Scroll for long enough and it starts to feel uncanny.
Grainy Instagram uploads timestamped 2016. Tumblr-era selfies resurfacing from forgotten hard drives. Side parts, matte lips, adidas Superstars, chokers – not styled with irony, but worn with full sincerity. Somewhere between a throwback and a quiet refusal, 2016 has returned as a collective mood.
This isn’t nostalgia in the soft-focus, rose-tinted sense. It’s sharper than that. More deliberate. Less remember when and more we were onto something.
It’s ironic, really, that I’m writing this story at all. As FNZ publisher Murray put it when I pitched the idea: “Aren’t you literally 12 years old?” And he’s right. I was 12 in 2016. Of course I’m going to see that year through the Snapchat dog filter – softened, sentimental, frozen at the exact age when the world still felt expansive and slightly unhinged in the best way. But the fixation on 2016 extends far beyond personal memory. It’s cultural. Structural. And increasingly impossible to ignore.
In the mid-2010s, fashion and beauty felt perfectly imperfect. Instagram wasn’t yet a storefront. Faces weren’t filtered into sameness. According to platform data, Instagram ads didn’t even roll out globally until late 2015 – meaning much of what circulated in 2016 still felt organic, peer-led, and experimental rather than transactional. Trends caught fire because they felt right, not because an algorithm decided they should. There was room to be messy. Earnest. Slightly cringe. Looking back now, 2016 reads as the last moment before everything became optimised.
That cultural sweet spot was visible on runways, too – including here at home. New Zealand Fashion Week 2016 sat at an interesting crossroads: polished, yes, but still playful. Designers leaned into wearability and personality rather than spectacle. Huffer, Zambesi, Kate Sylvester, Wynn Hamlyn and Juliette Hogan showed collections that felt grounded in real wardrobes – clothes designed to be lived in, not just photographed. There was less emphasis on virality, more on craft and character.
Models looked like people. Styling felt intuitive, not overdetermined. It was fashion before every look had to survive the afterlife of TikTok.
Which perhaps explains why the throwback posts circulating now feel less like fun and more like longing.
As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes creative industries – from AI-generated editorials to predictive trend forecasting – cultural fatigue is setting in. A 2024 Adobe study found that over 60% of Gen Z and millennials feel overwhelmed by the speed of digital innovation, particularly when it comes to creative tools. The future, once aspirational, now feels clinical. Hyper-polished. Slightly uncanny. And so we retreat. Not backwards exactly, but inward – to a time that felt human.
@wthlovegiu
This tension became especially visible during last year’s brief but polarising 2016 renaissance, when Kylie Jenner resurrected her King Kylie persona to promote a reworked release tied to Three Strikes, the track she originally featured in during her mid-2010s era. Fans were quick to praise the return of a version of Kylie synonymous with 2016: teal hair, heavy liner, Tumblr-coded glamour. The response wasn’t about the song so much as what it represented – a return to a time before total brand saturation, when pop culture still felt a little unpolished and strangely intimate. The backlash was just as loud, but the point had already landed: the aesthetic memory of 2016 still holds power.
In fashion, this regression is already taking shape. The return of skinny scarves, slip dresses layered over tees, low-slung denim, biker boots and leather minis isn’t about exact replication – it’s about attitude. 2016 style was confident without being calculated. Cool without explanation. You wore something because it felt good, not because it signalled cultural literacy.
@vintagevogueangel my role model #aesthetic #2016 #alexachung #trending #targetaudience
Someone who embodied this was Alexa Chung, who, for those leaning more into the Tumblr aesthetic rather than insta-baddie, was the ultimate 2016 style reference: effortless, slightly undone, and entirely human. Her side-parted waves, layered slip dresses over tees, oversized knits, and casual accessories perfectly captured the era’s confident-but-not-calculated energy. Seeing her 2016 images now – especially in this TikTok – reminds us why the aesthetic resonates: it was real, approachable, and utterly unpolished in a way that feels radical in today’s over-optimised, AI-driven fashion landscape.
Beauty is following suit. Dewy-but-not-glassy skin. Smudged eyeliner instead of graphic perfection. Hair that moves and borders on unkempt. Faces that look like faces. Not to mention the return of the “shelfie”. The slow rejection of overfilled, over-corrected, over curated aesthetics mirrors a wider shift: according to recent cosmetic industry reports, demand for “natural” and “minimal intervention” treatments has steadily risen since 2022. People want to look like themselves again – not a version refined by machine learning.
What’s particularly interesting is that this obsession isn’t driven by Gen Z discovering a new era, but by millennials reclaiming one. There’s a self-awareness to it – an understanding that while 2016 wasn’t perfect, it represented a cultural pause before acceleration. Before burnout became a badge of honour. Before everything required a personal brand. Before creativity became content.
So what does this mean for the year ahead?
Expect fashion to loosen its grip on futurism. Less tech-for-tech’s-sake, more tactile pleasure. More lived-in textures, emotional dressing, and references that feel personal rather than performative. Expect beauty to prioritise softness over spectacle, individuality over optimisation. And expect brands that can tap into memory – not nostalgia as a gimmick, but as emotional truth – to resonate most.
Looking back to 2016 isn’t about rejecting progress entirely. It’s about recalibrating. A reminder that the future doesn’t have to be faster, shinier or smarter to be desirable. Sometimes, the most radical move is choosing imperfection – and letting it be enough.
If 2016 taught us anything, it’s that style feels best when it’s human. And right now, that’s exactly what everyone seems to be craving.
Alexa…play Lush Life by Zara Larson.
IMAGE CREDITS
Getty images, Instagram, Pinterest
