souvenirs used to be cooler
a look at the slow death of the souvenir, and why future vintage depends on the risks we’re willing to take right now
I just got back from Yosemite. One of the most iconic, awe-inspiring places on Earth. I found waterfalls, peace in nature, slowness, and sweet serenity.
What I couldn’t find was a single souvenir worth buying.
Every gift shop I walked into had racks of bachelorette-script heather navy tees and digitally printed hoodies with geometric vector art of bears. There were loads of contemporary renditions of vintage national parks posters and ugly flat-brimmed hats that looked like they’d blend into the closet of any blind Denver resident.
Not a single piece with character.
Not a single bold, timeless graphic.
Not even a good bumper sticker.
It was genuinely disappointing. I realized I’d have to go to eBay to find something worth keeping. Something old. Something made when souvenirs still had soul. This happens all the time now, and that’s why I’m writing this.
There was a time when the best thing you could bring home from a trip was a tee or a sweatshirt.
Thick cotton. Ribbed cuffs. Block-letter type across the chest. A real-deal Champion crewneck from UCLA or Notre Dame. The kind that made you feel like you were part of something, even if you only passed through the bookstore for five minutes.
That sweatshirt wasn’t just merch.
It was a souvenir.
A wearable memory. A signal. I was there. I belong.
sou·ve·nir
noun
A thing that is kept as a reminder of a person, place, or event.
Before “souvenir fashion” became ironic (see the Balenciaga “Souvenir Shop” concept from 2024), it was sincere. Arguably, the most iconic fashion export from the U.S. isn’t some runway trend — it’s Champion sweatshirts. These were made to last, and they doubled as identity. They weren’t trying to be cool.
That’s exactly why they were.
In Ametora, W. David Marx writes about how Japanese kids would fly to California in the 1980s to line up outside the UCLA bookstore. Not for textbooks, but for merch. They understood what most Americans didn’t: souvenirs had weight. Built to last. Screen-printed with thick plastisol. Universally bold, yet culturally specific.
Some of that magic still lingers in vintage circles.
Gen Z was quick to see the value in Planet Hollywood hats, bootleg band tees , old NASCAR shirts. Pieces that weren’t designed to be iconic ended up that way through ubiquity, irony and timing. Specific. Tied to place. Produced in limited runs. Worn hard. Forgotten. Then rediscovered.
The new stuff? The stuff in shops today? It just doesn’t hit the same.
And if you care about design or memory, that’s a huge L.
erasing the fingerprints
So what happened? Why do souvenirs today feel so generic and flat?
1. Globalized production killed regional character
Any gift shop or boardwalk stand can now order low-minimum merch from Alibaba. Tees, mugs, hats. Templated, drop-shippable, and perfectly forgettable. MOQ: 3. Delivered in 12 days. Entirely soulless. So buff.
A sweatshirt I picked up in Vail a few years ago lost its appeal when I saw the exact same one in Mammoth, only the name had changed. It was a “your ski mountain here” template after all.
Gone are the hand-drawn mascots, the odd color choices, the screenprint errors that accidentally made a tee worth keeping. The strangeness is gone. The local, mom-and-pop energy is gone.
2. The online design economy erased the local voice
With tools like Pinterest, Canva, Fiverr, and increasingly, AI, souvenir design has collapsed into one flat style. Safe. Retro-ish. Overly optimized. Everything looks like a Target graphic tee. Same fake-worn texture stamps. Same “crafty” child-like typography. Same terrible blue heather fabric (why they gotta use so much fucking heather!?).
What once felt specific now feels like stock.
It’s aesthetic SEO, designed with data in mind rather than the place it’s commemorating.
3. Retail has learned how to fake memory
Walk into Abercrombie, and you’ll see an entire wall of fake souvenir shirts: “Montauk Boat Club” sweatshirts in #oldmoney fonts, hotel, cafe, or bar tees with pre-distressed textures, and country club logos for country clubs that never existed.
Ironically, the most broke-boy look imaginable is the fake “vintage” Cape Cod tee from Abercrombie — currently on sale for $28.
It’s a weird inversion of what brands like Firstport are doing.
While Firstport’s output is a love letter to East Coast souvenirs and hyper-localized destinations, rich in texture and storytelling (however manufactured it may be), Abercrombie’s version strips out the sincerity and sells vague destination nostalgia as a costume.
One day, my kids won’t be able to tell which “vintage” souvenir tee is real and which one was printed in 2025 to look like it was from 1986.
The line between artifact and artifice is blurring, and that makes the lack of real souvenirs even rougher to see.
the souvenir problem is now a business model
Entire businesses have emerged to fill this void.
Homage is built around vintage-inspired tees. They reprint archival gems for sports teams, movies, IP, even theme parks. On a recent trip to Cedar Point in Ohio, I saw a corner of the souvenir shop filled with incredible tees. “Holy shit, Cedar Point gets it!”
Not exactly. Turns out Homage had gone into the archive and reprinted all the designs they never should’ve stopped selling.
There are higher-end examples too. Vintage Heavy makes super-premium “fake vintage” reissues of old Peanuts graphics on thick fleece, run through stone washes, and sprayed with enzyme washes that are so believable you’d swear they came off the floor of a flea market.
Don’t want to dig on your hands and knees at the flea at 5am? For $290, that “grail” can be yours.
These brands are smart. They’re giving us what we’re missing.
But it raises a bigger question.
what are we supposed to do, just give up?
Are we just going to throw our hands up and say cool died in 1990? Or was it 2000? Or 2012?
I want to believe we can still make future vintage.
Stuff that doesn’t rely on nostalgia, but becomes nostalgic with time. But it’s hard to see it while it’s happening. Maybe it’s right in front of us. Maybe we need 20 years of hindsight to recognize it.
I don’t know. But I think about this a lot.
designing like no one’s watching
This shift doesn’t just change how I shop. It changes how I design.
What is it that makes vintage feel cool? I’m always chasing that off-ness. That layered, imperfect, practical beauty. One line of type that doesn’t match the rest. A printer substitution. A graphic scaled just a little too big. A layout that breaks the rules.
Perfect wasn’t the goal. Punch was.
The appeal of vintage souvenirs proves that “cool” doesn’t rely on “correct.”
When I’m designing, I’ll make something clean and then break it on purpose. Add something like it was slapped on last minute. Change the font halfway through. Let it get a little ugly. Not to be messy, but to be real. I play jazz with it. Break the tempo. Sit in the pocket.
I’m not trying to replicate vintage.
I’m channeling the mindset of the people who made it.
The non-designer designers. The print shop crew. Designers on a deadline who took liberties, pushed scale, and made decisions on the fly. They sent things to print, crossed their fingers that the type remained legible, and sold it even if it didn’t.
They played power chords with distortion.
Those mistakes made it. They’re what make something feel alive.
As we enter the age of AI-generated artwork, these human fingerprints have never felt more valuable.
future vintage starts now
We live in a world obsessed with nostalgia, but terrible at producing it.
We want things that feel timeless, but we design for trends.
We want clothes that age well, but we manufacture for speed.
We want souvenirs that mean something, but we’ve lost sight of the meaning.
If you make graphics, apparel, or anything that captures a memory, ask yourself:
Will someone want to keep this in 20 years?
Will it tell a story? Will it remind them of where they were?
Will it feel like anything?
Because in 2054, no one’s hunting for a Yosemite tee generated by AI and fulfilled by Alibaba.
But they might still lose it over a slightly-wrong, slightly-right tee from 1991 that wasn’t trying to be cool.
It just was.
cheat codes: how to make future vintage
Here’s what I try to remember when I’m designing with longevity in mind.
Design for place, not platform
Make it feel of somewhere, not made to live everywhere.Break your own work
Add the bizarre layer. Fuck with the font. Flatten the perspective. Let it feel human. Play jazz.Honor the mistakes
Flaws add character. Mistakes are what make someone pick something up at a flea market 30 years from now. Show ‘em a human made it.Use nostalgia as seasoning, not the main course
A reference is fine. A rehash is forgettable. Don’t just play covers.1+1=3
A great graphic is only half the equation. The production is what brings it to life. Ink, thread, fabric — these choices turn a file into something you can feel.
I was at Yosemite for the first time three weeks before you and had this exact experience! Scoured every tee and ball cap. (I’m in the market for a good one and I want it to be something real! A town, a place, a small time team!) Each a disappointment. Walked away with nothing. I’m so heartened by this piece because I left thinking “am I just lame for wanting a memento of this amazing place? Maybe I’m not appreciating the true spirit of Christmas. It’s not about the tees.” But you have reassured me that it’s most definitely at least partly about the tees. Thanks and happy hunting on your next adventure.
Local to me (this popped up when I was searching Lana Del Rey merch lol)
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