Today I read an article in Fantastic Man about vintage, 'THE VINTAGE HUNT' by CHARLIE PORTNER. It was one of the best written articles I've ever read in any publication, be it The New Yorker, or newspapers or any fashion magazine. In a time when vintage has and will increasingly play such an important role in the world of fashion, this article has allowed me to look at vintage in a different light. Probably more bad than good, but I don't know. And raised a few interesting points about vintage that I would like to share with you.
In Singapore, we have hardly any vintage clothing stores. Once in a while, we will have a few flea markets a year, held for a maximum of two to three days at most, selling mostly secondhand garments, handmade accessories and jewelry or simply clothes that were bought on impulse or couldn't fit the body anymore. Our Salvation Army shouldn't even be called a thrift store, I don't think it is even worthy of that name. Yes, the items there are cheap, but the quality and the variety of clothes....let's just say that the prices are the only thing that can excite one. The closest we are to vintage, are usually of stores in Haji Lane (somewhat a street in Singapore that carries 'indie' labels and fashion, I guess that's how you can put it) that sources for clothes overseas (Australia, Bangkok, Korea perhaps) and prices are definitely not as affordable as vintage in places where I guess, vintage is pretty common. Blog-shops perhaps are the only way of getting vintage here in Singapore, but as to how authentic they are, it is still pretty doubtful. Overall, vintage is lacking in Singapore, probably due to our lack of history of fashion, if you get what I mean. And whatever vintage that comes out of shops here are probably recreations, and are as young as your baby nephew. Or your yet to be born child. I do not kid. (OMG, I LOVE THE PUNS I'M MAKING.)
Whenever I bring up the idea to my parents of wanting to go on a vintage shopping trip, my mom would always say that these vintage are essentially the clothes of the dead. I rephrase, I mean the reason that these clothes are being sold because their owners are dead and not literally, what dead people wear or what grave-hunters dig out of the coffins. Ok, I was jokin' about the second part. Being the pesky naggy mother who would never approve of wild shopping frenzies, she would always disprove me of buying vintage, giving the excuse that well, spirits live in those clothes. (Oh I love the superstitious grandmother stories. Shall we start on that?) The thing is, that there could be some truth to this. Am I freaking you out already? Ok maybe I am, I don't know much about the part of spirits haunting, but somehow the tickling of your skin when wearing vintage MAY not be the works of ghosts but could well be that of fleas that once belong to a basement of an abandoned house. Of a dead man.
"Before vintage became part of the modern fashion lexicon, it used to be all mothballs and thrift. Now the four-figure outfits are often "inspired" by flea-market finds, the fashion industry is increasingly reliant on vintage dealer to keep coming up with old good. It's a world full of secrets. Which designers are borrowing what? Why? And where do vintage dealers get those clothes in the first place?"
The article follows a vintage dealer on a vintage hunt. On a Saturday morning in an American suburb, a queue is trying to form outside the house of a dead person, in which the vintage dealer, Cesar is sourcing to expand his inventory. Come 8am, the door swings open and the organizer of the sale ushers in the queue, "Let's get this over with, let's get this over with." This is what is known as a tag sale-all of the junk in the house can be bought; the house is open to anyone to pull it apart. These tag sales are the bread and butter for vintage dealers like Cesar. Anything that can be found in this house are for sale. But to a vintage dealer, usually such sales are not exactly treasure troves brimming full of good vintage finds. It really depends on what the late owner has and the ability of the dealer to know where the best items are hidden at; most people usually go to the basement to sniff out good bargains but for vintage dealers, common sense says, THE BEDROOM.
We often think that these items that are sourced out by these dealers are meant to be sold to us common folks. However, it is not a widely known fact that some of these clothes are not up for sale to the public. Cesar with his partner operates CHERRY, a New York vintage store, as well as what they call the CHERRY RESOURCE CENTER, an appointment-only warehouse from which stylists borrow for shoots, costume designers borrow for films and more lucratively, designers rent or buy what they call as 'inspiration'. Cesar says in the article that he can walk through a department store and recognize many of the new garments on sale as being sourced from his archive. In a way, vintage is increasingly playing a bigger role in the fashion industry: the fashion of the past is becoming the fashion of the future.
The next house Cesar goes to is an abandoned house whose owner died two years ago (I told you so), but has not been sold yet. Most of the items in this house is left untouched. Usually at such sales, there would not be any family present, but this time the men running this sale informs everyone that relatives are present. For what reason do relatives have to resort to such sales, it is not known. Many of these people visiting such sales are usually from the local neighborhood, on the search for cheap bargains. Contrary to what we think, vintage dealers that are present at such sales are few and far between. Few are interested in clothing during such sales, and even if they are, what these locals are looking for, are very different from what the dealers have in mind. Items at these sales usually go for a dollar, nothing too extravagant, after all it is still the belongings of the dead. The surprising (and scary) truth is that, after trading hands, the value of these items can sky-rocket up into the hundreds. Cesar pulls out a stained canvas satchel with a yellowed rubber lining. It probably had been previously used for fishing, no doubt sold at a dollar at such sales and attached to it is a CHERRY store tag of its new retail price: $200.
I'm speechless.
(I guess it's true that vintage is from the dead. I guess that's why we should always trust our mothers.)
"The vintage look became a global trend in the mid 90s, but before that the word had different connotations from country to country. In the United States, it mainly stood for thrift stores, in the UK it meant either cosy charity shops or tourist traps such as Camden Market. In countries like Italy, the idea of second hand clothing seemed shameful." And I personally think it is the same for Asian countries. Not that we Asian countries are on the same level of taste and luxury as Italy, we basically have this traditional mindset that anything secondhand is not as good as brand new. After all, we have the money, why resort to used items. However, this mindset is slowly eroding and influenced by Western cultures so much so that vintage and thrift seems to be a new fad. Or an 'in' thing and whoever wears vintage is part of the 'in' crowd.
Vintage has always played a significant role in high-fashion, with designers such as Miuccia Prada using vintage influences to get away from her brand's history of black nylon, Marc Jacobs at his own label and Louis Vuitton and even Nicholas Ghesquiere who openly admitted to copying a distinctive patchwork by the late designer Mr Kaisik Wong. But all of this can be attributed to Martin Margiela who was one of the first designers to use vintage as inspiration. While Martin Margiela had previously worked with flea market finds, it was only in September 1994 that he decided to take things a little further. In fact, Margiela's mindset was that, instead of imitating originals, he decided to make complete reproductions of garments. He had even put tags at the back of his clothes to inform people that his were reproductions of old garments. "I think I always look forward. But it's a nice feeling for myself to go forward by looking backward." Margiela told Miss Suzy Menkes before he became reclusive to the media.
Vintage as Inspiration, or that's what they call it:
Balenciaga Spring 2002 Collection and Mr Kaisik Wong's 1970s creation. Note the similarity in patchwork, and the lines.
On the left is Nicolas Ghesquiere's work for Balenciaga's Resort 2010 collection. On the right however, is a "Parrot" Jacket made by East West Musical Instruments, a San Francisco leather goods company that operated in the 60s through the 70s. For greater details, please look here.
There are similar 'resource centers' similar to CHERRY around the world (usually in fashion capitals, where designers are based in). London has RELLIK, famous for its Vivienne Westwood archives and Los Angeles has DECADES, famous for its wonderful vintage glamorous designer pieces. (Recently, Kristin Davis of Sex and The City fame wore a Jean Patou Haute Couture by Christian Lacroix dress from the archives of DECADES to a premiere.) While they do operate as shop fronts, their main business is still loaning their archives to designers and stylists. It is said that some houses take vintage research so seriously, that there a few who even said to X-Ray their garments to learn about their inner workings. In fact, "it's clear that pretty much every American designer make use of vintage regularly," as quoted from the article.
But having written that, it is easy to have the misconception that designers blatantly copy the clothes. It is however the craftsmanship and construction techniques that designers look out for and take reference from these vintage pieces. In a time when technology is moving at such a rapid speed, the original old-fashioned ways are replaced with high-tech machinery and mass production. These methods of creating garments are rapidly dying out. Say for example, like with denim, the old machinery no longer exists. Post Korean War, the old machinery were replaced with super-fast high-fabric-yielding machines. With vintage, it is therefore possible to see how old denim is made.
The founder of ACNE who is a client of CHERRY, says in the article, 'The thing with vintage research, you think it's going to flavour the whole collection, but usually you end up not using the pieces that they inspire. From them you end up knowing what not to do and pushing yourself further. The hard thing with copying a vintage piece is that it usually doesn't work.....It's usually from another time, which means it's not going to work today. If you really just copied these pieces, designing would be a very boring job.'
It might seem absurd that the fashion industry may use something bought for one dollar as creative inspiration for something that may hang in the rails of a high-end boutique selling at a four figure price. But on the flip-side, it is up to the designer to interpret the thoughts and efforts of years ago that went into the garment and bring it back to life. After all, we humans are mad about vintage, and are we complaining? Nostalgia definitely has a funny way with us. Or is it that maybe we just do not know how much vintage have been used to shape what we are wearing presently, or going to be in the future. The truth is, I do not see a day where vintage will stop or go out of trend. It probably will not too, given that the coats from Marc Jacobs FW10 were rethought from Marc's archives or the sweaters and satchels from H&M could be inspired from vintage finds.
Vintage is a continuous process. Who knows maybe one day, some designer from the 2100s may get inspiration from Uggs and rework it into a space-boot or something. You never know.....and I thank the heavens that I will not live to see that day.
I strongly urge everyone to get Fantastic Man and read the full article (around 4 pages of fantastic text). It is a fantastic piece of writing. Mine is only a fantastic summary of my thoughts and a small fantastic part of the whole article.
Ok that sounded real narcissistic, so please ignore that 'un-fantastic' piece of narcissism. Fantastic narcissism is best enjoyed when made subtlety. (Ok, I'm done with the use of the word 'fantastic'.)
