Have you heard of the pendulum swing theory of fashion? If you thought “laws” only belonged to science textbooks, fashion has always had its own version. It is the strange familiarity of looking at your mother’s university photographs and wondering how anyone ever dressed like that, only to scroll through runway images years later and realise the exact same silhouette has returned, suddenly elevated and desirable.
The theory suggests that trends rarely disappear, they simply retreat before returning roughly a decade later in a new form. For millennials and Gen Z, the internet’s current obsession with resurrecting 2016 images hits particularly close to home because we were teenagers then, dressing instinctively rather than strategically, discovering adulthood for the first time and using clothes as both self expression and mild rebellion.
Of course, a revival does not mean replication. No one is walking through Dubai Design District with aggressively backcombed hair and a towering poof while holding an oat matcha, and thankfully the era of violently distressed denim and uniform flannel shirts has remained archived where it belongs. Yet dismissing the year entirely would be unfair. If 2016 resonates so strongly across cultures today, it is because the surrounding pop culture, music and social energy carried a looseness that fashion mirrored. So rather than recreating the past, we are editing it, keeping the emotion and discarding the excess. Let us open the nostalgia wardrobe and see which pieces survive the translation into 2026 and how they return with better taste.
Athleisure to performance wear
Athleisure in 2016 did not come from sport, it came from celebrity scheduling. It was born in the fifteen minute window between Pilates and paparazzi, perfected by the Kardashian industrial complex and commercially baptised by Yeezy Season 3, where suddenly leggings were no longer an admission of laziness but proof of cultural awareness. Kylie Jenner leaving a Calabasas juice bar in a cropped hoodie did more for spandex than any Olympic committee ever could.
The problem was never the idea but the literalism. Matching sets, visible logos, sneakers that screamed gym even when the wearer had not seen a treadmill in months.
The 2026 version understands intention. The legging becomes a stirrup trouser under tailoring, the sports bra hides beneath sheer knits, the technical jacket meets eveningwear, and suddenly the reference shifts from “I just worked out” to “I move through the world”.
Photo: gotpap/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
Bomber jackets, now tailored outerwear
The bomber jacket’s 2016 dominance can be traced directly to Kanye West’s military surplus fixation and Vetements’ oversized nihilism, filtered through Tumblr boys who wore MA 1 jackets in thirty degree heat because aesthetic mattered more than climate. It was a good garment ruined by poor proportions, so in 2026, the bomber entered finishing school. Cropped suede bombers sit over silk skirts, leather versions are belted at the waist, and satin styles accompany evening trousers rather than ripped denim. Bella Hadid currently wears them the way Carolyn Bessette Kennedy once wore coats, as punctuation rather than personality.
Skinny leather skirts, just longer now
Every It girl in 2016 owned a tight leather mini because Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent had convinced the world that nightlife was a silhouette. Paired with band tees, chokers and ankle boots, the uniform travelled from Paris to every mall on earth within months. Today the leather skirt stretches into the midi and suddenly regains authority. Worn with crisp shirting or cashmere rather than slogan tees, it feels closer to a magazine editor rushing between shows than a teenager discovering eyeliner. The attitude has aged ten years, which coincidentally is exactly what the garment needed.