Tuesday 2 April 2013

Vintage, its a dirty word.

Can I just say “vintage” is becoming a dirty word, overused by people doing knock off stuff. High Street shops use it to describe their cheap and nasty version of something once brilliant. People with no fashion history knowledge, throw the word around to flog us yet more rubbish. Vintage is meant to be used to describe something of age; I meet antique and vintage dealers all the time and everyone has a different idea of how old something has to be before they can use that word. But big organisations have realised that vintage is now a massive trend and are using it to reproduce nasty versions of something that was once a quality item. All you have to do is type in vintage clothes into eBay and all types of 'repro' crap come’s up. 

A word that pisses me off even more is bloody “retro”. If someone describes something as retro it is basically a piece of shit. Retro is generally used to describe something that looks vintage, normally by someone that has no fucking idea, when it was actually made to sell under the whole “vintage” umbrella. So I'm asking you, swot up on what style each era possessed. It’s interesting, ask questions, read some books and you may find a whole new style that you never knew was out there. And please, PLEASE don’t buy anything that is sold to you that's reproduction, or something a bigwig advertising director has decided they will call vintage because it has a stylistic nod to a certain era! Make your own decisions, you may find that you only want to wear completely modern stuff, or that you want to dress entirely in 1950’s gear, there is nothing wrong with modern copies, or wearing something that is from the 90’s that looks sixties, you make your own mind up, and don’t be swayed by bullshit miss-use of an incredible word.

6 comments:

Ross Mountney said...

Wow! That's told us then! :) x

Lucys Lounge said...

here here . i so agree . i hate the word vintage .

Unknown said...

glad you agree xx

Unknown said...

Vintage: from the wine industry (d'uh!). Wine doesn't have to be 'x-years old' to be vintage wine. It has to be from a -good- year, ie for that grape, region et cetera.
So, 50s thin ties, 60s three-button suits, 80s Rubix cubes. These things are vintage.
If they were made more recently than their vintage, ie a 50s style dress made in the 90s, then they are retro.
Retro: behind, in the past. If it was made, at the time, in the latest trend it was not retrospective.
Bleedin' simple.

Unknown said...

haha thank you ric, you are right of course, we agree with you xxx

Anonymous said...

I totally agree, I hate how on say ebay or etsy vintage is just now anything that looks a little different. A t-shirt from 2000 is sold for $60 because it is 'vintage'. Or how people classify anything that they are wearing as vintage because ohh maybe it has polka dots. I hate saying vintage now, I've started using the term second-hand because that's all vintage is.