Emotional Hedonism: how City Bags & Cigarettes are a cultural signal 4 What's Up Next

TLDR -- women are metabolizing economic pressure through emotionally-driven, paradoxical consumption !!!

We have to talk about the return of (balenciaga) city bags and cigarettes. I’m so grateful that this isn’t an observation coming from my phone, or from the lens of people I know intimately, but from getting SMACKED by this visual on the street like a trend curve that’s bursting at the seams.

At first I thought it was a cheeky insight. I live in Chelsea, and figured seeing a couple hot girls smoking cigarettes and a couple more hot girls wearing beat up city bags in the crook of their arm was par for… but as the weather has gotten slightly better, and our political/economic/etcetcetc mass-induced anxiety has gotten overwhelmingly worse…. I started to see cigs and cities EVERYWHERE. Sometimes together, sometimes apart.

The city bag is perhaps most interesting — none of the bags appear to be new, and all of these girls appear to be INTENTIONAL about their choice to wear it. Whether it’s with workout clothes, office clothes, or something in between, it gives see U next tuesday meets “this old thing?” in a way that i can only deem aspirational.

I realized that this was more than an aesthetic resurgence, but one rooted in the psychological state of consumption, married against our response to the economy, et al. Here, we’re witnessing a cultural pendulum that is rapidly swinging between austerity and what I’m calling emotional hedonism. This is a phenomena where consumption isn’t driven by status or excess, but as a means of metabolizing feeling (e.g., grief, chaos, desire, nostalgia)….. especially when the world feels unstable.

Ultimately, this piece is about consumer behavior in post 2008 recovery patterns and how they’re re-materializing…. not through overt luxury, but through identity-driven signals that speak to the construction of self during a period of decline.