Vintage Turning Point

[Kim_B]

Wow, epr25, my recent target experience was much the same, except I wasn't dressed in total vintage...but the annoying Hiltonites were all around! Being that I'm an average curvy girl, modern trendy clothes never fit me right, which is why I love the vintage look. It embraces the curves and accentuates them; trendy clothes have never done that for me! Besides, vintage gives me the chance to be different without being every one else's idea of different...does that make sense? What I mean is, when you think of people dressing to stand out or to be different, what generally comes to mind is the goth/emo look. These kids try so hard to be different than the mainstream, but they all end up looking the same! Vintage is classic, sophisticated, and different - there aren't a lot of people who dress vintage (especially in this area!) so it's a great way to stand out!

Wow, I don't even know if this makes sense...no coffee in the system yet!!:coffee:

 

[Miss Sis]

I think my Mother encouraged me to be different or perhaps more to the point, myself!

I did ballet for a long time and was always happiest wearing costumes. MUCH more interesting than dull old normal life clothes. Also I loved doing plays. Wearing vintage probably stemmed from that, actually. When I was 12 I did a project about the Depression of the 30s and that got me really hooked on history.

It wasn't that easy to get much vintage stuff back then in New Zealand but I rummaged up what I could. I remember one Friday night heading into town to go shopping with my Mum and friend wearing a red angora twinset I'd got from my Nana with jeans and bright red lipstick. Boy, that got some stares but I felt very glamourous.

Now I live in the UK it is much easier to get stuff, especially with the internet. I don't wear vintage all the time but it is much more truely me than anything modern.

 

[RetroMom]

No doubt about it, I was born "vintage".

My parent's were children of the depression and young adults in the '40s. For me growing up, everything was stopped in that time period. I was born when my mom was 42 and my dad was 52. So I was always around much older adults through my childhood. My aunt's and mom wore their hair in the same style they wore when the were in their '20s. They never wore pants, only dresses, they had "cocktail" hour before dinner, of course only watched old movies on tv (and that was before cable!) and listened to that wonderful golden age music. My uncles wore suits, ties and hats. It really wasn't until high school that I realized there was a "modern" world out there. When I was a teenager in the '80s there was no internet, so I didn't realize that others enjoyed dressing vintage. My friends told me I would never "fit in" if I didn't get the modern haircut (sadly no more pin curls or rolls) and the modern "designer jeans". I never felt comfortable in those clothes and longed for my vintage stuff. When I was about 20 I met my husband. His parent's were a generation behind mine, 1950's. They still loved to swing dance and listen to the rock and roll of their generation, so my husband also grew up with a love of things "vintage". I finally was able to re-embrace my vintage lifestyle! Now my kids are into the '50's music and my daughter loves the big full crinoline skirts of that era, so together we are one big happy "vintage" family.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

I loved reading all your stories, too!

As for me, I was most certainly born this way. It is a carry-over from my former life Really, when I was a little kid I'd always be scared/fascinated with old stuff. I'd watch old movies all the time and really had no idea why I was so attracted to them. Maybe they took me back to who I once was [huh]

When I got into my "tween" years I became interested in punk and alternative music. Everyone else in school was wearing Motley Crue t-shirts with huge, huge hair and there I was with a green mohawk and a New Order T-shirt. I got teased a LOT, but it only made me do it more. My family has also always been a source of pain for me -- especially my Aunt and Grandmother who were always putting my interests and style down. I guess they'd hope I'd one day say "Yea! You're right! New Order is horrible! I'd rather listen to Tiffany and go to the mall!" Their persistence to change me only made me, yes, you guess it, DO IT MORE! I never went with the flow. I guess I'm a born rebel.

As for vintage, I adored it as a child, forgot about it during my pre-teen and teen years, but then it mysteriously re-surfaced in 1998 when I was 23 years old. I remember the mainstream swing movement that summer. I was bored of punk by then -- I just didn't believe in what it stood for anymore. I decided that this swing thing was interesting so I dove into it head first! When I decide I like something, I really get into it and swing was no exception! I discovered a whole new/old world out there -- I felt like that Bee Girl in the Blind Melon video who just never fits in until she finds that field of Bee People! The mainstream swing movement lead me to investigate less mainstream elements of the movement, including rockabilly. I was smitten. Swing lead me to even earlier decades. That, and the Internet. If it wasn't for the 'net I wouldn't know or have 90% of the stuff I know and have!

I remember it was September 1998 when I became interested in what is now my favourite era in history, the 1920s and the 1930s. I LOVE the movies! I remember swooning Louise Brooks' hair and had to know who she was. I also discovered a woman director from the 1910s named Lois Weber and became really interested in her. From there is just snowballed! And here I am, 9 years later, completely absorbed into the vintage lifestyle. It's my way of life now and I'm certain it will be 'till the day I die.

My sister is also very mainstream. My family adores her and she is, without a doubt, the "favourite." I often ask my husband how I got like this and he just tells me "Thank god you are!"

 

[Fleur De Guerre]

And here I am, 9 years later, completely absorbed into the vintage lifestyle. It's my way of life now and I'm certain it will be 'till the day I die.

I feel a bit like this, but my mum was criticising me the other day when I was going on about thing things I am planning to buy, like the overalls from Revamp Vintage which cost a fair bit, saying "Why are you spending all this money when you might change your mind soon?" Well she has a point in that I have changed pretty radically from my tom-boyish teens and very early twenties, but I stuck to that one particular style for 10 years, evolving over that time, but never really coming away from it. But even if I change again in 10 years it's worth investing in clothes I'll hopefully be wearing for all that time surely? And I see no reason to change, I feel this is "me"!

 

[olive bleu]

Just reading DANDELION_VINT s post, i thought yeah, that is probably one of the major reasons why i love vintage.The History. I love putting on a dress and wondering , 'who wore this before me'? Did she wear this on a date with someone she loved? Or would this dress hold sad memories.I wonder if she can see me wearing the dress, and having my own adventures in it?Weird, I know. But you can't get that kind of fun from the GAP!!

 

[roots66]

I was probably born with the vintage-lover gene too, but it took some time to become aware of it and several style evolutions to fully embrace it. My parents, who died within six months of each other in 2005, came from the same generation as RetroMom's. My father was born in 1928 in Italy, but his family immigrated to New York soon afterwards, settling in East Harlem, then a heavily Italian neighborhood (only a few traces of which remain, like Rao's Restaurant and Patsy's Pizza). My mother, born in 1930, spent her early childhood in rural Illinois, but her family moved to NYC by the mid-'40s. Through them I developed an appreciation for both streetwise New Yawkisms and quaint Midwestern sensibilities, with some old-world Italian traditions thrown in (not too heavily on the latter, though--Pops was surprisingly forward-thinking, liberal, and near-feminist for an Italian-American male!). I probably also got my general love of old movies/pop culture/history/Americana etc. from them. They didn’t exactly sit around the piano singing “Those Were the Days” a la Edith and Archie, but I remember them talking a lot about the way things were in their day. Couldn’t go to the movies with Moms without hearing her seethe with resentment over previews and ads, when back in the day you got a serial, a cartoon, a newsreel, sometimes even a live act, and all this BEFORE the feature…boy did she love bucking the multiplex system by sneaking in to see a second flick. And Pops couldn’t drive through Manhattan without pontificating about certain streets, buildings, and landmarks (extant or demolished) that had an impact on his personal mythology—always punctuating his stories with the tag line, “no more…thing ‘o the past…an era gone by” (said in a heavy New Yawk accent).

I loved reruns and old movies even in childhood, but I think the first “retro” things I was consciously obsessed with were the Beatles (“borrowed” my sister’s original albums, including “Introducing the Beatles” on Vee-Jay with the sepia-toned cover, at the age of 6—I still have ‘em) and the movie Grease, which said sister took me to see several times at the old RKO Keith’s in Flushing. In my ‘80s punk rock & new wave days I had the requisite part spiky/part shaved within an inch of its life “do,” held in place with a 7-UP/Aqua Net Extra Super Hold cocktail. My love for ‘60s rock & roll and style won out, though, so for the past two decades I’ve worn it either long and straight or in a chin-to-shoulder-length bob/pageboy with bangs, and have done my best to dress accordingly. My aesthetics, tastes, and sensibilities encompass all vintage eras, though. Recently got TCM again, the channel I most missed after leaving the States, and can’t figure how I got by for nearly six years without it.

By the time I knew them, my folks were dressing in typical '70s outfits (including the dreaded muu-muus and avocado leisure suits), so I can’t say I looked to them for fashion advice—but they were mighty stylin’ in the pre-1970s photo albums I frequently perused. When I was about five or six, I distinctly remember saying something like, “I hope I don’t turn into an old Italian lady when I grow up, ‘cause I’d have to wear black all the time”--my own paternal grandparents had died by then, but I must have noticed and been frightened by other relatives and "paisans" I saw dressed in constant widow’s weeds. Ironically I now wear black almost daily—only ‘cause of its slimming/Beatnik aspects, though, as I’m not yet an old Italian lady. Moms wasn’t much of a clothes-saver, so I don’t have too many examples of her wardrobe. When I was cleaning out the house last year I had to be very selective in keeping things, ‘cause there was only so much I could schlep up to Toronto, but there were certain things I couldn’t bear to part with—and I’m sure you pincurl-obsessed dames will appreciate that I *had* to keep my mother’s box of curlers, bobby pins, hairnets, end papers, and “duck clips.” A few weeks ago I was in a local art bookstore and saw a book in the bargain shelves called In Almost Every Picture. It consists of a set of vintage snapshots taken by an amateur photographer of his wife, posed against some lovely European sights. The woman in the pictures had a strong resemblance to the way my Moms looked in the ‘50s-‘60s, so I probably would have purchased it at any price—but luckily it was marked down to $4.99.

 

[Paisley]

I've loved vintage houses, clothes, movies, furniture and music as long as I can remember. Maybe it's because I loved being with my grandparents (b. 1894 and 1904). They lived in an old house with old pictures, furniture and appliances. There were neighbordhood kids there to play with, too. They were happy. My parents and I, on the other hand, lived in Littleton, Colorado, in a house beyond their means in a cold neighborhood. As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, "There's no there there," and it applied to where we lived as well: a suburb with lots of middle-aged couples whose kids had already flown the coop, a grade school that looked like a prison, and just generally nothing to do.

 

[Cheesecakecutie]

I have always had a very refined sense of beauty from a baby...i love the mystery and lingering energies of vintage items....As a child i loved to walk through old church yard looking at the stones wondering who was beneath them and what they looked like.

I used to have a box filled with vintage treasures that i found. I grew up in Saudia Arabia and was very drawn to dressing in the old traditional way....i guess i have always been different....i thought about it the other day i am 33 this year and still have vintage clothing that i wear, from the age of 14...incredible.

 

[lindylady]

I think that my tastes for vintage things started when I was a child, although I didn't realize it. I loved going over to my grandparents' house, which had been built around the 30s. They had Depression glasses, wrought iron trim on the furniture, old heating vents, and antiques that they brought with them when they moved from Mississippi at the end of WWII. I played with my grandmother's antique sewing machine, which had belonged to her grandmother. I tried on my grandma's clothes, always marveling at the pretty full-volume skirts and smart suits. I used to sneak into the attic and rummage through my grandfather's old coin collection and his suits. Also, my grandfather and I would spend weekend afternoons watching old westerns and black and white movies.

My mother was also old-fashioned. She didn't do vintage, but she always kept a ladylike appearance and demeanor, choosing classic tailoring and quality over trends. She taught me to do the same. She also explained to me who the Old Hollywood actors and actresses were. I think that she had a crush on Clark Gable!

It wasn't until about two years ago that I realized that I have an old soul. I loved the things of the past, enjoyed old movies, and listened to music that people my age had no clue about. I started swing dance lessons and wearing vintage-inspired clothing to the dances. It soon started carrying over into my day-to-day life. Before I knew it, I started collecting biographies of my favorite stars, photography books, vintage artwork, old family photographs.

Then I found the Fedora Lounge, and that gave me the confidence and knowledge to fully embrace my love of vintage. Ever since I became a member last September, I have been integrating vintage into my lifestyle. Once I graduate from school and get a good paying job, I hope to really showcase my love of vintage in my home and manner of presentation. I guess this post is turning into one long thank you letter to the Lounge!

 

[Elle]

When a was a very little girl, I remember seeing the one photo of my grandma from when she was younger. She was beautiful! I wanted to be like her so much.

And, my father would always listen to jazz, albiet not very good jazz at times (smooth? pah!), and started teaching me the culture by the time I was ready for school. I don't remember much about it or why my brothers or sisters didn't catch on. But I do know that I'll always have that connection with my dad.

Vintage felt like something I just born into. Something I hope to do with my future babies.

 

[Naama]

When I was younger, I was always afraid to stand out in any way. But then, when I came to senior high school, it all changed... I was pretty much into the gothic/punk thing and completely in love with rokkoko, the 50's then came the victorian era and then the 20's. Don't ask me how this really happened lol I only know that the past was always more appealing to me then the present...

The really strange thing... Now that I dress Vintage, I feel more out of place/standing out then ever before, even though this way of dressing isn't really shocking or anything [huh]


Naama

 

[Eleanor Marie]

Wow

Girls it is so good to hear your stories..

I have always been fascinated with costume and dress, but I started as a goth at the age of 15 and didn't look back! I always wanted to be different and now I have found my 'retro' 40's and 50's niche since November2006, I am a very happy bunny. I really appreciate the community here and all you girls are amazing...........

 

[epr25]

I am so glad to have had such a great turn out on this thread. I love hearing everyones stories. I find it odd that a large number of us have gone from goth or punk into vintage. I have done the same thing. It just doesn't seem like a natural progression of style. But hey we're here and loving our vintage so who cares.

My boyfriend has three daughters. A 21 year old 16 and 10. The 10 year old lives in our town. She has no intrest in the vintage stuff. Yet, I say yet and hope. But ther other two girls are about 100 miles away and we don't get to see them much. But we did have his 16 year old this weekend. She has shown so much interest in the clothes and our house ect. I am so happy. I thought that maybe she had some sort of vintage turning point this weekend. I don't think anything would happen before she left high school but maybe once she's out of the sub burbs and exposed to some more kinds of people and lifestyles. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope. I would love to someday leave my vast collection to someone that would appreciate it. I have no children of my own and don't plan to.

 

[Amelie]

I've always been really interested in fashion history and costumes, but I think my turning point came when I was about 16

I was in a high school in which I had to wear a uniform. And I hated their pants so bad, I only wore skirts, and even threw away the uniform pants I had. My regurlar clothing just started to reflect that change in my life. And for about three years, I tryed like mad to create a convincing bohemian look. It was quite unique at the time, so I had to work hard to find pieces I like.

But one day fahsion changed, and I had like a revelation when I was in a trip in Wien: everywhere in the stores were beatiful clothes like the ones I had been trying so hard to find for the pasts years. I was really pissed off to see little fashion victims wear the same look as me, so I started to look for something else.

I guess my choice had gone into vintage because at the time I was fully into Boris Vian, Jacques Brel, and Simone de Beauvoir, and there was so many pretty skirts and dresses in that time.

Even though fashion seems closer to my style an other time, I won't be changing my look, I am not a teen anymore, and this is just who I am ( I am not a hard vintage girl, I usually wear repros and inspired things, don't really bother me if it's not totally authentic)

 

[Miss Dottie]

This has been one of the most intriguing threads in the Fedora Lounge and I feel that I've learned so much about people.

It's true--I think I'm just one of those people who have always been interested in vintage since I can remember. But I do recall a pretty defining point--my father took me to the premiere of the movie, "That's Entertainment" (he worked for the Los Angeles news bureau of Newsweek) and it felt like coming home. Even at the age of four!

While other kids were wanting to disco dance, I was begging for tap dancing lessons. I was reading vintage Betty Boop comics and cribbing slang from the "Little Rascals" to throw at during recess. Instead of taking a job at the mall in my teen years, I worked at the library, so I could pour over old LIFE magazines from the 40s and vintage ettiquette books from the twenties.

My mother was pretty strict about what I could wear to school and just couldn't comprehend why I would want to wear something "old"! But she always let me purchase a few vintage items when we went to tag sales. I think she still shakes her head when she sees some of the items I put on.

Fortunately, I married a fellow who completely gets my love of vintage things. He's even taken it to the next level with our recent purchase of a vintage car! Sweet!

 

[Miss Dottie]

Oh! One more thing.

I'm not much of a religious person one way or another, but my love of vintage always made me think that reincarnation might be true. Why would so many people be interested in a time that they are not living in? And that so many people are just "drawn" to it or "born that way"... Perhaps we all lived during the golden era and that is why we are drawn to it. Just fragments of a lost past life.

Just a thought Albeit a quirky one.

 

[missjo]

To me it started with the Levi's 501 commercials from the 1980s.
I had no interest in popular culture at all, I was a teenager but didnt care for music, fashion, etc.
Didnt feel at home with the present (never have) and was sort of wobbling along.
It was 1985, I was 13 and hated everything my friends liked.

Then the Levi's 501 commercials came, suddenly I saw people wearing clothes i liked, heard music i liked and was introduced to nostalgia.
I saw the light!
I had always been interested in history in general and loved old photos and some movies.
And yes I know we saw Nick Kamen undressing in a 50's laundrette and yes I thought he was lovely, but there was more to that commercial that I loved.
It was the overall atmosphere of a idealised 1950's.
That same year I saw Back to the Future... and I was lost.
The moment Marty McFly walked onto the 1950s square while the The Chordettes sang "mr sandman", I fell in love with an era my parents grew up in and hated.
In those days the 50's were "hot", it was everywhere.
Old songs climbed the charts, shops were selling nostalgic furniture and there were retro parties.
I finally felt comfortable, finally the parties were fun, the boys looked good and it was fun dressing up to go to a party.

Then suddenly the 50's were no longer hip and people turned to the sixties retro scene.
Not for me thank you very much!
So I remained a 'rockabilly'.
Soon I discovered the years before the 50's and felt even more at home.
A few years ago I decided to decorate my house 30s style, then I threw away all my modern clothes and the rest is history...

 

[missjo]

Oh! One more thing.

I'm not much of a religious person one way or another, but my love of vintage always made me think that reincarnation might be true. Why would so many people be interested in a time that they are not living in? And that so many people are just "drawn" to it or "born that way"... Perhaps we all lived during the golden era and it's just what we remember for a past life.

Just a thought

same here, im not at all religious (the opposite even) and i dont believe in reeincarnation... but... but still...
why do i not feel at home in the present, why do i feel more in touch with 80 year olds then with people my age.
why do 80 year old people ask if I ever went to a certain dance hall that was torn down before I was born, why do i know how to close a ww2 stencil machine case that even the people who really used it during the war in the resistance have trouble closing...
i feel at home in my 1930s house, i love 1930s music and my idea of a nice man is hopelessly old fashioned.
I dont believe in reincarnation... but it wont take much to make me change my mind!

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Soon I discovered the years before the 50's and felt even more at home.

That's exactly what happened with me. A bit of mainstream 50s nostalgia lead me to vintage. From there I began to dig deeper and deeper until I finally landed in the 20s and 30s. And I'm quite happy here.