The Medieval Revival and Post-Industrial Fatigue – set apart by 150 years, yet both marked by the romanticization of everything that came before.
In his series of lectures Art applied to Industry published in 1865, English architect and designer William Burges asked, “Are we to have ugly or beautiful things continually before our eyes?” This question was posed at a time when the Industrial Revolution made mass-produced goods accessible to the Western World that, while affordable, lacked the artistry and craftsmanship of earlier eras. As mass production increased, so did the desire to return to a time when skill and artistry were valued.
It was this very dissatisfaction with the industrial age — the fear that beauty and skill were being replaced by the cold efficiency of machines — that gave rise to the Medieval Revival. Architects, artists, and designers like Burges began to look back to the Gothic and medieval periods for inspiration, embracing a time when craftsmanship was revered, and art was deeply connected to both spiritual and social values. While the Medieval Revival was an escapist fantasy of Victorian England, the longing for a romanticized past has resurfaced in today's cultural landscape, reflecting our discontent with a fast-paced, technology-driven world. In these movements, we once again seek simplicity, moral clarity, and beauty through the lens of an idealized past. Like the Victorians, who romanticized medieval imagery in response to the alienation of industrial urban life, today's aesthetics reflect a desire to escape a visually and emotionally sterile present—whether through fashion, design, or fantasy. The enduring influence of the Medieval Revival, then, remains a blueprint for how we reinterpret history to meet the needs of our own time.
While the Medieval Revival of the Victorian era has not been the only resurrection of a time long gone by, it has certainly been the most prominent with characteristics and values taken up in every comparable cultural movement after. As with all revivals, the Medieval Revival was more romantic than actual revival. Rather than an accurate reflection of history, it was an escapist fantasy — a curated vision of the Middle Ages filled with chivalrous knights, noble deeds, and moral purity, in contrast to the perceived debauchery and alienation of industrial urban life in the quickly growing cities of the late 19th century.
This tendency to romanticize the past is not unique to the Victorian era. In today’s cultural landscape, movements like Cottagecore or Regencycore and the popularity of shows like Bridgerton similarly draw on idealized, selective visions of history, or repaint history wholly. Often, elements from entirely different eras are mashed together into one, or fused with modern trends. Historical accuracy is not at the forefront of these nostalgic fantasies; it relies wholly on what modern audiences respond to.
These aesthetics paint a picture of simpler, morally superior times, in contrast to the fast-paced, technology-driven modern world. Even gothic and medieval imagery, seen in period dramas like House of the Dragon and The Witcher, taps into a collective desire to escape into fantasy worlds where history is rewritten to complement the shortcomings of our contemporary times. Not only do these touch on our wishing for a simpler world, but stem from a lack of purpose in life within the general population. A study from 2021 by YouGov states that 30% of 16-39-year-olds in the UK feel like they have no purpose in life. Shows in a medieval setting often contrast this by portraying protagonists that have a divine mission or a greater cause, like their king, god or people. The questions of whether these pursuits are morally justified is often shoved aside, characters live and fight without ever questioning the cause itself. Their portrayal of this time is less complex and morally ambiguous, catering to humans’ fundamental need for simplification and categorization.
In recent years, the medieval aesthetic has re-emerged as a counterpoint to the minimalist, sleek designs that dominated the 2010s. In 2023, Daniel Lee at Burberry reinstated the horse-rider logo, signaling a return to the heritage of the house. Meanwhile, a broader cultural longing for the otherworldly and medieval is occurring, with the resurgence of Blackletter fonts in popular media —like in Saltburn’s opening credits — or catholic iconography and occult aesthetics on social media. As Elizabeth Goodspeed puts it in her column for It’s Nice That, this trend (which seems to have a particular chokehold on the typography community), is a reaction to the sterile, minimalist design trends that followed the economic crisis of 2008, when greco-roman influences like the golden ratio dominated typography as symbols of stability and order.
Fashion, too, has embraced medieval influences. Ann Demeulemeester’s FW20 collection leaned into mystical and occult aesthetics, while Paco Rabanne FW20 drew inspiration from the military aspects of the Middle Ages with chainmail designs and Balenciaga released the infamous Chevalier Boots in their FW21 collection, which never gained much mainstream traction but are considered a fashion grail today. In these collections, designers not only tapped into a sense of medievalism but also reflected contemporary fears—of war, of uncertainty, of the loss of individuality in a sea of minimalism. Even more recently, Dior’s Cruise 2025 — hosted on the grounds of a literal medieval castle – and Loewe’s SS25 campaign shot by Jurgen Teller, both feature quite literal allusions to the time period. With Fast Fashion and an accelerated trend cycle undermining the intellectual and physical quality of the products put out by luxury fashion houses the sentiments declared by William Burges over 150 years ago still ring true today.
Aided and pressured by globalization, almost all big Western businesses have shifted their mass production to countries in the Global South with poor worker’s rights. Many have also started using worse quality materials, sometimes even marketing them as more ethical. While there are high-quality vegan leather alternatives made from various natural plants, the majority of ‘vegan’ leathers is simply rebranded, fully petroleum-based pleather. Microtrends, like the sudden spike in Stanley Cup fueled by sites like TikTok, have furthered the decline in reliably good quality commodities – as Stanley Cup orders piled, the production team struggled to meet the demand. As soon as the trend moved into its late majority stage, CNN reported on the cups containing lead and many customers began complaining in online forums this summer about their Stanley Cups being defective and handles breaking off, just shortly after receiving them. Cutting corners on production and materials has lessened manufacturing costs, and allowed for the emergence of ultra-fast-fashion over the past 20 years, which has began contaminating other fields, like furniture.
As Mina Le explains in her video “why is all furniture the same now?”, the concept of dropshipping has infiltrated the mainstream market in form of white-label products – items that are manufactured by one company, but then packaged and sold by another. This has led to little-to-no variety in the current mid-range furniture market, over-saturating the market (and thereby customers) with unoriginal styles and bad quality. Perhaps this explains part of the longing for the "good old days", when there was real merit to each product designed and sold.
Architecture and design of city elements have changed massively over the past 100 years. In a post WWII world it was necessary to keep building costs low, leading to the emergence of minimalist and brutalist design trends. While these design trends are not ugly or boring in-and-of-themselves, their easily reproducible nature and cheap construction materials tend to bend to the capitalist nature of our economy. This can create hostile city environments that are meant to guide and restrict behavior. Designing spaces like this prevents third places from forming within cities, guiding everyone to rush through public spaces, instead of providing possibilities and incentives to stay outside. This trend has also led to visual monotony – while big cities are considered places where people of all different backgrounds come together, many places look the same. A bench from 100 years ago and a bench today are vastly different, and many people would say that the bench from 100 years ago holds more visual character.
While mass production and its shift to developing nations in the past 30 years have allowed for a second Industrial Revolution of sorts and seemingly led to a decline in aesthetics, it isn’t necessarily all bad. As Burges said during the first Medieval Revival, industrial progress can aid artisans in creating beautiful things and make design more accessible to the people. Despite these theories being so prevalent in the 1850s, revived through Art Nouveau in the early 1900s, today we are left with cheaply produced, unoriginal designs and a fatigue with our current visual surroundings, returning us to the romanticization of the medieval – or what we envision as such. So, just like the Victorians sought beauty and meaning in the face of industrialization by romanticizing the medieval past, we too continue to look back to earlier eras for comfort and inspiration in a world that often feels impersonal, chaotic, and disconnected from craftsmanship. In times of rapid change the Medieval Revival and the many cultural movements that have followed, our collective imagination frequently turns backward, finding comfort in an idealized past that offers characteristic beauty and moral clarity.
