LIFESTYLE CHOICE OR WEEKEND FANCY??

Photos by baju24

There was a time back in the mid 1980s when only new designer clothes would do and the mere suggestion that you shopped in a charity shop or wore your grandmother’s cast offs was a reason for playground mocking and poking with a large stick.  In fact it was only the fashion obsessed designers and over the top art students that indulged in a bit of granny wardrobe robbing.
Now however it seems that you would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t own a little bit of clothing history- except perhaps those people who voluntarily live in Croydon… if a recent trip to IKEA is anything to go by. Even Top Shop has capitalised on this lust for all things retro with a vintage section in their flagship Oxford Street shop.
But is fashion from the past a trend or are we just changing our buying habits?  As the storm clouds of recession gathered last year so did our ability to make credit card purchases. Fashionistas increasingly bragged about their bargain buys and Charity shop steals – how they looked stylish on a budget. It was and is no longer fashionable, Russian oligarch wives aside, to flaunt ones wealth…..what’s left of it anyway. Instead style on the cheap has now become something to be commended not ridiculed.
But still our collective taste for fashion continues to change and evolve even within the vintage genre. This can be with the ever changing value of vintage clothing. A 1950s designer prom dress for example (considered by many to be the holy grail of retro finds) has, from the 1980s onwards been reaching the thousands and 1920s costume jewellery which was, even relatively recently worth very little is now regularly being priced in the hundreds on programmes such as the Antiques Road show.

Photos by baju24

The philosopher, Francis Fukuyama once claimed that there can be no new ideas and that we are just destined to repeat.  This is certainly true of fashion be it with the late Alexander McQueen’s 2002 breakthrough shipwrecked collection which heavily drew on medieval influences with its tough brown embossed leather, flowing wench blouses, frock coats and cropped leather jackets or more recently through to a fashion designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier in his men’s Spring 2010 collection which was made up of white striped blazers and high waisted trousers. Something which has an air of the Great Gatsby 1920s about them.
So perhaps it is our never ending quest for originality that drives us further into the past. Where before we may have looked to the price tag to ensure no one else is wearing our dress now we raid our cupboards and vintage shops for that unique must have piece. And my verdict? While tastes and buying trends are constantly changing vintage is here to stay!

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