'traditional' and 'modern' is seen as sth that is inherently desirable. Campaigns articulate this by depicting women in touch with their 'tradition', 'culture' etc but at the same time fully 'modern' ie independent, educated etc.

Nostalgia marketing is hardly an original concept but instead a recently popular articulation of the double bind that punishes all women, in various ways, and some more than others.