You could call it déjà vu, but that wouldn’t exactly hit the nail on the head. What we need is a word to describe “nostalgia for things we haven’t even experienced”. Things like transistor radios, soda counters, and rabbit-earred televisions. Wes Anderson is a connoisseur of this sensation. No doubt the French have ten different words for it.
For those who enjoy that particular mixture of recognition and longing, there are better places in which to wallow than on eBay. Namely J. Peterman, an outfit rigorously devoted to That Feeling and offering all manner of things to invoke it: the pipe that Mark Twain toted, a leather bomber that replicates those worn by the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1927, and the kind of wool sweater that Captain Ahab likely wore before being smoked by Moby-Dick (spoiler alert?)
Best of all are the monkey socks. J. Peterman really killed it with this one. Rockford “red heel” socks are those iconic wearables found on the feet of Ansel Adams, John Kennedy and Albert Einstein, among others. Constructed from chocolate-brown heather with a cream border and that fire-engine heel, the Rockford socks could easily be the only pair of socks you ever wear.
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I heart monkey socks… and J. Peterman!
great socks, but there is one problem. Einstein was infamous for his total aversion to socks: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125603.200-einstein-in-nosock-shock.html