When Nostalgia Goes Viral: The Universal Day of the Romanian Blouse

This study offers an anthropological approach to a celebration of Romanian identity: the Universal Day of the Romanian Blouse. Initially launched as an online initiative in 2013 and rapidly embraced by a wide community of Romanians both at home and abroad, the celebration was later officially recognized by law in 2022. The analysis demonstrates that this phenomenon emerged from a complex constellation of factors, the most significant being the search for identity in a globalized world and the viral dissemination of online content carrying symbolic and identity-driven meanings, both specific to contemporary digital culture. Within a global context marked by cultural homogenization, nostalgia operates as a psychological force of reconnection to one’s roots, transforming the past into a usable cultural resource and providing coherence to the present through the rewriting of tradition. The Romanian blouse becomes a transnational marker of identity, projected into the global sphere through image circulation and the affective participation of digital communities. The phenomenon analysed illustrates the capacity of digital culture to generate new forms of continuity through the intersection of memory, technology, and emotion.

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