Have you ever read Retromania by Simon Reynolds? It’s this book that traces our society’s fixation on the past, and the concept of “retro.” Sometimes, when I’m feeling really deep, I’ll ponder some of these questions for myself. Mostly, I wonder if holding onto nostalgia can ever truly be inhibiting like everybody makes it out to be.
Although I wasn’t alive in the 60s, I have an intense emotional attachment to British Invasion music, Andy Warhol’s Factory and the culture of Greenwich Village at the time, and I love taking sartorial notes from the mod movement, as well. If I had my own signature perfume, I’d want it to smell like nostalgia. Nothing makes me more excited than getting snail mail, or going to my grandparents’ house and stumbling upon an old yearbook where everyone’s penmanship is in perfect script font and you have to squint to decode the written message. All of it makes me so giddy! So does it really matter that I wasn’t born during the 60s? Don’t I still have the right to appropriate my own experiences to it?
That’s why I really love Deborah Serdy’s Etsy shop, “I Love My Aunt Debbie” (the name of the shop alone makes me picture a cute little aunt, working away, hidden in a craft corner), because it unabashedly pays homage to all the staples Deborah misses from her childhood. It’s clear the television and movies she grew up with in the 60s and 70s manifest her line of handmade kitschy jewelry. Many of Deborah’s earrings and brooches feature a blinged-out photograph of an iconic couple from the height of pop culture’s past: Sonny and Cher, JFK and Jackie O, Elvis and Priscilla Presley–even the world’s first couple Adam and Eve get dangling glittery shout-outs that will make you love Aunt Debbie as much as I do. Prices range from $12 to $56, and are available for purchase only at I Love My Aunt Debbie on Etsy.
