Here we are, ready to step into 2026.
With our eyes firmly set on the present, but our minds, emotions, and memories inevitably slipping into the past. A world we perhaps never appreciated enough, lived through too quickly, and that today we look back on like an old VHS tape we can’t stop rewinding.
There’s something that, for better or worse, never really changes: just like back then, our time is still marked by conflict. Multiple, fragmented, spread across nations and interests. Wars we hope will come to an end, just as the Cold War did, with the fall of the Berlin Wall — an event that rewrote history and ignited a global sense of hope.
Turning to technology, we too have our own Skynet. Artificial intelligence is now part of our new reality: we hope it remains a tool, fertile ground for ideas, and not something that “activates” beyond our control. Much like the Commodore 64 back then — revolutionary, powerful, yet still human, direct, understandable. Today everything is faster, more complex, more pervasive.
If there’s one thing that has remained surprisingly unchanged, it’s consumer society. Image and consumption are still the beating heart of the West. Perhaps even more than before, but with endless new facets: influencers, digital platforms, infinite feeds constantly telling us “you need more, you must be more,” like an eternal OBEY reflected behind a pair of dark sunglasses.
In the ’80s, MTV turned up the megaphone of image culture. Today that megaphone has gone global: everything is visible, but above all measured, classified, recorded. It’s no longer just the big brands that started in America and crossed the ocean — now there are viral trends, memes, and fashions that travel the world in minutes.
I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad one: it covers an infinite range of nuances, but no longer brings people together under a few shared categories. In fact, it often seems to divide us even more.
And here comes another strong parallel with those years: social inequality.
If Wall Street was once the symbol of centralized financial power, today there are much bigger monsters, almost straight out of an episode of Stranger Things: BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street. Entities that move more capital than entire nations. A reality we may not have foreseen, but one that is impossible to ignore today.
And then there’s what we miss the most: music, cinema, fashion.
Iconic films, soundtracks that made us dream, styles that felt like they came straight out of a psychedelic vision. Today, retrowave culture tries to take us back there, but too often it remains confined to a melancholic, fascinating, yet stagnant subculture.
And this is where I want to do my part: to spread that culture, to set it in motion again.
To see mullets, jeans, bold colors, Hawaiian shirts, retro cars, LEDs everywhere. Not a revival filtered through social media or nostalgia, but a living, real return, with the engine roaring. May artists and the market help us truly relive that energy, that passion that made those years so intense and alive.
With this, I wish everyone a 2026 that doesn’t need filters to make us feel alive.
A year of new hopes, new achievements, and — why not — a bit of that ’80s magic we still miss so much.
Happy 2026 to everyone.
Stay retro. 🚀📼✨
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