Over the holidays, the first trend of 2026 emerged: the year 2016.
“2026 is the new 2016,” users declared, in captions waxing poetic about the good old days, accompanied by Instagram-filtered photo dumps of celebrity Met Gala bathroom selfies, mannequin challenge clips, Kylie Jenner lip kits, and Triangl bikinis. Many celebrated what they dubbed a return to the ‘best year ever’.
There were some good fashion moments, too: Beyoncé dropped “Lemonade” in a fabulous ruffled mustard yellow dress (she also performed at the Super Bowl and hosted the CFDA awards that year); Lady Gaga walked Marc Jacobs’s fall 2016 show; and Fendi staged a show at Rome’s Trevi Fountain (the restoration of which the brand funded).
But the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia are real. In her now-decade-old recap of the year, Vogue’s Nicole Phelps noted the popularity of the #Fuck2016 hashtag when thinking back on the year’s most memorable fashion moments. 2016, after all, brought Brexit and the first Trump administration; the death of icons including David Bowie and George Michael; large-scale outbreaks of the Zika epidemic; and frequent terrorist attacks claimed by ISIS.
Those advocating for a return to 2016 aren’t reminiscing fondly about the politics and global events of the year. They’re focused instead on the culture of the time, one that both influenced and was shaped by social media platforms and trends of a bygone era.
“We had just started to evolve past Tumblr-era cynicism, and from a social media perspective, the algorithms were less aggressive, and surveillance was less of a concern,” says Katie Devlin, trends editor for fashion at trends intelligence firm Stylus. “Of course, rose-tinted glasses play a factor, but in hindsight, there is a whimsical and carefree nature associated with that era that people are really nostalgic for.” It’s this reaching for the ‘emotional tone’ of the era that makes nostalgia function as such a powerful emotional shortcut for brands and creators, says Cait Marron, SVP of creative strategy at marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy.
In 2026, the state of the world is no better. (It’s worse.) And our feeds — and, in turn, trending moments and wider culture — are so fragmented that people are left without outlets for community and levity. “People remember 2016 as the last moment of true mass culture. Social media hadn’t yet fully fragmented us into algorithmic echo chambers, so virality still felt like a collective phenomenon,” says Sam Cummins, co-host of fashion and culture podcast Nymphet Alumni. “A decade later, after years of digital fragmentation, that sense of a unified cultural experience feels lost.”
Users’ affinity for the simpler times of the mid-2010s reads as a signal of what consumers want in 2026: more fun, less polish, less fragmentation. Looking back without the rose-colored glasses, what can fashion learn from 2016 to carry forward to the year 2026 — and what should it leave in the past?
Big moments
2016 was characterised by big, viral trends, from Pokémon Go to the mannequin challenge. Fashion had its share of viral moments, too, on a smaller scale. Rihanna in the fuzzy red Saint Laurent heart coat; Taylor Swift’s color-blocking Versace Grammys look; and Beyoncé’s yellow Roberto Cavalli dress got everyone in fashion internet circles buzzing.
Though nobody’s asking to go and chase Pokémon around the city in 2026, there are lessons to be learned about the value of big, flashy moments for cultivating communal experiences. “Fashion can learn from 2016’s embrace of spectacle as a uniting force,” Cummins says. “The microtrends of the 2020s reflect the alienation of the echochamber, hyper-personal and isolating. 2016 had a larger scope.”
Matthieu Blazy’s first two Chanel shows felt like a seed of the major fashion moment that even those outside the industry rallied around for a while. Friends of mine who wouldn’t have known who Blazy was the week prior to the show were texting me their thoughts and feelings about the looks — and the venue. The grandiose of the outer space set played a role in the inundation of content on socials, generating coverage beyond the clothes themselves. The same goes for the Métiers d art New York subway show. Here’s hoping brands lean further into these projects and events of this scale in 2026.
Merch madness
Merch-as-fashion is now par for the course, but it was still a nascent concept 10 years ago. Kanye West’s Life of Pablo played a key role in driving the transition of merch into everyday fashion. (Those tees, though, best stay in 2016.) Justin Bieber’s Purpose tour drove this trend home, with merch designed by Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo generating great enough fervor that fans were waiting in three-hour lines to cop a yellow Purpose hoodie. GQ dubbed it the “Great Merch Revival of 2016” — and also deemed this merch mania over as quickly as it began, by the time the year closed out.
Now, we’ve entered yet another merch boom. Last year, Oasis raised the bar, collaborating with Adidas on its reunion tour merch and opening pop-up stores in cities weeks ahead of the shows. “Merch is having a moment, and it’s bigger, broader and more culturally potent than ever,” Parisa Parmar, senior creative strategist at entertainment marketing agency Attachment, told Vogue Business last year on the rise of concert merch. “What was once a simple band tee has evolved into a powerful brand extension tool, spanning industries.”
This year, merch won’t be limited to concerts. The Nahmias Marty Supreme jackets closed out 2025 with a bang, evolving into a big, splashy cultural moment that felt more communal than we’ve had in some time, thanks to star Timothée Chalamet’s grassroots, viral marketing efforts. So long as consumer fatigue doesn’t set in too soon, we can expect more brands and films (and concert tours) to take a page out of the Chalamet/A24 playbook and create more merch moments. As superfandom balloons in 2026, there’s opportunity for these moments to help build up the year’s big moments of cultural spectacle.
What goes around comes around
2016 had a distinct look about it: merch as fashion was accessorized with a choker, perhaps a bomber jacket layered on top. Slip dresses and bralettes were styled over little white tees. Off-the-shoulder tops were a summer 2016 favorite. Velvet took over the runways. Hoodies became a staple out of the house (Vetements was, in part, to thank). Some of these trends will, thankfully, remain in 2016, but some are edging toward a comeback — or, at least, planted the seeds for a 2026 iteration.
Chokers dominated on and off the runways. Ralph Lauren, Dior, Ellie Saab, and Alexander Wang all sent models down their fall and spring 2016 runways in variations on the trend, and in the real world, celebrities from Kendall Jenner to Rihanna ensured we spent the year with ribbons tied (or clipped) around our necks.
The choker trend faded, and we’re back to normal-length necklaces. What is poised to come back in the year ahead, though, are accessories in the vein of the choker: statement and, most importantly, on the body. (Not the bag!) In 2024 and into 2025, bag charms entered the zeitgeist and fast became a handbag staple. In 2025, people took things up a notch, fastening Labubus that, at times, rivalled the size of the bags they were clipped to.
This year, insiders are hoping for more accessorizing on the person. Vogue editors are angling for more brooches and ‘comb-maxxing’ inspired by The Row’s pre-fall collection lookbook, in which models’ hair was fashioned into artsy updos held in place by an array of hair combs. The odds of the latter trending are low (it’s a tough style to master at home), but both predictions address ways to add quirk and personalization to outfits at a moment when people are growing tired of looking the same. Men are expected to lean into this accessorizing, too.
2016 was the bomber jacket’s moment in the sun. The style led Google’s fashion trends roundup for the year. Searches for bomber jackets were up 297% year-on-year in the UK and 612% year-on-year in the US, per the report. Though Alpha Industries-style bombers no longer have the pull they did when Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid were pairing them with panelled Alo Yoga leggings on the way to their Los Angeles pilates classes, the shape is making its way back into fashion. Nour Hammour’s leather jackets — most of which are bombers — topped Vogue’s most-shopped items in 2025, and the brand’s Hatti jacket (a leather bomber) featured in Lyst’s Q3 Index. Saint Laurent, too, sent boxy leather bombers down the runway for its spring 2026 show last September.
Human slop
In 2016, all Instagram posts were square, filters were heavy-handed, and feeds were filled with friends and family instead of brands and companies trying to sell you things.
Now, as AI slop permeates our feeds, users are wanting for human touch. To this end, consumers aren’t pining for 2016 itself, which was riddled with political and social upheaval, but for a simpler time, as they operate in a world of advanced AI and evolving technology, says Krista Corrigan, senior retail analyst at intelligence platform EDITED. 2016’s “aesthetic chaos” goes against today s hyper-curated digital norms, she says.
Instagram content
Marron agrees, observing a burgeoning shift away from the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic and overly polished content. “We’re seeing a preference for rebellion with a dash of chaos, as opposed to refinement and curation. Messy-girl energy, grunge influencers, and unedited vlogs are starting to re-emerge throughout internet culture for something that feels real.”
Brands can — and should — lean into this desire for imperfect content (human slop) so long as they offer a fresh take. Saint Laurent’s latest lo-fi campaign featuring Bella Hadid and a revived Mombasa bag, for instance, is very 2010s internet-coded; one can imagine the images doing numbers on Tumblr. But the clothes (and the 2025 timestamp) make them feel modern, if on the nose.
Looking forward, not back
Therein lies the challenge. Fashion, like culture, is cyclical. Nostalgia, too, moves in cycles, and it was only a matter of time before, after years of revisiting the 1990s and early 2000s, culture inevitably turned toward the 2010s — especially in this moment of instability, Marron says.
For fashion, this Y2K nostalgia drove a flurry of reissues in 2025: the McQueen skull scarf; J’Adore Dior tees. But experts cautioned that mulling the past too heavily could result in consumer fatigue. As consumers romanticize 2016, brands ought not simply bring back the icons of the time, but instead tap into the emotional levity that is, after all, what people are really craving. “It’s about reframing it through modern storytelling in a way that feels fresh, yet emotionally rooted,” Marron says. “The opportunity for brands is not to recreate 2016, but to channel its spirit.” This channeling of spirit, not aesthetic, provides a route for brands to tap into a current cultural moment’s yearning for ‘better times’ without regressing into the traps of time itself. After all, was 2016 really great?
This is the line brands need to toe. Despite all the pining for 2016, consumers want modern messiness, not a thoughtless throwback to a decade prior. “When brands become overly dependent on nostalgia, and simply reanimate past hits, they risk commodifying their legacy and diluting brand equity,” Marron says. “Fashion brands trade on innovation, aspiration, and cultural leadership; without that, they may be perceived as lacking in creative vision — a core brand currency. It’s essential to balance revival with reinvention.”
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