Akademik

(ret.troh.FEE.lee.uh)

n.

An intense attraction for things of the past.

—retrophile n.

If trying to relive the 1960s were a crime, there wouldn't be enough jail space to hold all the duly convicted guitar-pop bands. Still, there is something particularly brazen — and boring — about the retrophilia saturating Teenage Fanclub's new CD, a collection of jangly midtempo ditties that nod unabashedly to The Beatles, The Byrds and any number of less iconic groups from the era of mods and moptops.

— Elysa Gardner, "Caress a Jaguar, experience Religion," USA Today, January 29, 2002

Just when you thought it was safe to start shopping in specialist shops again, George Davies has opened a Next department store in Kensington High Street. With Next's various outlets on virtually every street corner, the big question is whether it will work. some style pundits have already compared it to Biba — true, the interior does smack of retrophilia — but with Davies's enthusiasm, we'll all be kitted out there for the next couple of years.

— "Quick Look," The Times, May 31, 1987

Here's my favorite citation for the word retrophile:

At a press conference Monday, U.S. Retro Secretary Anson Williams issued a strongly worded warning of an imminent "national retro crisis," cautioning that "if current levels of U.S. retro consumption are allowed to continue unchecked, we may run entirely out of past by as soon as 2005." . . . Nowhere is the impending retro crisis more apparent, Williams said, than in the area of popular music. "To the true retrophile, disco parties and the like were common 10 years ago. Similarly, retro-intelligentsia have long viewed 'New Wave' and even late-'80s hair-metal retro as passé and no longer amusing as kitsch," Williams said. "We now face the unique situation of '90s retro, as evidenced by the current Jane's Addiction reunion tour: nostalgia for the decade in which we live."

— "U.S. Dept. of Retro Warns: 'We May Be Running Out Of Past'," The Onion, March 11, 1996