What boomer activities have been given a rebrand? Photo / 123rf
What boomer activities have been given a rebrand? Photo / 123rf
Sure as the sun rises and sets, eventually low-rise jeans, vinyl records, and banana bread will come back into fashion.
What some may find perplexing is that when trends resurge, they often get a rebrand.
A holiday in the United Kingdom used to be just that, but recently it transmogrified into a “staycation”. Keeping a diary was a popular pastime in the early 19th Century, but has been reinvented as a mindfulness trend: “journaling”.
Busy families have prepared meals in advance for generations, but now young people obsess over “batch cooking”.
Footballer Gary Neville was mocked after espousing the importance of a “mini-retirement”, explaining: “it’s where I can basically say for three days... I don’t think about work”.
That may sound like a long weekend, but don’t be fooled, this is a new thing that Gary Neville invented.
“The young reinvent the old, calling it new,” explains Michael Lamb, a strategy director at advertising giant M&C Saatchi whose role it is to spot and engage with trends.
“It’s cultural amnesia with a hashtag. Like claiming you’ve discovered a hidden gem in Oasis when your dad’s been singing Wonderwall’ since ‘95. It’s history repeating itself with more social media followers.”
The renaming of old-fashioned concepts helps them feel new.
“There’s something inherently comforting – even magical – about reclaiming pieces of our history,” says Dayna Isom Johnson, Etsy’s trend expert.
“For young people, revisiting their parents’ or grandparents’ habits feels like discovering something new.”
In a world controlled by algorithms where summarising your identity into a line of personal marketing is key to developing a following, it’s no wonder trendy buzzwords rule the roost.
So what other boomer activities have been given a rebrand?
Tablescaping
What boomers call it: Setting the table
Powered by the Instagram-friendly tables of designers like Sophie Conran, Liz Earle, Fiona Leahy, and Mrs Alice (AKA Alice Naylor-Leyland), tablescaping is the art of laying the perfect table for your dinner guests. Think carefully colour co-ordinated napkins, themed crockery sets, and table arrangements which fit the theme of the dinner.
“It’s now a cultural phenomenon,” Leahy told the Telegraph.
“Now if anyone’s got friends coming over, they think about how they’re going to set the table. It’s an aesthetic thing, but it’s centred around food, and entertaining people.”
Before 2019, crockery sets and tablecloths hadn’t been invented so food was simply tossed down in front of diners to eat with their hands. Everyone remembers that, right? Right?!
Not quite. Tableware sets date back to ancient Mesopotamia. Josiah Wedgewood repopularised the concept in the 1770s after making mass-market crockery which doubled as table decorations.
Around the same time, King George III employed court “table-deckers” to dress his banquets. Laying the table to suit the food being served has been a British tradition ever since.
Wild swimming
What boomers call it: Swimming
In 1815, The Cleveland Pools in Bath were opened after Georgian society decreed that nude swimming in the River Avon (which had been popular with the city’s working class) was a public scandal. The UK’s first swimming pool was a changing room with a pool attached.
Pools proliferated around the country, partially in response to the industrial revolution harming water quality and cholera outbreaks causing a fear of swimming in lakes and rivers.
Yet in 2021, the BBC declared that “wild swimming is Britain’s newest craze”, with 7.5m Britons (over 1 in 10) swimming in open water every year, according to The Outdoor Swimming Society. Last year 27 new bathing water sites were designated by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Older readers may wonder whether anyone in history had ever thought to swim in those locations before.
Rawdogging is supposed to showcase mental strength. Photo / 123rf
Rawdogging flights
What boomers call it: Not having in-flight entertainment
“The unsavoury portmanteau, ‘rawdogging’, is one of a suite of mind-numbing social media travel trends to have taken off over the past year,” explains Telegraph Travel expert, Greg Dickinson.
“Footballer Erling Haaland was an early rawdogger, posting about enduring a seven-hour flight with ‘no phone, no sleep, no water, no food’, boasting he found it ‘easy’.”
Given the wealth of in-flight entertainment available to travellers in 2025, you may wonder about the purpose of “rawdogging”.
Some have pointed to the importance of boredom which has been shown to improve relaxation and creativity. Others are skeptical.
“It’s supposed to showcase mental strength,” suggests Dickinson.
“Really, it’s what old men have been doing on benches in European town plazas for time immemorial, only they don’t post about it on the internet. Call me a cynic, but rawdogging seems less about mental wellbeing, meditation or endurance, and more to do with seeming tough to people online.”
Shelfie style
What boomers call it: Arranging shelves
When was the last time you took a shelfie? That’s a shelf selfie – a misnomer given the shelf doesn’t take pictures of itself, but never let logic get in the way of a trend.
Shelfie style is all about putting together a handsome shelf. That might mean colour-coordinating your shelves, adding a mix of ornaments, plants, or even photographs amongst your books to make them really look good.
The hashtag #Shelfie has been posted on Instagram a colossal 3.5 million times. “It’s always nice to put a little extra intention into making your kitchen shelves look special,” quips interior designer Kathy Kuo, a shelfie style aficionado. Well, quite.
Those who can’t quite commit themselves to a full #DryJanuary (in New Zealand we tend to favour DryJuly but the premise is the same), might be well advised to consult the revolutionary invention of zebra-striping to embrace temperance.
“While the trend of having a glass of water alongside your glass of wine or beer is nothing new, we’ve seen zebra striping trending this year with customers alternating and experimenting when it comes to no-and-low alcohol options,” explains Sarah Holland, No and Low Buyer at Waitrose which included zebra-striping in its recent trends report.
What is zebra-striping? The simple act of alternating your drinks. Have a glass of wine, then follow it with a non-alcoholic drink before you have another glass of alcohol.
Ignore the fact this has been the advice from the UK government’s drinking advice charity, Drinkaware, since it was founded in 2006.
“[The popularity of zebra-striping] is due to the increasing variety of drinks to choose from nowadays,” Holland continues.
“You no longer need to settle for water, when you can have a non-alcoholic botanical spritz like Pentire after your Aperol Spritz.”
Of course, these non-alcoholic drinks are really just flavoured water but don’t let that stop you.
Staycations
What boomers call it: A UK holiday
According to Google Trends, the first searches for the term “staycation” began bubbling away in August 2008, but it wasn’t until 12 years later that the term went stratospheric, before searches peaked the following summer.
Of course, a staycation, a holiday where you either stay at home or at least within the country, is hardly a new concept. Domestic tourism was invented by the Victorians, and up until the rise of package holidays in the 1960s it was the only option for most Britons.
During the days of the pandemic when long-distance travel was entirely banned (remember the traffic light system for countries you could/couldn’t visit?) the term “staycation” became popularised, giving areas like the Lake District and Snowdonia a boost for British tourists. Naturally, Brits who lived in those beauty spots were thrilled by the influx of newcomers…
Wearing secondhand only became fashionable in recent years. Photo / 123rf
Pre-loved fashion
What boomers call it: Second hand
Charity shops as we know them first appeared in the 1940s, but wearing secondhand only became fashionable in recent years. For those in the market for a “super cute upcycled y2k vintage fairycore dress, worn once, perfect for party season”, you’ll probably know all about the trend for pre-loved garments.
Launched in the UK in 2014, online clothes reselling app Vinted has become increasingly popular. Nowadays, flogging old clothes has become a lucrative side hustle (money-making hobby) for swathes of Gen Z who scour the app looking for a bargain.
“The main reason is because it’s a more sustainable way to buy clothes, but it’s also a more exciting way to shop,” explains 24-year-old Amy Fawcett from Harrogate. “You don’t know what you’re going to discover and you get to learn a bit about the items as well.”
Fawcett also uses her interest in “pre-loved” fashion to indulge in the other Gen Z hobby: “upcycling”. “Sometimes I’ll buy something and it doesn’t fit or something like that and I will patch it up, or customise it and sell it on,” she explains.
“I have sold a lot of things and made a lot of money from buying and selling – I’ve probably made about £500 ($1,088) from upcycling stuff I’ve found on Vinted or at car boot sales this year.”
The concept of quiet quitting; doing the minimum requirements of your job and putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than necessary; has become a source of fascination and panic in recent years. One columnist fretted that “Britain has become a nation of quitters”, and others blamed Britain’s sluggish productivity on the trend.
But quiet quitting was never about actual quitting. The trend wasn’t a repudiation of work, just a refusal to make work the centre of our lives. “I want to say I’m ambitious, but objectively it’s a no,” Lucy, a 20-year-old student told The Telegraph. “In my opinion, the idea of living for the weekend and having such limited time off isn’t truly living.”
Those boomers who experienced professions which didn’t make their hearts sing and offices they didn’t skip into, will remember this “trend” as simply doing your job.
Girl dinner
What boomers call it: Picky bits
If you’ve ever opened your fridge on a Sunday evening and cobbled together a plate of food based on what you’ve found, you’ve eaten a “girl dinner”. Thus named by TikTok influencer Olivia Maher (@liviemaher), girl dinner became a certified trend last year.
Girl dinner is a few slices of cheese, a packet of Hula Hoops and a yoghurt. Girl dinner is a few carrot sticks, a bowl of Heinz cream of tomato soup, and a Penguin biscuit. Girl dinner is crackers, grapes and two boiled eggs. It is fuss-free, effort-free, concept-free. (See also boy dinner, which is the same thing but somehow even less inspired.)
The terminology has proved controversial. Writer Tom Hillenbrand (52) took to Twitter to explain that “Most Germans eat like this every evening. We call it Abendbrot.” That term translates as “evening bread”. British cookery queen Nigella Lawson (64) also decreed that girl dinner was no more than the British staple of “picky bits”, otherwise known as finger food.
