The Dreamy Aspects of Vintage Clothing
Anyone who wears vintage clothing daily (or probably any 'subcultural' form of dress) are frequently confronted with defending the way you dress. I get asked 'why' a lot, and I don't always know what to say. It's a part of my way of self expression, but by no means my identity. I've always been concerned with nostalgia and find it inextricably bound up with fantastical aesthetics, and vintage clothing offers the perfect playground. In an article I recently wrote on Sofia Coppolas Marie Antoinette (2006), I pondered upon how the past becomes a fantasy dimension for fashion in period pieces. It is really the same way with my approach to vintage.
With vintage clothing, especially from the 1930s and 1940s getting increasingly more popular (thanks to social media), the style one might have picked to stand out looks more and more similar to what 'everyone else' is wearing all of a sudden. I've never been historically accurate with my dress, I dress according to an aesthetic that is mixed up with everything else I like, although I'm quite certain the look comes off as very historically accurate vintage. But the important thing is, I know it's 'me'. If I was putting everything together like it was 1939, trying to put on some kind of 'past life identity' it wouldn't feel right. The undefinable feeling of 'classical pastness' is what draws me to this specific style. It's so easily blendable with my overall aesthetics, but it's increasingly hard to explain to curious outsiders.
I have never been concerned with 'fitting in', and with the vintage community becoming increasingly more homogenous, I feel we can take creative measures to make it our own.
