Nostalgia Continues to Dominate Sports Apparel
Without sports history, we would not be able to identify tournament winners, historic professional athletes and the evolution of team logos and colors. Nostalgic sports gear helps fans re-experience sports memories and allows them to continue to represent their team’s past accomplishments.
Nostalgia or Not?
People are naturally drawn to nostalgic items. In a hubshout.com blog post, the author writes, “Nostalgia is the whiplash of happiness we get when we instantaneously arrive in a simple, happier, idealized part of our memory.”
Nostalgic thoughts improve the overall mood of an individual. Affections from the past can help us pull ourselves out of boring daily routines and allow us to re-experience the same joy over again. On the other hand, re-discovering nostalgic items could also have bad ramifications. Nostalgia can easily lead to rejecting our current reality, preventing an individual from accepting new experiences. It can also make a situation increasingly bleak, gloomy and hopeless. Although nostalgia presents many pros and cons, when it comes to retro sports apparel, bathing in the nostalgic jerseys and logos is beneficial for every sports fan.
Wearing Nostalgic Sports Apparel
In an article, Ryan Gaydos interviewed Streaker Sports and discussed three reasons behind using team logos and uniforms from the pre-2000s era. First, they believe the artwork is generally better from those time periods. They also believe there is a huge market for retro apparel. Lastly, big companies make it difficult for small businesses to engage in selling sports apparel. Selling retro apparel is a much easier space for a small business to compete with companies like Nike or Fanatics.
Past items from sports teams can symbolize a fan’s longing commitment to support the team. On top of that, representing your favorite older generation player isn’t complete without the nostalgic jersey design to match.
Traditions and Cultural Values Are Enforced Through Nostalgia
Nostalgia can help us understand the roots or past experiences that are emotionally valuable to the person who is experiencing nostalgia. According to an article written by Michael Schein, “Nostalgia is, at its core, a deep longing for and connection with something bigger than ourselves. People who are able to see themselves in the context of their past, their roots and their culture have a positive bank of memories to draw from, which allows them to feel linked in to others and to avoid the existential despair that comes from viewing oneself as an isolated and doomed individual.”
Historically, cultural values and traditions dominate human society. For example, think of the transition from Colorado A&M to the Colorado State University (CSU) Rams. Prior to the name change, Colorado A&M wore green and orange as their school colors, while today's CSU Rams’ wear green and gold. Although the school colors have changed, the nostalgic green and orange continues to return with incoming students over 40 years later. Traditions such as these are found throughout every sports team across the world.
Without nostalgic gear, the history of sports would be underrepresented and lost. Although nostalgia demonstrates advantages and disadvantages, for sports, nostalgia is extremely important for fans to re-experience what made them enjoy and love their team in the first place.
Fort Collins, CO has plenty of opportunities to find nostalgic sports apparel. Rocky Mountain Retro Sports Apparel has a plethora of retro choices and is located on 19 Old Town Square Suite #137. Go check it out!
