Selling the Summers We Never Had.

I do not know why, but The Summer I Turned Pretty got me (and half the nation). I probably should not have been watching it, being over thirty, but somehow I was hooked. It was not the story as such. It was the feeling. The flawless skin, the clipped hydrangeas, the perfect pause from real life and the absurdity of Donald Trump on the news. It sits somewhere between memory and daydream.

It made me think of those old Jack Wills handbooks. Does anyone else remember them? They used to arrive through the letterbox filled with bronzed teenagers, all sea-salted hair and careless smiles, and if you lingered long enough you could almost catch the faint smell of wet tweed and privilege… I loved them. I kept them for far too many years.

Both the handbook and the series capture a kind of youth that feels real, even though it has been carefully created. It is someone’s summer, yet somehow it belongs to everyone, a shared fictional memory. They both chase the same feeling, that blend of wistfulness and escape, a dream you could almost walk into, building memories you long to claim, even if they were never yours.

Jack Wills knew how to do this long before streaming services caught on. Every grin, every sleeve rolled just so, every scene of well-bred chaos at country houses…it wasn’t about clothes. It was about belonging. About the idea that you could step into that world and somehow fit in.

Both the brand and the show move to the same rhythm, that soft ache for a golden age that feels almost reachable. It is the same instinct that makes you scroll through old photos and think, wrongly, that you used to be happier and thinner. In reality, you were simply younger.

For brands, teenage nostalgia has its own special pull. Some people look back certain they always belonged there. Others look in, drawn to something just beyond their reach. And some insist they do not care at all, too grown up and sure of themselves. That mix is where the power lies. The tension between belonging and exclusion makes people lean closer, pay attention, and long for the world being offered.

The problem is that nostalgia is a fragile currency. It works for Netflix, but brands like Jack Wills learned what happens when the fantasy begins to crack. Too much gloss, too many perfect smiles, and the dream tips into parody. People stop aspiring and start rolling their eyes. Nostalgia only works when it leaves space for imperfection.

For anyone in the business of selling something, the lesson is not to slap sepia filters on everything and hire teenage models. It is to use nostalgia with care. Find the small, specific details people secretly miss. Root your story in those textures rather than clichés, and build worlds people want to remember themselves into.