What we long for seems to be everywhere in our styles. Consider the "retro" look that came into vogue not too long ago in the design of everything from automobiles to architecture to apparel.
It enables a person to work in an office building with a 1920s-style massive marble base, complete with ornamentation of a kind that was once said to have become too expensive to continue producing. Today’s affluent can also buy a new home built in a style about which people not too long ago said, "They don’t make ‘em like this anymore." Likewise, a contemporary man can wear his father’s ventless double-breasted suit, wear his grandfather’s suspenders, and even smoke his cigars. But why would people want to do such things?
Well, whether because of their innate characteristics or simply because of their association with earlier periods in our history, all of these artifacts convey a certain aura of substantiality.
In an era of declining real wages and great anxiety over the elimination of jobs—whether through foreign competition or corporate downsizings—this can be a difficult commodity to come by. Even in the ranks of today’s well-off, there is a sizable group of people whose economic viability ultimately comes down to staying one step ahead of a set of perceptions—whether within the companies they work for, or on Wall Street, or in the client companies they serve. This does not foster a sense of either substance or security about one’s position in society.
Moreover, almost no matter how economically successful anybody is, and even though an affluent contemporary couple’s gross salary for a single month may be as much as their parents paid for the houses in which they grew up, it is still very rare for any couple to enjoy a lifestyle equivalent to that of their parents unless both spouses work. This can further promote suspicions that today, everything is just "funny money."
In such an environment, it really only makes sense for anything that manages to evoke a bygone era’s sense of substantiality to be sought after.
