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Agree? Disagree? TheGloss editor Lilit Marcus, a lover of vintage dresses, responds.
Women who only wear vintage dresses are smug. Meanwhile, women who own 3,000 designer vintage dresses are dolphins-want-to-punch-them-in-the-face smug. Charlotte Smith, who owns said dresses and would like you to know that she and the Maharajah of Jaipur are BFF 4-Ever, explains that “the women at the Met ball looked like complete tarts!” in their newfangled dresses. She concedes that Sarah Jessica Parker looked okay, but only because she was wearing vintage Halston from the 1970′s.
First of all, Katy Perry did not look like a tart. She looked like a human lightbulb-rainbow, and it was magical. Second of all, Anna Wintour has never, ever looked like a tart, and never will. Charlotte Smith, you are a bag full of lies. But it’s not surprising. Because vintage-snobs tell all kinds of lies. Like these!:
Oh, everything was just CUT so much better then!
Yeah, and in the old days no one disrespected their elders and teabaggers and socialists played together in the soda-shop where everyone was skinny. When people talk about magnificent cut, they’re talking about things hand stitched by Coco Chanel. They’re not talking about the 50 year old dress with the Gimbel’s tag and the sweat stains you just bought. That dress is cut like shit and it smells like mothballs.
None of this modern day clothing fits me!
What’s it like being a midget with cone shaped breasts? Awesome?
You just don’t see the same kind of high quality patterns and fabric in modern day clothing!
Oh, puce and red paisley velour isn’t around in Topshop? Try to figure out why.
I like the way every piece of clothing has its own unique story!
Oh. Please. These are not your grandmother’s jewels bequeathed to you on her deathbed with a beautiful handwritten note. Sure, every piece of vintage clothing has a story. A story you don’t know. Because you just got that dress when you were killing time before going over to ironic-bowling-night or whatever the vintage-snob-hipsters are doing these days.
Only wearing vintage makes me more unique because nobody else will be wearing the same thing!
For the love of God, develop a personality. And, on the rare occasions it happens, an ability to high five a girl who is wearing the same dress as you.
I cannot believe your comment about fast fashion collaborations with designers. Sure they may look similar to the real thing but made of cheap martial and will probably fall apart after one wash.
I also can’t believe your raving about target and h&m. Who are you? Ugghhh sure you can find some thing nice made with child labour that will fall apart after a few washes. Then you have to go back and buy something new. Perpetuating the fast fashion cycle. I see women all the time in “cute”, “trendy” outfits but when you get close you can see uneven seams, pilling fabric and low quality. Polyester never drapes the same as silk.
Oh fun. Yet another person claiming that anyone who wears vintage is this thing called “hipster”.
I’m going to try and explain what you seem to be having trouble with. Really everyone wears a vintage style- or recreation of it. Most trends are re-runs from the past, so what’s so wrong with wearing the real deal? And what’s awful about people who try and stay away from ever changing trends and actually go out and find what they like? OH THE THOUGHT OF IT!
Look, nothing I do is ironic, I don’t stop liking a band just because they’re “mainstream”, I wear clothes that fit me, and I most definitely would never pass for a homeless person… neither would I want to.
But since I like vintage clothes thats makes me a self-absorbed hipster snob. Okay whatever.
QUERIDA AGNES
My love your comment ^^^ just proved and re-proved everything in the aforementioned article. GOOD GOD Bizhatch you are subscribing to the same damn brand of mo fo consumerism, so dont rant and rave in an unnecessarily long paragraph about your Louboutin heels and Pucci dress because you still suck as a person, the lengths that you go to just to prove that you are diffo. Use your dang personality instead.
I love vintage, wear vintage, and rock vintage. I think that all the 3 or 4 posters that responded to this article with their “amen” “yay” and “horray” are the sad few that do not have personal style and subscribe to modern conventions of fashion instead of creating a style all their own. Please, H&M? Target? Holding those bastions of consumerism in such high regard because they rolled out “designer lines” made of cheap materials and shoddy sewing just is a testament of how limited your viewpoints are. And just like everything else in fashion, you can’t assume that all vintage is fantastic. There were bad trends back then like there are now. But the truth is, and it is and always will be, that clothing made back then was better cut, and made with better fabrics than most of today’s fast fashion fixes. There were unions back then that took pride in their work, before the era of overseas labor that almost all the modern labels subscribe to nowadays, which holds to no standard of production other than how fast they can it out. And to the poster who said that all vintage clothing is only for larger sizes, let me tell you that it is waaaay harder to find larger sizes than smaller ones, you just haven’t had any luck. I personally love the fact that by wearing vintage I distinguish myself from the rest of today’s conventional mass buyers. If that makes me a smug snob, I’ll raise a glass to ya wearing my Pucci dress with Loboutin heels. The lady that wrote this article just hopped on all the negative aspects of vintage and rode that pony into the sunset. Well, sayonara to you lady, I hope it made you feel fantastically well in your cheap-china-made suit that you overpaid for at Banana Republic.
Good lord. That’s not a line. Thats an illness.
Show me the Whitney Port post and we can fight about that – can’t see it.
I mean, I just think every color in the rainbow doesn’t need to be on the SAME vest-accented romper. http://thegloss.com/fashion/whitney-ports-new-line-is-like-bubblegum-ice-cream/
In the words of my old history of costume teacher “It’s not what you wear it’s how you wear it”. You can wear modern and look vintage or wear vintage and look modern – it’s all about the attitude and how you put the outfit together that matters – and that should be all that matters!
And, yes, I am one of those people who will buy an outfit or an item from a charity shop just because I “want to rescue it from going to a bad home”.
Sad, I know, but it makes me happy. … See more
Viva le vintage!!!
:)
Show me one of those sales where you don’t have to queue from silly o’clock and then watch it sell for 3 times the RRP on ebay and then I might see plausible side of your argument. Unless it was M for Madonna….
Fair. I guess the cost thing is undeniable. And the traffic is slowing on this, so I have to go hate something new and exciting now. But I will fight with you on any other post to boost comments. On which note, Whitney Port’s new line is ugly.
Okay, the cost thing is a great point. You do get more options for your buck at vintage stores. But what about all the great designers doing lower cost lines now? You can venture over to H&M and pick up pieces from Karl Lagerfeld! Sonia Rykiel! Jimmy Choo! What about the Liberty of London stuff for target? That stuff rocks. I feel like I grew up with impression that low-cost clothing meant a totally boring t-shirt and pair of khakis, but now that’s definitely not the case anymore.
and yes being a cone-boobed midget in a 50′s dress rocks!
I think the lying bit is a bit harsh though, maybe that could have rephrased it to ’5 boring things lovers of vintage harp on about’ (because its true, we do – that’s passion for you :-). We are generally a nice bunch see http://vintagesecretblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/birth-of-new-movement-ngcs.html I agree its not the only choice and people can bang on about vintage (myself included!), but nowadays its often, unfortunately, the only affordable choice. If I could afford a well made item of modern clothing I would be in there like a shot, but the items I love and that are tailored are way out of my price range and my experience of high street is not that great (very shrinky/bobbly). Maybe you should do a blog on just that so people can learn to mix and match and retain value and quality? That would help as I have to do a TV item on just that Tuesday and I have no idea! I love a good 50′s hat as well and have plenty in my East London boudoir if you ever fancied a visit.
Naomi, eh, I don’t hate vintage. I mean, I collect hats from the 1950′s to wear around (they’re legitimately hard to find in normal stores!). I just hate people who talk about how it’s necessarily always better and the only acceptable clothing choice. Doing so seems exactly the same as people who bemoan the fact that the fact that there are just “no good movies these days” or “no sense of family values” or whatever. And on that note, I would kind of love to be a midget with cone shaped breasts.
Topshop copy every old pattern and style going, so that’s utter tosh. And as I am one, I can say being a midget with cone shaped breasts is awesome! I get to look good without having to pander to someone else’s idea of attraction.
In response to skinny dude, one of my major complaints about vintage is that everything is made for large people. All my suit coats and jackets are size XS or XXS, sizes that don’t even seem to have been invented until the 1990s, when supermodels became a thing. Vintage = hippy. As in, not for hippies, but for people with enormous hips.
For me, a short, skinny dude, I will say that I have an easier time fitting into off the rack vintage suits. Skinny people, as a race, are a dying breed in this country and they just don’t make many 29″ waisted pants or 36″ jackson.
Sure, but you also buy new clothes and don’t go around talking about how you’d only ever wear vintage.
Someone’s awfully angry over nothing. Good luck fixing that.
Amen.
Love it. There is nothing worse than pretentious snobs, whether it’s about music, fashion, film, art, etc. They all suck equally. Get over yourselves, you are not better than anyone. We all have our own tastes, and if you like vintage, cool, wear it. Don’t hate on what other people wear though. It’s none of their business.
Oh my god I love you.
Thank you for this.
People can keep their baggy sweaty grandma clothes. And the blouse that someone who is now an old man once spit up on as a baby! Gross.