Vintage Turning Point

[epr25]

This has all come about from the trip to Target I had tonight. I went to pick up some bobbe socks to wear with my new circle skirt proudly found at Salvation Army the other day. While I was there I thought that I would look around a little. My day to day wear is usually 50's, skirts and blouses. Tonight I had on a skirt set, tan with dark brown embroidery on the top, brown suede sling backs and a matching brown purse, hair in semi roll style and of course red lipstick. To me a normal put together outfit. I was soon surrounded by girls in the clothing section there I would think not that much younger then myself. I am 28. They looked as if they had stepped out of Paris Hilton's closet. Tight holey jeans, shirts that look like maternity wear (layered up of course) huge sunglasses, well you get the picture. They just couldn't decide how many of these bathing suits they could fit in their bag destined for Cancun. At that point it made me wonder "How did I end up the way I am?" Has anyone else wondered how you veered off the main stream path so much? To me girls like that are cookie cutter a dime a dozen but why aren't I? That then lead me to thinking how did this vintage fascination start anyway? Does anyone else remember what you vintage turning point was? I am glad that I am who I am. But it just made me wonder?

 

[CanadaDoll]

I would have been 7 or 8 when I saw A League of Their Own, and thought they were some of the greatest women I'd ever seen(told my mommy that I wanted dresses like their uniformslol ), but of course at that age I had no concept of how to shop, muchless how to find vintage clothes. Further on I tried to fit in so of course no vintage, and then about the same time I started spending time really talking with my now boss, whom I'd found to be slightly intimidating cause I didn't work with him on a regular basis, who is very goth, of the victorian variety, and just hearing some of his stories made me realise it was my personality that kept me from fitting in(I guess my opinions just don't mesh with the Paris Hilton majoritylol ), so I may as well be an outsider doing what I want[huh] and now here I am, sticking out like a sore thumb and not caring a whit

 

[Voodoo Kitten]

I've often wondered myself.

Both my sisters are "trend followers", my one sister spends all her husbands money on Coach purses she leaves on the ground so her dogs can pee on them and her kids can walk on them. She "has to" get a new car every four years, (or less). My other sister is the same way, not so much into the designer purse thing, but she's into modern music, has an SUV, kinda yuppie like.

Meanwhile I cruise around town in my old cars and dress, (or try to, I'm lazy), 1950's style. I listen to music that was popular 50 years ago and admire the old furniture and stuff in vintage shops.

Strange how people who grew up the in the same house can be so different.....[huh]

But I like being "me", even when I get stares and overhear the comments, I wouldn't change who I am for the world.


ps, Paris Hilton- blech!!!!

 

[Shearer]

Yeesh, I have no idea. I think I was born this way! lol

I've always been into something other than the mainstream, even when I was young. When I was a Freshman in high school my nickname was Punky Brewster because of the way I used to dress... knee high/thigh high socks, crazy dresses, barrettes, sheer tops, Doc Martens. My hair was close to being purple!

It mellowed down the older I got, but even when I was dressing like that I was still into vintage stuff. No one else I knew watched old movies and could name the actors. I remember being 18 and trying to tell someone about Django Reinhardt... of course no one I knew had heard of him.

I used to watch this show that was on AMC back when AMC was still cool about the designers and the makeup artists in the Golden Era. I remember they had a show on Adrian, one on Max Factor. I learned that makeup artists for Liz Taylor used to keep eyebrow pencils in the fridge so they would be hard enough to draw on her brows one super-thin hair at a time. And how Bette Davis always refused to wear a bra and she frustrated costumers with her sagging boobs

Anyway, by the time I got to college I was able to meet more people, but you know, it's still hard to find someone to sit down with and have a long conversation about some vintage stuff [huh] But I guess it's like that for anyone with interests that are so off the radar.

So to sum up all that rambling in one thought... There was no real "Aha!" moment that pointed me on the path where I'm treading.

 

[pigeon toe]

When I was 6 I fell in love with Dylan from 90210. The kind of modern-day James Dean was a look that I found to die for in men when I was little, and then when I was in middle school I discovered the hunkiness that is rockabilly dudes.

It wasn't until I was in high school when I actually started to wear vintage for school dances, or just for fun. I was very into riot grrrl (feminist punk) back then, and Bettie Page was one of the icons for feminist punk girls. I idolized her! I also became totally obsessed with US History and collecting vintage snapshots. However, it wasn't really until my first year in college that I started getting more heavily into vintage. With my boyfriend being into vintage style as well, we became enablers to each other's vintage addictions! But it wasn't until the Fedora Lounge that I truly fell off the deep end! lol

 

[Christine]

I think my interest in everything vintage started when I watched 'I Love Lucy' reruns when I was younger. I just always thought they all looked so sharp and sophisticated. You can tell they were very careful in the way that they presented themselves, even if it was just a tv show. Everyone now-a-days looks like they rolled out of bed walking around the supermarket in holey sweat pants and stained shirts. Now that I am no longer a teenager and my mom keeps telling me to look like a young lady, i'm definitely taking hints from when women looked sexy and smart not slutty and stupid. lol

 

[ClaraB]

Not really a turning point, but an evolution...

I think about this question a lot, how I got to be who I am, and I think above all I have to thank my mother for it. Looking back I see that from a very young age my mother instilled in me a need to stand apart and be my own person, needless to say that my desire to just be me resulted in years of torment and ridicule throughout school but that too is important in making me who I am. As far as my love of all things vintage I think my mother is to be blamed for that as well. I think I was 12 or 13 when she presented me with a 1940's fur trimmed jacket from a local thrift shop. It was a beautiful jacket but being my stubborn young self I refused to wear it thinking that it was disgraceful because it had been worn by someone else and purchased at a thrift store (I thought shopping there made you poor). That same year my mother encouraged me to wear a vintage ball gown to a party and I did but only to appease her, again thinking how weird it was to be wearing some old dress that belonged to someone else. Today I try desperately to fit back into that dress and wear the jacket regularly, in fact it has become my favorite winter jacket. I spend lots of time these days scouring various thrift shops and vintage clothing stores looking for the perfect vintage garment (perfect being it fits and looks decent). I guess my mother saw something in me that as a silly adolescent I couldn't see myself. I tried many looks on, an eighties punk thing, a hippy thing.... always encompassing vintage garments but always feeling like I was wearing a costume or playing dress up. Finally I've found the right fit, where everything comes together and I am as comfortable with what is on the outside as I am with what is within.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Like Shearer said, I also was born this way -- one of my earliest memories, when I couldn't have been much more than two years old, was being fascinated by my grandmother's lipstick. She kept the same basic '40s look about her for most of her adult life -- even to the point of dressing up in a nice suit to go to the First National for groceries, and when I was little girl, I just figured that was the way grown up ladies were *supposed* to look.

By the time I was in grammar school I knew I was different -- I remember being very upset when the Girl Scouts adopted trendy new uniforms in the '70s, because I really liked the traditional green dress with the yellow bow, and I kept wearing mine till I outgrew it. I might have had to grow up in the '70s, but I wasn't about to participate in them.

By the time I hit my teens I'd already started collecting 30s and 40s era magazines and catalogs, and when I was old enough to start choosing my own clothes, I went for the most vintage-looking things I could find, if not actual vintage -- and I've been doing it ever since, to the point where I don't think I'd know how to dress modern if I *had* to.

 

[olive bleu]

I have always dressed differently from everyone else, even from a very early age, whether it was vintage or not. I have never really been interested in looking exactly like everyone else.

But, I grew up in a very tiny community that was very retro.Cheese was cut from a wheel,and our groceries were wrapped in brown paper & string.Coke was in glass bottles, and Candy was sold from big glass jars, and placed in a small paper bag for you. THis was only 30 years ago that i was 10, and i knew even then, that I adored this, and this was not the same experience that kids my age were having in most of the rest of North America.

Because, we were so isolated, I was very close to my family, and loved to hear my mother & aunts telling stories about what life was like for them as teenagers growing up in the 40's.I would stare at those pictures for hours and admire the beautiful clothes and hairstyles.I think a lot of us who pine for the golden era feel this way...almost like we were really there.

 

[Mojito]

Like Shearer and Lizziemaine, I was born this way. I've always marched to the beat of a different drum, in more than one way, and my personal style has been...anachronistic! Some of my earliest memories are of trying out different ways of wearing my mother's beautiful vintage shawls. My mother and grandmother put all their wonderful old clothes in a huge suitcase for me that became my 'dressing up box', and I dived into them for years.

I rather expected the opposite - that one day, a switch would be flicked in my head and I would become "modern" (which is how I thought of it conceptually - a vague catch-all term that covered fluoro tube skirts or whatever the fad of the day was). I remember distinctly expecting that I would hit 13, and suddenly I'd be wearing whatever the latest trend was. I anticipated this change with dread.

It never happened - and the family who have known me since I was born are not one whit surprised.

 

[goldwyn girl]

I also would say I was born this way. I can't remember not being interested in "the past". I never fitted in at school and had only a couple of friends. Most thought I was weird, which of course at school fitting in was the thing to do, I was weird. I have always loved old movies and TV, going through my Grandparents photo albums, playing in my grandma's clothes.

My grandparents bought a house built in the 1920's and it was never updated. It had a wood burning stove, no hot water, the toilet was outside, down a path. I loved to do the washing with the ringer, it still had the old copper. It was like stepping into the past. They even played cards in the evening instead of TV. My grandma did love a new fridge and it was funny because she never wanted to get rid of the old ones so on the back porch it was like a fridges though decades display lol .

They were always well dressed and my grandpa always wore a hat so I guess growing visiting them and the way my mum is it was natural for me to be "vintage" I don't think I could be any other way, And I don't ever want to be.

 

[Decobelle]

That's an interesting question, epr25. I can only echo some of the other ladies here and say I was born this way. I just loved the past, and had no interest in my own era. Shopping for school clothes in the 70s were tearful episodes because I hated the modern look (I was not a kid who really cared about fashion, I just wanted to wear smart frocks like Nancy Drew, not floppy bell bottoms). Luckily I had a wonderful grandma who made old fashioned clothes for me. I didn't really care what kids had to say about me and they had no power to change the way I was/am. What was a great disapointment though was not having a group of other vintage chums. If there had been a Powder Room then, I would have been so much happier, just to be able to share things like this with other girls who "get it." I was basically all alone in this at my school, and later in college. I would say a turning point - as far as realizing that of all the eras I loved the 40s, especially the wartime 40s, the best of all - was when I saw the movie musical The Fleet's In on television, in the early 90s. It suddenly just clicked for me!

 

[VanillaT]

Haha. I have always been like this. I used to wear pilgrim outfits and prarie girl outfits to elementary school. My mom tried to convince me that I would get reamed by my fellow students, but I knew what I wanted and I was stubborn. I was in the third grade when I actually tried to make my room "30s" and wore outfits which I thought could've been outfits my dad's sisters would've worn when they were little.

 

[Lady Day]

I was born this way too.

I have always been interested in old things, always. I love the fact that someone made this their own for a time, and now its my turn. The idea that this item that was made by a person will still be this item after I am long gone just makes me feel like I will have a connection to something after I really am gone.

Also, Im not skinny, so most of my clothing growing up was made or altered. I was a geek, big fro, circle glasses, HUGE hips (way before my time ) and I just didnt look the part of the other 'mainstream' gals. So into my head I ran, and what I wanted to remember I drew on paper.

As far as the look now, I just feel it suits me. My family has a great archive of old things, so I was always around them (still am with all my mother's things). She even said herself, when I was younger, that 'She always likes that old stuff. Always has, have no idea why.'

Im an old stuff liker. I can live (do actually) with that


LD

 

[Shearer]

I love reading everyone's replies!

Yay for all the quirky girls! :eusa_clap

While I was reading this I just remembered that on my 7th birthday I insisted on dressing up in a black velvet/cream taffeta long sleeved monstrosity for school.

On my 10th birthday it was a baby blue chiffon number with rosettes all over it.

Hooooboy. My parents shoulda known. lol

 

[ohairas]

This is creepy as I've been thinking of starting a similar thread!

As most, I suppose I was born this way too. But I think I really got started when I was about 4 or 5. My grandma gave me this big vintage purse filled with old makeup to play with. I of course loved the makeup, but also her old 50's purses.. and this was the 70's! She taught me how to put on the Ponds and use Dove soap. I've always loved playing dress up and wearing heels. And ah.. the nostolgic smell of Coty powder....

I remember I would always draw princesses with the big poufy sleeves like Cinderella. I'll never forget my mom and all laughing at me, thinking that they were breasts! I'm like NO, it's her DRESS!!

My great aunt always had junk and clothes to go through, and I'm kicking myself today for not keeping MORE of it!

In highshcool I dressed a bit differently, but I wasn't secure enough to really go for it, ya know? And now it's like, hey.. this is me~ take it or leave it!

Nikki

 

[Adelaidey]

Alas, I have written too much yet again... oh well!

I loved reading all your stories ladies! I don't really know if I was born this way-- if it was genetics, those in my family certainly got scrambled; my younger bro is an alt/modern-hippy/longhaired barefooter (I'll explain if need be), and my baby sis is all glittery/stylish/trendy as can be.... we look quite the sight when we're all out together! I was raised by my parents, particularly by my grandparents, with a love of old music, great classic cinema and fabulous movie stars, and an appreciation for my Maga's and Papa's stories of how things used to be.

Growing up I guess I never really had a style of my own-- all I remember is struggling with all my might to NOT wear anything either popular or attention getting-- I was your typical Plain Jane. Plain jeans, solid shirt, and plain shoes. This continued throughout middle and most of high school. Its not that I hated fashion, just that nothing I could find ever made me look or feel "right". I idolized the Golden Age movie stars, but knew that I would never find anything like that at Kohl's or Sears!

I guess my vintage "coming out" would have to be in my junior year of high school, when for Homecoming Week we had themed days, one of which was "Black & White," a theme with an obscure title that was left open to interpretation. Most kids just literally wore the colors black and white, while I took it as an opportunity to set my hair, do my makeup, and piece together whatever elements of my wardrobe and things from the drama costume loft that I could find to become-- The Thin Man's Nora Charles! Complete with my stuffed dog that I had bought a while back because it looked exactly like Asta. Some of the older teachers went crazy over the look, even bringing me to the teacher's lounge to show me off; random people stopped to either compliment me or look suspiciously at me ("What are you supposed to be?"); most of my friends were left slack-jawed and gushing compliments. That also happened to be the year I truly got my figure (), and let me tell you, it was the first time guys actually looked at me as though Marilyn herself had stepped into the room, and the first time that I could tell that girls were actually jealous of me. lol

But small ego-trip aside, and most importantly of all-- I just felt so amazing and secure in that look-- I owned it. Everyone else could dress as trendy/alternative/plain/casual/skanky as they cared, but I had found my style. Since then its just been a matter of making that my full-time look. Most people who have known me forever say that they know I was born in the wrong era, because seeing me dressed, coiffed, and postured in styles from the 40's and 50's was just so ME-- they couldn't imagine me any other way. And you know what? Neither can I!

 

[dandelion-vint]

Hi Ladies,
I grew up around my parents collecting and selling antiques. From when I was about 5 years old, we spent weekends at yard sales, flea markets, antiques shows etc. I've always been around antique and vintage items, so I never had a problem with 'used' stuff and it was great to see that beautiful things could be bought kind of cheaply, and if you bought wisely, those things could have more value someday.
I started buying vintage clothing when I was a teen, in the 1980s, mostly brightly colored 60s-70s items back then. I grew up in a Mall town and was tired of wearing what everyone else had on. So I guess the desire to be different (not neccessarily to get attention, but to be an individual) and the appreciation of old stuff got me into wearing vintage. I also enjoy the history of an item and thinking about how it was previously loved and worn.

 

[RetroModelSari]

I allways watched black and white movies as a little child with my grandma. And I never dressed in fashion and just put on something without caring if it matches together or not cause fashion sucked anyway. [huh] There were also not many stores to chose from in my small town.

The big turn came some years ago when I stumbled over a pin up book and the stores were full of 50s fashion repros. I realized I want to dress like that, no matter how the others dress. This was probably the reason of my desinterest in fashion for most of my life: There was just no fashion that I enjoyed to watch at before. I was a child in the 80s and a teen in the 90s. Not really decades of georgous fashion highlights in my oppinion

 

[Fleur De Guerre]

I've always been "different" fashion-wise! No so much as a very young child, but when I hit my early teens, though I was quite shy and didn't necessarily want to draw attention to myself, I used to style my hair in very unusual ways. I didn't want to look like everyone else with their boring plain long hair, or Rachel from Friends cut so I had it cut into a fringe and I used a hot culer to make an extreme flick at the bottom (So extreme that some boys once tried to balance a biro in my hair during assembly!) Then I discovered clothes customisation and used to buy jeans, cut the seam open at the side and sew in a fancy coloured triangle to make them more flared and interesting.

At 16 I discovered Metal and started wearing combat trousers and dyed my hair pink (almost got suspended from school) and I then decided to leave mid-term and go to a local college where I could wear what I wanted and I really came out of my shell. I became outgoing, dreaded my hair, wore more way-out clothes, flirted briefly with being a goth, settled in a sort of skatery style that I stuck with for a few years until I fell in love with rockabilly and the 50s look, from which followed my current amalgam of vintage eras!

As mentioned in another thread, I've been a non-conformist for as long as I can remember, and that applies to my "vintage" look as well. I can never look like a lady from the 40s because there is always going to be something putting me either partly in a different era or bang up to date. But that is the beauty of the 21st century I suppose! I