If, contra received wisdom, nostalgia is still what it once was, its aesthetics today is pure cliché. Glasgow lad Trackie mixes Trainspotting, raves, and Louis Vuitton knockoffs as though they were currency in 2025’s Britain. He turns personalised reg plates, lads’ mags headlines, and the Burberry check into icons of a culture he is too young to remember. A mass billboard “partnership” blew up these charity shop trinkets. It duped McLeod into believing that a return to DVDs was, for him, imaginable.
What excuse for this naivety? “Working-class” and “queer” appear in the collateral as obligatory for every insider. What doesn’t is “white”. Yet this alone is McLeod’s distinction in the Yookay Aesthetics index. His longing for ‘90s homophobia is pale fire next to the IrnBru output of fellow Pollokshields dweller and Turner Prize winner Jasleen Kaur. Look closely, however: her multipacks bear the mark “for export”.
