Joyscroll the past, don’t live in it.

In a world uprooted, is it any surprise I find myself turning to social media for a daily dose of the magic, mystery, and glamour of the past? The great parties of old, the homes of fabulous tastemakers, the thrill of sex in advertising—Instagram has become my nostalgia machine. I’m not alone, either. The digital ouroboros feeds these images to us on a loop, like an endless Back to the Future theme park ride, and we keep joyscrolling for more. It’s time we park the DeLorean.

Throwbacks can be an escape from the daily information overload, but poking around the archives serves us well only when we use what we find to move the culture forward. Why revel in the past when I’m in the throes of Dua Lipa’s

Future Nostalgia? She turbocharged the iconic sounds of Madonna and Olivia Newton-John for the dance soundtrack of the pandemic. At the movies, Steven Spielberg made West Side Story soar again.

And in fashion, Daniel Roseberry pays homage to ’80s Lacroix for his Schiaparelli, while Alessandro Michele breathed life into the Tom-Ford-eraGucci red velvet tuxedo immortalized by Gwyneth Paltrow. (She wore it again.) Will Telfar’s shopper have the staying power of an actual Birkin? Will we someday think of Frank Gehry as lovingly as Emery Roth? Could Lady Gaga kissing Kermit find as soft a spot in our collective memory as The Muppets Take Manhattan? Only time will tell, but for now I have enough of the future to keep me happily in the past.