One summer in college, I lived in Philadelphia. I worked at the Starbucks on 4th and South as a barista. My boyfriend Brad and I lived in a huge but roach-infested apartment at 2nd and South, above a bar called Quincy’s Irish Pub. And yes, we could hear the jukebox wailing away until 2 am every night. And wow, the patrons of Quincy’s really loved the Guns N Roses cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” And oh yeah, one night the jukebox at Quincy’s broke, and it proceeded to play “Sweet Home Alabama” from 2am until the next afternoon. And unfortunately, the jukebox seemed to be located directly beneath our bedroom.
During that hot, gross summer (when the Frappucino launched at Starbucks) we had a really terrible thunderstorm that knocked out the electricity for most of South Philadelphia. But strangely–and it seemed very mysterious at the time–one business on South Street had power and remained open: Johnny Rockets.
Now if you’re unfamiliar, Johnny Rockets is a 1950s-themed diner: they sell milkshakes, burgers, and fries, all in a super chromed out space designed to remind customers of midcentury diners. Each table has (or at least it did back then) a jukebox, where customers could add quarters to hear “Leader of the Pack” or “Hound Dog.”
For months, Brad and I had been joking about having dinner at Johnny Rockets because everything about it seemed so ridiculous and cheesy to us. But that night, with all of South Street cloaked in creepy, quiet darkness…Johnny Rockets was a beacon of light, french fries, and “Rock Around The Clock.”
I can’t remember what I ate, but most likely it was a grilled cheese sandwich and a vanilla milkshake, my go-to diner meal until I learned that I couldn’t have dairy or wheat many years later. Most likely, I chose “Leader of the Pack” on the jukebox because I’ve always loved tragedy songs by girl bands. But also, this was the summer when my bipolar disorder was starting to emerge in a big, scary way and I was reading The Bell Jar over and over again.
I never ate at a 50s themed diner again, but I will say that diners are an integral part of my teenage and young adult memories, because they were the only place someone under 21 could hang out late at night. It started with Denny’s as a teenager in rural PA (where I one time drank 10 cups of coffee over a span of a few hours and made myself very sick). In college, late night diner grilled cheese sandwiches were a regular thing in my life. And in Philadelphia–where Brad lived–there were a plethora of great diners that are now gone.
But while I never visited a 50s diner again, that Johnny Rockets on South Street managed to stay open until 2018! And really, 50s diners had been around since I was a little kid. In fact, the 80s and early 90s were full of 50s and 60s nostalgia everywhere I looked.
Why is my childhood so full of 50s and 60s nostalgia? Because in the 80s and 90s, Baby Boomers were in their 30s,40s, and early 50s. They were the biggest generation (until millennials claimed that title) and they were at their peak earning power (meaning: they had money to spend).
And of course, because capitalism is all about cashing in, just about every industry out there was trying to figure out how they could make money from Boomer nostalgia:
And even though all of the original “source material” for all of this nostalgia happened long before I was born, strangely it’s still in the background of my childhood because boomer nostalgia was everywhere. Or maybe that’s not strange at all. After all, my mom is a Boomer–well, actually was born on that Boomer/GenX cusp, so she’s really part of the microgeneration called “Generation Jones.” Regardless, she dictated the movies and television we watched, along with the music we heard in the car. And despite being born at the beginning of the 1960s, she loved 50s music, movies, and television shows.
Dustin and I were talking about this a few weeks ago. Specifically the 50s Diner Industrial Complex…which lead to the Boomer Nostalgia Industrial Complex (and my discovery that somehow Dustin has never seen Forrest Gump). I said to him, “you know, it doesn’t surprise me that the whole world was trying to cash in on boomers in the 80s and 90s because they were the largest generation in American history at that point. But now millennials are. So how will capitalism commodify that nostalgia?”
Okay, well spoiler: it’s been happening for more than a decade already. And we will be talking about that more in this episode. But Dustin and I kept coming back to the 50s diner. Like, what is the 50s diner for millennials? At first I was like “a restaurant that recreates birthday parties at McDonald’s and Chuck E. Cheese, but for adults.” After all, that does sound kind of fun.
But then we started joking about a 90s/early 00s-themed restaurant:
We realized that we should open this business in Japan–where smoking is still allowed in cafes–so if you want to invest, let me know.
I haven’t seen any 90s/00s themed restaurants yet, but I sure have seen a lot of other things being sold to millennials and GenX over the last few years. So in this week’s episode, we’re going to talk all about why nostalgia is so lucrative, how it makes us feel, and ways we can get those feelings without buying a thing.
Welcome to Clotheshorse, the podcast that has seen The Doors movie no less than 20 times (and I’m not even really a fan of The Doors).
I’m your host, Amanda and this is episode 263. And today we are going to talk allllll about nostalgia:
Along the way, we’ll talk about that viral Esprit sweatshirt (and the true story of Esprit), whimsy-maxxing, and zombie brands that are just coasting along on nostalgic good vibes.
Before we get started, a few updates:
Strangers have been insulting me on the internet for years because I speak about some uncomfortable truths. That doesn’t mean I like it. In fact, strangers on the internet regularly make me cry, have nightmares, or just send me into an anxiety spiral.
And one of the things people want to fight me with most is this: we all have to change our habits if we’re going to make a difference in the environmental and human right disaster caused by fast fashion and general overconsumption of everything. And I mean EVERYONE: you, me, and every other person we know…even if you don’t think of yourself as a “fashion person” or an avid shopper.
It means buying less new stuff. Wearing things for longer. Rethinking social norms like quasi-disposable Halloween costumes and holiday decorations. And opting out of The Viral Product of The Week.™ It feels like a lot of change, but it’s possible. Many of us have been making these changes for years and we are always excited to help someone who is starting their own journey into slow fashion.
Last month, strangers on the internet (who clearly don’t know what a silly weirdo I actually am) called me a stupid, miserable, joyless idiot because I looked into the true story of the viral Esprit sweatshirts at Costco, aka The Viral Product of The Week.™
Basically the TL;DR of it is all is this: people started noticing some Esprit sweatshirts at Costco. This news began making the rounds on Instagram and TikTok. People started buying them up in every color. Some people bought up every size and color and listed them for 3-5 times the price on Poshmark.
But regardless, everyone wanted this Esprit sweatshirt (or so it seemed).
I actually learned about the existence of these sweatshirts via my friend Janelle, the owner of All Roads Design. She posted about how low quality they were, not at all like the original Esprit sweatshirts of the 80s and 90s. And some of her followers and friends were FURIOUS. That made me want to dig into it more. And that’s kind of unusual for me because I tend to avoid the Outrage of The Week on social media. Yes, it pleases the algorithm and gets you lots of followers. I know many accounts in the sustainability space that built their following by inserting themselves in The Outrage of The Week. But that’s just not the kind of attention I want. And honestly, I just don’t have the emotional energy to deal with it. But the Esprit thing seemed small and therefore safe-ish. Sure, I should have known that people were going to freak out if I posted anything less than positive about it (based on the messages Janelle was receiving) but I also was like “eww people need to know the truth.”
And my verdict was “eh, I don’t think you need it because it’s not the good thing you remember.” One person even told me that I should focus my anger on billionaires instead of people…and I was kinda like “okay, clearly you’re new to Clotheshorse.”
The thing is: I am angry. Not at people who buy sweatshirts. Not even the strangers who call me stupid. TBH it’s a step up from being called ugly. Also, the joke’s on them because while I’m deeply insecure about just everything else about myself, I am highly confident in my intelligence.
But yes, I am angry.
I am angry at all of the greedy companies that are exploiting our anxiety and hopelessness by selling us enshittified nostalgic stuff. To be clear, this is a calculated plan to gobble up our hard earned money and shift our focus away from the real problems in this world. In fact, since 2016, licensing and repurposing nostalgic brands and products has been a gold mine for companies that wanted to make money without doing the hard work of building a brand or iconic product of their own. Gen X and millennial nostalgia is lucrative, with a long list of brand names to license: Delias, Von Dutch, Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Teletubbies, and more…put a pin in that because we are going to come back to that.
But let’s start by talking about the fucking Esprit sweatshirt.
I have complicated feelings/memories about Esprit. On one hand, it was THE brand for beautiful, popular girls when I was in middle school. The popular girls all had long hair (always washed with salon shampoos), glorious Esprit sweatshirts, and massive Esprit tote bags. They went to hair salons, wore immaculately white K Swiss or Tretorn sneakers, and used Clinique skincare products. I had short hair (my mom always cut my hair off because she said I had “bad hair,” turns out I just had wavy, thick GLORIOUS hair). I washed my hair with whatever my mom bought at the grocery outlet. I wasn’t allowed to wear sneakers because I had fallen arches and instead I wore…ORTHOPEDIC SHOES. I don’t even know what kind of bag I used for school because it didn’t matter because it wasn’t Esprit. And I had a couple of Esprit clothes my grandma had gotten me at a rich family’s yard sale. But I didn’t have the sweatshirt. In fact, I didn’t have anything with the Esprit logo on it. And yes, it made me sad on a regular basis. I had such longing for it.
At the same time, the beautiful, popular girls who DID have all the Esprit gear were mean and bitchy. They were cruel to one other…and me. Their friendships always seemed stressful, with complex, miserable power dynamics. My best friend Laura Curley (who did have some Esprit stuff) had gone to elementary school with some of the most popular girls, so she was sort of grandfathered into their group…but she always confided in me about the backstabbing and nightmares.
So my feelings about Esprit were 50% “i wish i wish i wish that I could have some Esprit clothes” and 50% “The Esprit logo is just a symbol of cruelty and weird power structures.” And it’s funny, as I grew up and had money of my own (or found stuff thrifting), I soon realized that the Clinique skincare stuff made my skin worse. That Tretorns and K Swiss hurt my feet. That salon shampoo was fine, but I preferred the hippie kinds from the health food store. Most of the stuff that I longed for as a tween and teen no longer mattered to me. But the Esprit thing lived with me forever. Last year, Christine of Lady Hogg Vintage made one of my dreams come true by giving me HER vintage Esprit tote bag (sunflower print). Seriously one of my most prized possessions. I love it so much that I never put it in a checked suitcase, lest my luggage were lost (and the bag gone forever). It’s always in my carry on when I travel.
I have never had an Esprit sweatshirt, but I remember trying on one of Laura’s. It was pale pink with the Esprit logo in rainbow (screenprinted, not embroidered). And it was the thickest, nicest sweatshirt ever. TBH if I ever found that one in the wild, I would probably wear it.
So all that to say: I get why Esprit is nostalgia bait for GenX and elder millennials. It symbolizes different things to different people:
And either way, these feelings are powerful. So of course people had a very intense reaction to what I was about to tell them about this damn sweatshirt at Costco.
I started my journey by talking to Janelle. She had seem them IRL at Costco. What were they like? Well it’s important to call out that Janelle was a textile designer and developer for several big brands, including Anthropologie. So when I ask her questions about fabric and construction, I know she’s going to give me the full, accurate story.
She told me that the fabric was thin (classic fast fashion move) and a polyester/cotton blend. The original Esprit sweatshirts of the 80s and 90s were heavy duty, 100% cotton. I know that changed in the late 90s and 2000s as the company faced money problems, but even those sweatshirts were heavier and sturdier than the version at Costco.
The other interesting thing: on the 2026 version, the logo was embroidered. But that wasn’t the case in the 80s and 90s. And as Janelle reminded me, screenprinting a rainbow logo would be expensive because each letter would require a different screen. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years managing the graphic tee category at numerous brands: more colors = more screens = higher costs = lower profit margin. In many situations throughout my career, I would actually ask the designer to remove a few colors from the graphics to keep costs down. Meanwhile, embroidering a rainbow logo is actually a lot cheaper. For one, the sweatshirts are embroidered by machines, which do it very fast. And they can embroider all of the colors at once. No extra screens being burned, no increase in mistakes (which also drives up costs). While embroidery might seem “fancier” to some shoppers, it’s actually a sign of cutting costs to make a margin target.
Her verdict was: this new Esprit sweatshirt was an enshittified version of everyone’s memories. And I’m not surprised because the retail price was around $16.99, while Esprit sweatshirts in the 1980s/90s cost about $45…which would be about $120 in today’s money. So of course a $16.99 version would be…well, shitty.
And that raised a huge red flag for me: why would a brand that has so much longterm goodwill with its customers (enough to make them go wild over a logo sweatshirt in 2026) potentially jeopardize that goodwill, those good vibes, by selling an incredibly lower quality version (at a much cheaper price)?
So I did some digging (and btw it wasn’t difficult or time consuming…just involved starting a search with the question “who owns Esprit?” and following the thread from there). Here’s what I learned:
But you know what I AM anti? All of these shitty zombie brands.
There are lots of “zombie brands” out there that are lowkey ripping us off by portraying themselves as the “real” brand they once were. Esprit is one example. Those sweatshirts weren’t made by Esprit because that company died a few years ago. It’s no different than getting a bootleg Esprit tee made at a t-shirt shop at the Jersey Shore.
The Delias line that Dolls Kill was selling for years was just the Delias logo slapped on extremely low quality, ultra fast fashion. Delias went bankrupt in 2014 and in 2015 a company called Fab/Starpoint bought the intellectual property and branding for Delias…and has been licensing it out since then.
These “zombie brands” are just licensed logos and intellectual property. The real brands are long gone, but there is still money to be made by selling stuff to customers who *think* they are buying the real brand. I was explaining all of this to Dustin in the car yesterday: When a brand is still making their stuff, they are invested in making sure customers like it enough to come back again. When it’s a licensed product (like the Esprit sweatshirts), it doesn’t really matter. The licensee is just hoping to cash in on customers’ emotional connection to the brand. Because “renting” the logos and brand name cost money, the companies paying for the license need to keep the cost of making the product as low as possible to offset the licensing fees, while still being profitable. So customers end up with a lower quality product…and who knows what’s happening to the people making those products.
Some other zombie brands: Billabong, Juicy Couture, Reebok, Quicksilver, Roxy, RVCA, Limited Too, Champion, Lee, Dockers, even Marc Jacobs (which is basically run by a massive licensing company that then licenses out some categories to other companies, while also making other licensed stuff on its own)…the list goes on beyond these examples. Honestly, before you buy any brand that gives you the nostalgic feels, do a quick internet search to see who owns it. You will definitely be surprised!
And that Esprit license? Apparently “esprit” (in heavy air quotes) has “partnered” (more heavy air quotes) “exclusively” (even more heavy air quotes) with Walmart in Canada on a special line of Esprit clothing. Because of course, this Esprit thing is all a cash grab.
I’ve already covered why we might be inclined to buy an Esprit sweatshirt and/or fight with humans on the internet about said sweatshirt.
But nostalgia is at the core no matter what, right?
So what is nostalgia REALLY?
Well first things first…nostalgia is an emotional state. And we know when emotion is involved and brands can harness that emotion…our wallets open up.
But nostalgia is also a complex emotional state, often described as “bittersweet.”
Nostalgia is also a portmanteau, a blended word. Examples include brunch, smog, hangry, frenemy, glamping, and chillax.
Kind of funny to think of nostalgia alongside “chillax,” but here we are.
Unlike “chillax,” nostalgia was coined in 1688 by Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer. And it is a blend of two greek words:
Basically nostalgia is rooted in “homesickness,” a longing for a place (and time) where you felt safe, happy, and loved…but you can never return to it. Sure, you could go to Costco and buy an Esprit sweatshirt, but you’ll never get to return to 7th grade and wear it to school. So even when we buy stuff now out of nostalgia, it’s never going to be as fulfilling as we hoped. At its core, nostalgia is both happy (ah, nice times) and sad (that moment has passed and I can never fully experience it again). And often we tend to remember the past as just a little bit nicer than it actually was, right? So that makes that feeling of longing even more powerful.
I read this really interesting interview with Dr. Krystine Batcho, a professor of psychology at LeMoyne College, a licensed psychologist, and expert on nostalgia.I will share it with you in the shownotes.
She explained how nostalgia has this unifying quality to it.
She said, it helps to unite our sense of who we are, our self, our identity over time. Because over time we change constantly we change in incredible ways. We’re not anywhere near the same as we were when we were three years old, for example. Nostalgia by motivating us to remember the past in our own life helps to unite us to that authentic self and remind us of who we have been and then compare that to who we feel we are today.
That gives us a sense of who we want to be down the road in the future.”
I could see how that could motivate us to buy something that touches on nostalgia, like an Esprit sweatshirt. By buying that today, you could be reinforcing to yourself that this is something that you can give yourself now. That you have become a person who has the financial wherewithal to buy a name brand sweatshirt. Or you might be feeling bad about yourself right now, and buying/wearing an Esprit sweatshirt reminds you that you were once popular, beautiful, etc.
Powerful, right?
And I’ll tell you…I’m not immune to this kind of thing either. I have essentially no nostalgia for the 90s. It was a very difficult time for me: my stepfather died of AIDS, my mother found out she was HIV positive, my bipolar disorder was beginning to intensify, and men and boys were always being creepy with me. Also, I was broke, occasionally homeless, and just having a really hard time.
I am not exactly nostalgic for the 80s and my childhood. But…somehow I am a sucker for toys of that era. I’ve never bought a reissue/zombie version of those toys (because it’s always very obvious that they aren’t as good as the original), but if I see a My Little Pony or 80s Barbie at the thrift store, I’m buying it. It makes something in my brain feel “fixed” for a minute. My childhood was lonely, chaotic, and traumatic. I really just wanted two things: love and toys. I’ll never be able to go back and get the love that I was missing then, but being able to now have the toy I wanted so badly back then feels cathartic. Like, “no one took care of me then but that’s okay because I take care of myself now.”
But also…I DO get nostalgic for the late 2000s and early 2010s (basically that sweet spot between when I moved to Portland with Dylan and the 2016 election cycle). And that’s because it was a generally happy time in my life where I began to figure out who I was. I was on fire creatively. I had all kinds of cool, interesting friends. And life felt like a wacky little adventure every single day. I haven’t found myself wanting to buy things from that era, BUT I do find so much powerful nostalgia in listening to music from that time period. Like, the Beach House album fills me with this overwhelming wave of memories of this one particular summer in Portland. Or early Best Coast makes me feel this longing I had for a guy in Philadelphia.
And yeah, it’s all bittersweet. But even those aching waves of homesickness for a different time (and a mostly different life) actually help me put my current life in perspective. I always feel so grateful for the work I do, for my incredible partner Dustin, for my lifelong friendships (Janelle, who I mentioned earlier, has been my friend for 20 years! And she drove up to San Francisco from Joshua Tree to see me when I was in San Francisco last week). Despite the ache of nostalgia, it’s actually really good to experience!
So I get the self-unification aspect of nostalgia.
But also, Batcho points out that nostalgia is also a highly social emotion. She says, “ It connects us to other people. It does that and in so many beautiful ways. In the beginning, when we’re very young, it’s part of what bonds us to the most important people in our life, our parents, our siblings, our friends. As we go through life, it can broaden out and extend to a wider sphere of the people we interact with. It’s a social connectedness phenomenon and nostalgia is in that sense a very healthy pro-social emotion.”
And this is at the core of what made the Esprit sweatshirt The Viral Item of the Week! All over social media, I saw people pitching this sweatshirt as a means of bringing Gen X women together. That it was part of this “Gen X rebellion.” Hmm, well, the revolution will never be for sale at Costco. But I get the power of sharing a memory (and then buying into that memory) with a whole group of people around the world. It feels SO GOOD! Especially right now when we’re all more isolated from one another than we have ever been. I actually think that Gen X and millennials are MORE susceptible to buying nostalgia than Boomers ever were because Boomers had a more IRL social life. Family life was different in the 80s and 90s. And so was the way people socialized. They just weren’t as lonely as we are now. And life for GenX and elder millennial women is really fucking hard: menopause/perimenopause, sometimes caring for children and elderly parents at the same time, cost of living out of control, jobs harder to find, and so on.
But no matter your generation, the news is so hard every day, no matter where you live. It’s especially terrible here in the United States. But also: climate change, the rise of fascism globally, AI, data centers, earthquakes, and on and on.
And nostalgia is at its core very comforting. Batcho says, “it stimulates memories of the times when we were accepted and loved unconditionally. That is such a powerfully comforting phenomenon, knowing that there was a time in life when we didn’t have to earn our love, or we didn’t deserve it because we earned a certain amount of money or we were successful in a certain venue. Our parents, for example, or our siblings or our friends simply loved us unconditionally. That is a wonderfully comforting feeling when we’re undergoing any kind of turmoil in our personal lives.”
And wow, many of us are living in turmoil right now. So why not indulge that nostalgia by buying something, right? It will be comforting and we might find some human connection with others that are feeling the same sense of nostalgia for that thing.
But also: nostalgia can help us cope with change. And as dark as things are right now, I actually think we are on the precipice of massive positive social change: how we live, how we work, how we interact with others, and what we want from our leaders. I really do believe that we have been driven apart for decades, and now we are about to come back together. But change (even when it is positive) is scary because it is UNKNOWN.
Batcho says this about nostalgia: “One of the most important aspects of being a healthy human being is having a sense that you are in control of things. When things start to change, either very substantially, such as major events in a person’s life, getting married or getting divorced, getting a new career, going back to school or graduating from school, it’s comforting to have a nostalgic feeling for the past that reminds us that although we don’t know what the future is going to bring, what we do know is that we know who we have been and who we really are.”
So yeah, nostalgia is GOOD for us: it helps us understand ourselves better. Connect with others. Find comfort. And cope with big life changes.
But does that mean we have to buy something to get it?
The Esprit sweatshirts are just some licensee’s attempt at cashing in on Gen X/elder millennial nostalgia. Our entire lives, we have been told that buying stuff (especially specific brands) WILL make us happy and socially successful. Why not buy more stuff when the world feels like a dumpster fire? And what if you could get happiness for a mere $16.99?
But also…lately I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about how similar generative AI and fast fashion are. And one common characteristic is that in order for either to succeed, we have to be comfortable (or at least, very numb to) mediocrity and disappointment. We know fast fashion isn’t great. The fabrics are bad. The fit is bizarre. And the quality is low. Generative AI writing, music, and art is similarly…ehhhhh, not good. Downright terrible. And neither genAI nor fast fashion really have any innovation or creativity at their core at this point. I mean, it doesn’t help that most fast fashion brands are now using genAI to “design” the clothes they sell, so they are even more mediocre and uninspiring. The Esprit sweatshirts at Costco are mediocre, too. Low quality. Disappointing fabric. If they had any other art on them, people would be less interested. They wouldn’t be The Viral Item of the Week. But since they have a nostalgic logo, suddenly they seem a lot less mediocre at first glance. It’s only the second and third look that makes you realize that they are just meh fast fashion like everything else.
The current holder of the Esprit license isn’t the only one out there making money off of our desire to get a quick dopamine hit from nostalgia. In fact, the landscape is so saturated with zombie brands and crappy licensed products, that one would almost begin to believe that the ONLY way to feel nostalgia is via shopping. That’s just not true.
But I do feel as if somewhere along the line…and I don’t know where/when this happened. Heck, maybe it started when we were babies? Somewhere/sometime we came to believe that the only way to feel positive feelings (joy, comfort, pride, confidence, contentment) was via shopping. That we can only experience good feelings by buying something. So of course we also think that the best way to experience nostalgia (and all of its positive benefits) is by purchasing a thing.
If that all sounds super depressing or even impossible to you…I want to remind you of all of the ways our brains have been rewired by fast fashion and fast everything:
So of course (at least subconsciously) we have started to believe that nostalgia is something we experience via shopping.
Here is a quick (and by no means exhaustive) list of experiencing nostalgic joy without buying something):
One last thing I want to discuss here is this: when we are nostalgic for something, we are often remembering it as better than it really was. That’s just human nature. And sometimes we find out later that what we thought was great at the time, was actually monstrous. Like Bill Cosby or Woody Allen. Or anyone else in the long line of “men whose work I loved at a particular time…and then I found out years later that they were a horrible person and/or sexual predator.”
And I think that there is tremendous value in understanding the truth about a brand or movie or album or book that is so nostalgic to us, because I think it helps us put our own lives and values (and who we are now) into perspective.
So I want to wrap this up with a brief history of…Esprit. Because it’s kind of fucked up.
The history that I am about to share with you is a condensed version of an amazing piece that Joshua Bote wrote for SFGate back in 2022. I will share it in the show notes and you should absolutely read it and share it with your friends!
Esprit began in 1968, when Susie Tompkins and Jane Tise started a new business called Plain Jane. They sold dresses to local boutiques out of the back of their Volkswagen Bus.
This wasn’t Susie’s first business. In fact, she and her husband Doug had recently sold an outdoor shop that they owned…it was called The North Face. Yes, that North Face.
Doug joined Plain Jane with Susie and Jane. They used $50,000 from the sale of The North Face to secure a factory that would allow them to produce their dresses in batches of 100.
And business was good. They were selling to department stores and both customers and the fashion media liked the simple, but very groundbreaking designs. At that point, fashion was all about maximalism, so Plain Jane was doing something very different.
Susie and Jane weren’t looking to grow into a massive corporation. They wanted to keep things simple in business, too. They told San Francisco Examiner fashion critic Maureen Kirby, ““We don’t want to be a giant company. We want to contain our size, and just grow a little with each collection.”
By 1970 Plain Jane had done about $2 million in sales (after just two years in business). That would be about $17 million today. So not a small business at all. They rebranded, too…as Esprit de Corp.
For the early years of the business, Susie’s husband Doug had spent about half the year each year hiking and kayaking. But now he wanted to be more involved on a daily basis. This included contracting with a nearby factory to exclusively manufacture for Esprit. That factory was primarily staffed by Chinese women.
As Bote wrote in his piece for SFGate:
“Conditions in the factory were a far cry from the utopian ideals of the hippie founders. In 1974, factory workers struck, alleging poor working conditions, including delayed pay and racist treatment. Among one of the more obscene restrictions Doug had imposed was forcing its 135 workers to ration toilet paper at a rate of two rolls a day, according to Harvey Dong, an Asian American studies lecturer at UC Berkeley.”
Doug was so moved by the strike that he decided Esprit would clean up its act.
No jk…that’s not what happened at all.
Instead Doug locked the workers out of the factory. He got police to arrest workers, in hopes of scaring everyone into ending the strike. But instead, that only made the strike–the first major union strike by Chinese immigrant women in THE UNITED STATES–even stronger.
In 1975, the Department of Labor made Doug pay back wages to the workers. And strangely, one month later the Esprit headquarters burned down. Arson was suspected. A few years after the fire, Doug staged a “coup” that made all of the original team (except his wife) leave the company by buying out their shares in the company.
This was a huge turning point for the company. And to quote Bote’s piece “Who deserves credit for Esprit’s success depends on your tolerance for the narrative of the male genius.”
This was when the iconic Esprit logo emerged. And the brand began to heavily market itself to teen girls. Stores opened around the country. Susie and Doug built a huge collection of Amish quilts. Doug was difficult to work for and with (some say), and others say that he was also hooking up with female staff members. But the office also had a gym, in-office talks with people like Gloria Steinem, organic fruits and juices…even a trampoline. By now, the clothes were made overseas, usually in Hong Kong. And apparently no one on the team thought the clothes were very good or cool, but fortunately teenagers loved them.
The business just grew and grew. At one point, the brand had 80 stores and it was stocked in just about every nice department store.
But in 1987, the business began to stall. Doug and Susie divorced in 1988. And yes, they split up the Amish quilts between the two of them. It seemed as if Goldman Sachs were poised to buy out Susie’s shares, leaving Doug to run the company, but she hung on. Allegedly at some point she called him a “malignant narcissist” in front of his toadies. I love that for her.
The business continued to spiral, mostly because trends changed and the brand didn’t. As the earthtones of grunge became what everyone wanted, Esprit was still churning out bright colors and logo heavy garments and accessories.
The brand tried an “eco” collection. It flopped. It tried some other stuff that also flopped.
Sales continued to decline and generally the entire world thought of Esprit as a fading dinosaur.
In 1996, a new CEO was appointed: Jay Margolis. He moved the headquarters to LA and banned Susie and Doug (as well as their family) from entering the building.
Susie moved on, marrying a real estate mogul and becoming a major Democratic donor.
Doug quit business and became an environmental hero. In 1993, he had married former Patagonia CEO Kristine McDivitt. Together they bought 800,000 acres of land in Chile, turning it into a nature preserve, and gifting it to the country.
He died in 2015 as the result of hypothermia from a kayaking accident.
Esprit lumbered on for years, trying to be relevant again (while continuously declining the quality of its product). Bankruptcy came just a few years ago, and as I mentioned earlier, now it’s just a license, up for the grabs for anyone who might want to cash in on some Gen X nostalgia. I don’t know about you, but knowing that Esprit was actually built out of racism, worker exploitation, and major toxic masculinity/ narcissism…well, it’s just not that cute to me anymore, no matter how amazing that Amish quilt collection was!
I say this is a person born in the Gen X/Millennial cusp: our entire lives we have been told (literally and subliminally) that buying the right thing will help us claim our place in the world. Esprit sweatshirts in the 80s and 90s meant you weren’t poor and you might even be eligible for the popular group. Getting a Cabbage Patch Kid or a Tamagotchi when every store was sold out meant your parents loved you a lot and you were going to experience temporary celebrity at school. Doc Martens meant you were cool and “alternative.” JNCOs meant you were a raver. We’ve been sold “uniforms” and status items since we were tiny.
The Esprit sweatshirt is also uniting in a time when most of us feel the loneliness of this very weird century. Buying the same sweatshirt as tens of thousands of other people feels like being part of something. As I mentioned earlier, I have seen it pitched as a “Gen X revolution” or “Gen X women revolt” moment.
We really do need a revolution. And you have no idea how excited I get about the prospect of a revolution that is NOT led by cis men! It’s long overdue. But here’s the thing: the revolution will not have a cute logo. The revolution will not be for sale at Costco. The revolution will not be a sweatshirt. The revolution will not come with free shipping or a discount code.
The revolution will begin with hearing and accepting some uncomfortable truths.
The revolution will be admitting that we are fed up with the status quo.
The revolution will be changing the way we live our lives, divesting from systems and industries that only widen wealth inequality while polluting the planet.
The revolution will be reaching out to grab our neighbor’s hand and saying WE WILL DO THIS TOGETHER.
And if you’re wearing your newly purchased Esprit sweatshirt for the revolution, just be sure to wash it inside out in cold water. To prevent pilling, protect the embroidery, and avoid shrinking, air dry it flat. Get the maximum wear out of it. And when you’re done with it, rather than dumping it in the trash or a donation bin, rehome it within your community. Someone out there will be so excited to give it another wear.
If you want to share your opinion/additional thoughts on the subjects we cover in each episode, feel free to email, whether it’s a typed out message or an audio recording: amanda@clotheshorse.world
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Selina Sanders, a social impact brand that specializes in up-cycled clothing, using only reclaimed, vintage or thrifted materials: from tea towels, linens, blankets and quilts. Sustainably crafted in Los Angeles, each piece is designed to last in one’s closet for generations to come. Maximum Style; Minimal Carbon Footprint.
Republica Unicornia Yarns: Hand-Dyed Yarn and notions for the color-obsessed. Made with love and some swearing in fabulous Atlanta, Georgia by Head Yarn Wench Kathleen. Get ready for rainbows with a side of Giving A Damn! Republica Unicornia is all about making your own magic using small-batch, responsibly sourced, hand-dyed yarns and thoughtfully made notions. Slow fashion all the way down and discover the joy of creating your very own beautiful hand knit, crocheted, or woven pieces. Find us on Instagram @republica_unicornia_yarns and at www.republicaunicornia.com.
Cute Little Ruin is an online shop dedicated to providing quality vintage and secondhand clothing, vinyl, and home items in a wide range of styles and price points. If it’s ethical and legal, we try to find a new home for it! Vintage style with progressive values. Find us on Instagram at @CuteLittleRuin.
