Since moving to our Victorian home in Pittsburg, I’ve been come a rather avid antique/vintage shopper. It’s actually rather easy in a region of the country rich with history. Pittsburg as well as the neighboring towns all have a good deal of antique/flea market type shops, which I have falling in love with. These shops are a great place to find vintage furniture, knickknacks and even fashion. One of my obsessions has become hats.
On a whim one day I came across a pair of vintage hats for like $5. Now I have bought hats before, one or two and even a very nice vintage one once, but I wouldn’t call myself a hat collector. However, after finding the two lovely hats I mentioned I started finding more and yet more at other local shops. Before I knew it I had the start of a rather impress vintage hat collection. What I needed to do now was to wear these hats, but how? I wanted to be authentic with the style so I decided to do some research on the topic of vintage dressing.
I’ve always been a fan of vintage clothes and often found myself buying clothes that were more vintage inspired than modern. Many of the favorite films and TV shows were era period, being partial to the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s. As I embarked on my research into dressing I came across the book “Style Me Vintage” by Naomi Thopmpson. The book began by explaining what is considered vintage, here’s an excerpt from the book:
Purist would say that “vintage” is per-1960, and post 1960 is retro.
Regardless of what purist say, the book goes on to indicate that it’s generally considered that the 1980’s and back are retro/vintage. Personally having memories from the 80’s I don’t believe it to be vintage, but okay. The book goes on by describing what to look for in vintage fashion, types of things to never throw out, and then goes on to describe the fashionable looks of the decade starting with the 1920’s.
Although the book gave rather good you tips on how to dress vintage like, and even places to shop,it seemed to focus on those places that can only be found in a metropolis like California. I suddenly felt disheartened, remembering that not so long ago as a teenager working in a library I came across a similar type book on vintage dressing, and found it to be difficult to find such clothes, so in a midst of an identity crisis I went all goth with purple hair, instead. Nevertheless I really wanted to try this vintage thing out, after all I did have vintage hats. But it’s one thing to read about it in a book, but do people really dress vintage?
I continued my research and discovered that dressing vintage is not as odd as it may sound, and there’s even a rather larger community of vintage dress bloggers out there, who provide a lot of good info on buying vintage, dressing vintage and yes even sewing vintage. These bloggers are very helpful and quit entertaining as well. Here are a few of my favorite and I do recommend you follow if you are thinking about going vintage:
- Retro Chick
- Vixen Vintage
- Dairy of a Vintage Girl
- Gertie’s Blog for Better Sewing
- Vintage in a Modern World
- Va-Voom vintage
Many of these vintage dress bloggers are just regular people who got tired of wearing yoga pants and flip flops and wanted to feel not only comfortable but feminine in what they wear and the fashion of days be gone seemed to have all these qualities.
Looking back at the vintage fashion it is evident that people cared how they looked back in the day, but I’m not saying that in a vanity kind of way. Today there seems to be a “whatever I got on” dressing mentality with individuals dawning flip-flops and shorts in the winter and furry boots in the summer, and many of them with hair as if it never seen a comb. I’ve even been wittiness to seeing people wear pajamas and slippers out and about. Despite these dressing trends, which have become somewhat commonplace, there are countless studies on the phenomenon called “enclothed cognition,” or the influence your clothes can have on the way you think, feel, and behave. In other words we should “dress for success”.
We act the way we dress. Neglected and untidy clothes reflect a neglected and untidy mind. –Unknown Source
This is true, since it’s all about how you feel, and if your dressed your best, you feel your best, then you do your best. Sadly this is not how everyone feels. Now that’s not to say we everyone should go vintage, but one must admit that back in the day they knew what being well put together meant.
Some people would argue though that the looks of the past are anti-feminine in the way they portray women with their hour-glass shape, and what about cleaning the house in heels and pearls. The first compliant is one that many of the vintage bloggers talk about, and state quite frankly that wearing a frilly skirt doesn’t make you anti-feminine if anything it should make you more feminine and girly. The way you choose to dress and look is strictly a personal matter. The second complaint about pearls and heals, this is just the Hollywood perception of the time frame, in fact most woman had what were called play dresses, where the full skirt was detachable and underneath was a romper type outfit (one piece with shorts). The lady could run around the house doing earns, house cleaning and the like in this, then if they needed to head out they could dawn a quick scarf around the head and attach the skirt back, making them look like they spent hours on their appearance.
Even at home people dressed up in case of the unexpected visitor. There were ladies house dress, which is essentially a wrap house coat that looks like a dress, in case an unexpected guest should ring the door. Then their’s the pajamas, which typically came with a house coat and by today standards look like something you’d wear out in public.
After reading all about vintage and finding all these blog resources I thought I would go ahead and try my hand at dressing vintage for real. Vintage clothes on the other hand were hard to come by, and well people seemed to be smaller back in the day, so even if I were to come across a vintage frock, it probably wouldn’t fit, not to mention I have issues with second-hand clothes. Having thumbed through the book again I realized that I have always gravetated towards vintage style clothes, even in the modern market, and that some of my current dress in my closet although only a year or two old were very vintage in style, and if paired with the right accessories could create the right look.
All of the looks above were created with clothes I already owned and I was thrilled how they came out so well when accessorized the right way, with the right hair. Though I was happy knowing I could pull off dressing vintage, I still felt a few select pieces in my closet doesn’t make a daily wardrobe.
It turns out that wearing vintage has become so popular that there are several online vintage/vintage inspired clothing stores. Here are a few of my favorite.
The shops above have a fantastic line of clothes, however they can be a bit pricey, especially if you’re looking at the authentic vintage gown. Since I don’t have hundreds of dollars or even 60 dollars to drop on a new dress it dawned on me, wait a second I have a sewing machine. I can now make my own vintage clothes. But I only started to sew and I still needed practice, besides I still felt that I needed to learn more about dressing vintage.
Given my busy schedule and my beginner skills at sewing the past semester I have been trying to be more vintage in what I wear, but some times I’m pressed for time and just do a quick clip of the hair and toss on a nice suitable dress and then off to teach class. Luckily however, some quick vintage looks are quite easy. I have bought a couple of nice pencil skirts and try to wear them as often as I can with nice sweater or collared shirt, very 50’s -60’s in style. I’ve also been trying to incorporate hats when I can, but now that it’s winter, I don’t want my vintage hats ruined in the snow, so I’m not wearing them as much.
During the semester break I’m also playing around more with my hair trying to learn more quick vintage looks, and trying to master that 60’s beehive, with my dead straight fine hair. I also hope to practice sewing some vintage frocks of my own.
If anything I hope by the end of this post I hope I’ve inspired you to look into vintage fashion or at the very least to “dress for success”.
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