The costume

Traditions don’t start as aesthetics.

They start as answers.

To scarcity. To place. To time. To limits.

Someone did something a certain way because they had to. And over time, that way became meaningful.

What spreads next isn’t the reason. It’s the imitation.

The look. The language. The cues.

(The overwritten menu. The reclaimed wood. The vintage logo. The heritage experience.)

None of these are wrong.

They’re just incomplete.

So we get the surface without the source.

The ritual without the responsibility. The story without the sacrifice. The experience without the discipline that created it.

It feels right. It photographs well. It earns approval.

But it’s hollow.

Here’s a simple test:

If you remove the constraint and keep the label, you didn’t preserve the tradition.

You dressed it up.

Real traditions are expensive. They cost time. They cost margin. They cost saying no.

That’s why they mattered.

When the story becomes louder than the practice, the practice becomes optional.

And what’s left isn’t culture.

It’s a costume.