Retro versus Nostalgia

Another quote from Matthew Derby's essay Well-Dressed Men Sing Songs for Oblivion published in The Believer:

"Like, you know how the hermeneutic spiral is when the thing returns without its original context. So 'retro' is when you take something old and make it new by cutting away all the reference points. Like that woman with the legwarmers the other day. She didn't know what the fuck legwarmers are. She got them because they were at Urban Outfitters, or whatever. 'Nostalgia' is when you fondle something old, something you knew when you were young, to try to get some of the original feeling back. Like those Alzheimer's nursing homes that are built like a small town from the thirties."

"Which one are you?"

"Both", he says. "I'm totally whacking off to the Eighties."[...]