The history of objects as carriers of culture has been noted by anthropologists since the early 20th century (DeSaussure 1915) and that objects have a social meaning for their possessors and users has continued on to become one of the central tenets of consumer research (Belk 1988). Objects themselves are known to reflect, elicit and signal identities (Levy 1959; LaBoeuf et al. 2010), prime specific motor movements in muscle (Larson et al. 2012) and elicit social roles by their mere presence (Kay et al. 2004). Further, many objects produced in—or in fashion during—particular eras become associated with the time periods they represent (the “Flapper” dresses of the 1920s, bell-bottomed jeans from the 1970s) and one repeating trend in design is calling back to those eras with vintage design elements. Interesting work (though surprisingly little) has been done by researchers to understand what creates interest in these vintage items (Loveland et al. 2010), but the current work seeks to examine the impact the vintage items themselves have on their beholders. While research on implicit racism (Greenwald et al. 1998) and sexism (Rudman et al. 2001) has implied historical, quasi-anthropological origins for unsavory attitudes, recent research into less politically-charged subjects like North-South distinctions in American behavior (Nisbett and Cohen 1996) and implicit Puritanism in Americans (Uhlmann et al. 2011) has attempted to link current attitudes and behavior with specific historical periods. This work attempts to extend similar insights into the realm of consumer behavior and vintage products (there is no precise definition of terms like vintage, but consensus has formed that vintage design refers to designs under 80 years but over 30 years old). One striking aspect of the differences between ‘vintage’ era products and modern products is the extent to which they should evoke different (i.e., more traditional) gender roles. In particular, female gender roles have changed enormously in the last 30 years and women now make up the majority of the labor force and college attendants—domains once seen as male-dominated (England 2006). This shift has seen women’s primary social role change from being ‘homemaker’ to ‘breadwinner’ and women are perceived as becoming more agentic in society (Diekman and Eagly 2000). However, men’s roles are generally not seen as modified and society does not expect an opposing move from men into lower-earning, lower-status, feminine roles in the future (Diekman et al. 2004). Together, these attitude shifts allow the possibility that, for women, vintage products might elicit social identity cues tied to the era in which they were produced, and that those cues would be distinct from modern era products. Yet, because men’s roles have not changed as much, they may be unaffected by behavioral cue differences in vintage and modern-era products. The current work, in fact, hypothesizes just this: 1) Because of the more substantial change in societal roles for women in the last half-century, vintage products will be a more powerful eliciting cue for women than for men in terms of idealizing accompanying behaviors. And 2) priming traditional gender identity will lead women, but not men, to enhance valuation of gender-stereotypic products with vintage design features because vintage-design positively biases women’s memory for the past. In Study 1, we examined the effect of vintage vs. modern product design on how people idealize their behavior. Undergraduates were shown a range of products (either stereotypically feminine—e.g., a mixer—or masculine—e.g., a barware set—verified by pretest data to be gender stereotypic) with either vintage or modern design (pretests confirm this distinction). Following presentation of the products, participants were asked to rate on a 7-point scale (1 = “not at all”; 7 = “all the time”) how much they currently did the activity associated with the product (i.e., baked, made cocktails) and then how much they would like to do that activity in their ideal life. The ‘current activity’ score was subtracted from the ‘ideal activity’ score to give an ‘Idealization’ index for every participant. After averaging idealization scores for each of the four product types (masculine vs. feminine; modern vs. vintage), two interactions emerged that supported our predictions. First, with respect to idealization of activities associated with traditionally female products, participant gender and design era interacted (F(3,173)=5.12, p =.025) such that women idealized the activities more after seeing a vintage-designed product rather than a modern one, F(1,173)=12.41, p=.001. Men, however, did not idealize these activities. Conversely, with respect to masculine consumer products, participant gender and design era interacted (F(3,173)=12.01, p=.001) such that women showed more idealization for modern products than vintage masculine products, F(1,173)=19.12, p<.001) while men showed no preference for products as a function of design era. These findings suggest that vintage-design products can positively bias memories of times-gone-by and thereby affect current preferences. Study 2 was designed to test whether gender role activation underlies the effects in Study 1. Using a manipulation from Shih et al. (1999) we primed participants with gender roles. Because we hypothesized these roles are central in vintage product valuation for women—but not men—we expected gender primed women provide better evaluation of, and higher valuation for, vintage products as compared with modern products. We again expected no effect for men. Consistent with our predictions we found, in females, an interaction between gender role prime and preference for products, such that women primed with traditional gender roles evaluated vintage (but not modern) products when they were gender stereotypic (e.g., a mixer), but lower (compared with modern items) when they were seen as generally masculine items (e.g., a cocktail making set; F(3,65)=3.41, p=.023). Importantly, we also find that vintage-design makes women remember the past as being more positive for women, and this biased memory for the past mediates these effects. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that products from the same era can evoke different social identities and behavioral ideals. Women, who have seen vast role changes since the design era of the vintage products, seem to carry with them two era-specific sets of associations whereas men only carry one.