Every season has that pattern or trend – the style that explodes everywhere, taking over Instagram feeds, Pinterest boards, shop windows, and the outfit of every stranger you notice on the street. As evidenced by this past summer, it has become official: polka dots are the current “it” print. They are scattered everywhere, covering everything from tops and dresses to co-ord sets, swimsuits, and even nail art, as if they never lost momentum and never really left. 

Instinctively, this print seems to signal yet another summer obsession and recycled modern trend, exemplifying fashion’s endless loop. Yet polka dots are everything but new; they are actually as vintage as it gets, immortalised by Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and even animated in the Disney world through Minnie Mouse. Their sudden reappearance thus isn't a matter of surface-level trend cycles or algorithms. It points to something deeper: the way nostalgia continues to resurface, quietly teaching us that nothing we love ever really disappears.  

There is also obviously something about spring and summer that connotes playfulness and ease. While the days become longer and lighter, our wardrobes loosen, and funkier styles begin to bloom again. Polka dots hit the sweet spot with a lovely vibe: bold but versatile, retro yet original. Emerging with particular flexibility, they can be flirty or professional, depending on the cut and style. And in all honesty, after years of minimalist beige and “clean girl” aesthetics, we might all be craving something sillier, louder, and more fun. Dots inherently suggest nostalgia; they lead us back to bundles of childhood dresses and wearing them now feels like reclaiming that enthusiasm with a modern twist. 

After all, fashion is memory in motion. It may seem as if trends merely come and go, but they actually sleep, never completely vanishing. What feels familiar and comfortable today is often an echo of something we once knew by heart. Perhaps that's why nostalgia remains such a powerful emotion, because it allows us to reflect on the past with softer and relaxed eyes, recognising how time has changed what once was, without erasing the feelings that made the past originally matter.  

A few weeks ago, I was browsing through my mother’s wardrobe and found silk green and blue polka-dot nightgowns folded neatly between old scarves and sweaters. Tucked away for over twenty years, the emerald green and deep blue dresses – both with matching dressing robes – serve as a reminder of how popular the pattern was. Trying one on felt like stepping into a memory and presence that did not entirely belong to me but still felt comforting and familiar. This perception reminded me that often, clothes are not just fabric but continuities – physical proofs that whatever we considered valuable never truly leaves but rather lingers, waiting to be found again. 

This discovery also taught me that nostalgia doesn’t confine us to our past but instead exists to remind us that what’s gone is still valuable and, in a sense, still tangible. Fashion is only one of the many ways we try to reconcile past, present, and change. Each print and style represent fragments of who we once were, loved, and chose. Wearing something after a long time leads past versions of ourselves to meet present ones, allowing us to notice the evolution and progression between the two timelines.  

There’s also something profoundly human in this act of return. Beauty and pain often reveal a similar rhythm: we lose, we grieve, we learn, and eventually, we return to places, people, and parts of ourselves that we thought were left behind for good. Upon revisiting them, they feel quite different. The heartbreak that once felt insurmountable has softened through time, the memory that was once burning and tormenting now simply glows warm.  

This is what nostalgia really enables: a quiet kindness offered by time.  

This effect might explain why fashion’s cyclical nature reverberates so well. Each comeback reflects the emotional seasons we go through: what we once considered unlikeable now feels endearing, what once hurt us now seems instructive. An outgrown trend comes to represent an emblem of the past, and fashion’s shifts of disappearances and returns constantly teach us this through a language of resilience. A pattern that disappears from magazines surprisingly reemerges on a runway, a dress kept away in a closet finds life again decades later with a family’s new generation. Change then does not automatically erase what came before; it fills our lives with more layers. 

As aforementioned, pain really does work in the same way. What once consumed us becomes less sharp, altered, and more survivable. What seemed unbearable becomes bearable, even beautiful and formative. It’s all about learning to live with the versions of ourselves that no longer exist, without resenting them for having been there, trusting nostalgia’s ability to render the past tender once again.  

As Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “One is always at home in one’s past.” Except now, in hindsight, that home feels more colorful, more solid, and more safe. Visiting it now feels like forgiving past mistakes and rewarding yourself with reminiscing.

Fashion presents us with this lesson – the dot you once thought was an end turns out to be part of a larger pattern. So, the next time a trend resurfaces, or an old, painful memory slips back uninvited, don’t dismiss it as repetition. Stop and look closer. It might just be life reminding you that nothing – not loving, losing, or pain — is a waste. Everything, in time, becomes part of a broader picture, and that’s the most comforting pattern of all.