I have always enjoyed wearing vintage clothing and used to love going to flea markets, picking up items and saying: “My grandmother wore that,” or “My mother had those.” Then it happened: I picked up a dress and said, “I owned that!” When you get old enough to remember the first time around, can you still wear retro without looking dated?
Loving resale is a good thing, no question, but it has also led to a situation where the whole meaning of “vintage” has become confused with “used clothes” and “retro” — which are, in fact, not actually synonyms.
There is, as it turns out, no generally accepted definition of “vintage” — The Vou.com newsletter describes it as “any object representing a previous era or social period, at least 20 years old but not older than 100 years.” Vestiaire says that vintage is “15 years old or older.” Many other sites use the term simply to mean old — and by “old,” I mean last season.
Let me tell you: “Vintage” does not mean last season.
And that, in answer to your question, has absolutely no age limit.
Persons:
“, Z, ” Vestiaire
Organizations:
Cambridge
Locations:
Larchmont, N.Y