Why Gen Z conservatives love the ‘Reagan Bush ’84’ tee
When Kieran Laffey attends a George Washington University College Republicans event, he often wears his “Reagan Bush ’84” t-shirt. Other members make the same fashion choice.
Students wear them at debates and events with speakers, says Laffey, an incoming senior and the club’s chairman.
Laffey bought his online back in 2020. “We were just kind of living in some turbulent times,” he says. A high school sophomore then, he says fellow students and teachers were more liberal. “It’s almost turned to a rebellious act to have those right-leaning views. And I thought, you know, owning a T-shirt like the ‘Reagan Bush ’84’ one was kind of a cool way to join the movement of the antiestablishment younger generation of conservatives.”
The tees have led to some friendships because “once you see someone wearing the same shirt as you … it’s an easy indicator that you might get along.”
Whether genuine vintage or newly manufactured to look retro, the red, white and blue shirts with the classic serifed font “Reagan Bush ’84” logo have been a mainstay for more than a decade, even as the Republican Party itself has undergone galloping shifts. Think of it as the conservative take on a band shirt or the once-ubiquitous Che Guevara tee. They represent a moment of dominance for the GOP - the absolute electoral college rout that year - and a broader nod to American nostalgia.
“It’s really iconic,” says Mario Nicoletto, the 24-year-old campaigns chairman for the New York Young Republican Club. “It’s like the MAGA hat of the 1980s.” Even some new MAGA gear riffs on the logo, replacing the last names of the ’84 candidates with Trump and Vance.
The tees are available for sale for $24.95 through the Reagan Foundation, which declined to comment for this story. People can also purchase knockoffs through a heap of online retailers, kind of like buying a faux-vintage concert tee at a big box store.
Trump gear has continued to grow in popularity as the Republican Party has become remade in his image. Still, the “Reagan Bush ’84” shirts abide.
“I have seen a lot of my generation, Gen Z, wearing that merch,” says Caroline Downey, the editor in chief of conservative lifestyle and fashion brand the Conservateur. “I think it’s because nostalgia is a very valuable currency to them, especially an era where things maybe were simpler, or maybe weren’t as contentious.”
It’s not just that one shirt. The Conservateur sells a sweatshirt with a black-and-white photo of Reagan in a cowboy hat and horse, inspired by designer Anine Bing. “That sold like crazy,” Downey says.
“Reagan is still a vibe,” she says. “Even as the conservative movement has shifted in such a way where, you know, some of the original Reaganite ideas are no longer in vogue, I think we all still collectively look back on that Reagan era very fondly.”
Arianna Zeldin, a sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis and a vice president of her campus’s Republican club, saw fellow members of Gen Z sporting the “Reagan Bush ’84” shirts at the 2024 Republican National Convention. (Her father is Lee Zeldin, who heads up the Environmental Protection Agency.) She calls the shirts a “conservative staple.”
Zeldin, a history buff, loved seeing Reagan in the sartorial mix. “Wearing his merch isn’t just a fashion,” she says. “I think it’s a way of showing pride in the conservative ideals and pushing back against a culture where left-leaning imagery is more in mainstream.” It also gives her generation a “sense of connection” to “the American pride that our parents were a part of,” even if they weren’t alive to experience it firsthand.
Most of the students on campus with Laffey, the George Washington College Republicans chairman, are more liberal than he is. He sees his Reagan shirt as less confrontational than “wearing the red MAGA hat around, triggering the libs, so to speak,” he says.
“It’s kind of a peaceful, respectful way to say that, you know what, it’s okay to have a different opinion than you and disagree. I’m going to wear my Reagan shirt - it’s a more respectful way to voice my opinion.”
One thing that Laffey has noticed over his half-decade of wearing the shirt? “I’ve been even criticized from the right for wearing the Reagan stuff,” since the 2024 election, from people who see Reagan as too soft on immigration. Laffey doesn’t agree with every Reagan policy but says he still wears his shirt “proudly.”
The renaissance in these shirts began with now-defunct apparel company Rowdy Gentleman, which targeted its “obnoxiously patriotic” gear to fraternities. It introduced a version of the “Reagan Bush ’84” shirt in the early-2010s, back when Mitt Romney was the standard-bearer of the Republican Party.
The shirt was a frequent bestseller, according to ABC News. After all, Reagan had been a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon. Rowdy Gentleman advertised its suite of “Reagan Bush ’84” gear, which also included holiday sweatshirts and beer koozies, as the “original after the original,” spawning a slew of imitators.
“It wasn’t political,” Matt Cisneros, then-senior vice president of sales and business development at Rowdy Gentleman, told ABC about the impetus for its line of Reagan merch. “It’s a cool factor thing, a historically cool thing to tie ourselves to, it’s not about politics present-day.”
Since then, though, they’ve certainly become political. News reports noted the popularity of the gear during the 2016 election, with the Tampa Bay Times calling the shirts the “hottest Republican accessory of the 2016 presidential campaign.”
Reagan is among the top three most popular presidents among collectors, says Steve Ferber, co-owner of Lori Ferber Collectibles, which deals in political memorabilia. (The other two are John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln.)
Ferber has anecdotally observed something unique about the people donning Reagan gear compared to the merch of other presidents. “Whenever we see somebody wearing a Reagan T-shirt or bumper sticker, they do tend to be younger,” he says. “Which in a way is a plus because collectibles in general, you know, a lot of the old-timers are unfortunately dying off and the younger generations just aren’t collecting like their parents and grandparents did.”
But even if collecting political memorabilia isn’t a popular hobby among younger folks, wearing retro-style logos certainly is. There’s a reason sports teams are constantly releasing throwback jerseys. Scott Sutton, CEO of marketing company Burlington Press, says that the “Reagan Bush ’84” logo has a “strong, non-offensive visual identity … it’s as basic as you get.”
“We design political logos as part of what we do, and I wouldn’t design something like that today. And I’m sitting here and I’m wondering … why not?” says Sutton. “Like, yeah it’s dated, but you know what? … It became timeless.”
There’s something fitting about the popularity of the shirts, given that “the Reagan campaign created more T-shirts than I think any campaign before or since,” says Tony Lee, president of the American Political Items Collectors. The campaign would give them out free. “You had more Reagan Bush T-shirts out there in the world than probably people who wanted to wear them at the time.”
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