The patented nonsense 'What kind of vintage are you?' quiz.

Dr Johanna von Pinkelthingy and her friends at the Kodd Institute of Psychology have been working jolly hard on this. Answer the terribly serious questions and they will allow you to pigeonhole yourself into a fabulous vintage stereotype without having to go to the effort of buying Cosmopornolitan or attempting one of those Facebook 'what donut are you?' type things compiled by morons. The results are absolutely correct and will allow you to attach yourself to a wildly inaccurate stereotype within an entirely artificial concept of a scene. If they offend you, you obviously have anger issues and the Kodd institute will deal with this for you for a small fee, and yes, this will involve electrodes and your boobies.  Simply answer the question below to obtain a free personality assasin...er assessment.

1 Why do you wear vintage clothing?

a) Because the smell of mothballs and the origin of indeterminate stains turns you on.

b) It expresses your individuality and no one else will be, like, wearing it.
c) You want to pull a James Dean look- a- like.
d) It pisses everyone else off.
e) You loved your nan.

Nana.

2 As far as you are concerned THE vintage sin is:
a) Masochism, only way to explain the willingness to tolerate sleeping with metal pins and plastic spiked tubes in your hair over night when you can just tuck it under a hat.
b) Envy, how exactly does that bitch get her hair that perfect every time? and how come when you copy her on You Tube your hair still comes out looking like a big poofy marshmallow that exploded?
c) Pride, look at my high speed lindy hop moves and weep inferior being.
d) Mixing era's, 30's hair and fifties skirts? get the lynch mob.
e) None, we are are pure, protected by our dainty aprons, pretty curls and walls of industrial duty cupcakes .

Hellraiser's got nothing on us.

3  Your vintage haunt is:
a) Totty van pot's Burlesque newcomer night in a dodgy pub in Stevenage. If she can jiggle her bits you can.
b) The Ford owners vintage jive jamboree so you sniff car fumes and pretend to be from Tennessee.
c) Perched under a tree at the Chap Olympics watching young men in linen being beaten to a pulp by Heidi Heil in the bicycle joust.
d) Baron de la Mercatore's (aka Keith from Epping) grand all the vintage periods in the world time travel Gypsy Hotel extravaganza, you are on the guest list.
e) Watching fire eaters at the Double R Club, followed by a sneaky kebab.

4  Your attitude to the opposite sex is.:
a) Some one to set off your frock, light your cigarettes and hold your coat, preferably with neatly manicured facial hair.
b) They have their uses, but you’d rather be knocking back tequilas with the girls.
c) Vintage shellac? Check. Marine tattoo? Check. Cocky grin? Check….
d) Some nice chap in tweed with a Pashley bicycle who mixes a mean raspberry Martini.
e) Any one who’ll buy you the Martini.

The choice of paramour can be very revealing

5  What strikes terror into the very heart of your being?
a) A hairspray drought. pincurl strike and curler melt down.
b) Crappy Top Shop versions of fities dresses on 13 year olds channelling Lily Allen's and Cheryl Cole's bastard devil child.
c) There-is-someone-wearing-the-same-dress-as-you-even-though-the-stall-holder-at-Spitalfields-market -swore-she'd-made-only-one.
d) You find yourself sharing a chalet at a weekender with a fruit looper who loves the fifties because they were sooo right then and there were no blacks, or gays or mooslims or homos and God put Elvis on this earth...
e) Clothes Moths.

6  Your vintage find is:
a) A leather skirt for a tenner in Rokit.
b) A pair of nipple clamps in Oxfam..you’ll fashion outré curtain hold backs with them.
c) A forties tea dress complete with shrapnel burns and ack ack skid marks.
d) A lovely big fur stole with the lovely ickle beady foxy eyes winking at you, second-hand fur isn't the same is it after all?
e) A fifties coffee table with a tableaux depicting fornicating poodles.

7  You have a:
a) Cat, in fact dozens of them. And they keep on pooing everywhere, eating your lucite handbag and puking on your sofa.
b) A blog, and a computer with a screensaver featuring a still from 'The Women' from which to run your on-line empire.
c) A tattoo of cherries, a Northern star and an anchor, even though you get seasick.
d) A boyfriend with horizontally challenged hair and a pair of yellow winklepickers.
e) An old conker who doubles as an Imaginary friend.

The vintage lady may prefer a status big cat.

8  Your ideal pet is:

a) A Fluffy Kitten.

b) A cheetah with a diamante collar.

c) A house boy with a leather collar.

d) House mice.

e) A large dog that chews everything including annoying strangers.

9  Your hobby is:

a) Making models of the Eiffel Tower out of Kirby grips.

b) Make do and mend, as long as whatever you make is useless and whatever you mend was fine as it was.

c) Standing in front of the fashion displays at the V&A and wishing you were a criminal mastermind.

d) Knitting, macramé, bondage…

e) Mixology: every liquid in the cocktail cabinet plus a splash of Irn Bru.

The Mixologist has got hold of the Cilit Bang again...

10 You would like the vintage scene to be:

a) Word of mouth grass roots events where you know everyone and it’s gone before the hipsters find it.

b) Huge, so that the High Street is full of cheapo versions of your favoured period clothing.

c) What ‘scene’?

d) Festivals and big weekenders, you love lugging around your vintage case with fake retro travel labels and wearing plastic NHS eye glass frames and antlers.

e) Decadent, outrageous and drunken rather than just drunken. 

There you go, having answered the sneery questions add up the questions (or alternatively go to the pub, I know what I'd do) and see what your very own vintage stereotype is! Please don't complain to Redlegs, the stereotypes aren't based on anyone, she is ill and her hair is flat.... which explains a lot. Comments are however welcome and please feel welcome to forward. xxx


Q1:   A = 10  B = 1     C = 5    D = 8    E = 3
Q2:   A = 1    B = 8     C = 5    D = 10  E = 3
Q3:   A = 8    B = 5     C = 10  D = 1    E = 8
Q4:   A = 10  B = 5     C = 1    D = 3    E = 8
Q5:   A = 3    B = 10   C = 1    D = 5    E = 8
Q6:   A = 1    B = 8     C = 3    D = 10  E = 5
Q7:   A = 3    B = 10   C = 5    D = 1    E = 8
Q8:   A = 3    B = 10   C = 8    D = 1    E = 5
Q9:   A = 5    B = 1     C = 10  D = 3    E = 8
Q10:  A = 5   B = 3     C = 10  D = 1    E = 8

81-100  The Vintage Maven 

61- 80   The Vintage Rebel

41-60    The Vintage Chick

25-40    The Vintage Kitten
10-24    The Vintage Hipster

STEREOTYPES

81- 100 The Vintage Maven. Her home looks like a set from the V&A, she’s  been doing this for years (mavens are seldom under 30) and her approach to all this hoo hah is to either rise above it or more likely open a faux vintage club in the East End and make some money from the rubes. Other opportunities include flogging unwanted vintage bits for a fortune on ebay and appearing at the opening of club nights to make them look good then never going back.  She’ll be interviewed by the tabloids, talk of her yearning for an age of glamour and they’ll make her sound like a reactionary nut job.

The best mavens are brisk chic ladies with a sense of humour and an encyclopaedic knowledge of clothing.  At their worst they will cut you off forever if you wear the wrong footwear with your Carven wool suit. Often to be found at The Goodwood Revival and London’s best hotel bars and restaurants. The worst thing you can say to her is “I love your costume”.  If you got this result please feel welcome to spray yourself with imaginary Eau de Smug.

61-80  The Vintage Rebel.  The vintage rebel has no choice. Fashionable clothes look like rubbish on her and her innate chippiness makes her deeply suspicious of the media and the fashion industry. After years of drifting in and out of various styles that may have included Goth, punk and cyber geek she has arrived at the point when she realizes that tattoos and piercings notwithstanding it is the fake leopard skin, red lippy and full shampoo and set that compliments her distinctive view of life and love of glamour. Often found in the company of the Maven the rebel is more approachable, jolly and drunken.  She gave burlesque a twirl, got bored, dropped it, and now sings lewd songs at late night cabaret when not lolling around the French House at the weekends.

The Rebel is happy mixing era’s and will roll up at the odd fetish night. She can also be abrasive and rude when crossed and will allow her entire evening to be spoilt by the presence of an idiot in trainers and a track suit.  If you got this result...do we know you?

41-60  The Vintage Chick. For this one it is all about the music and having fun. Not so much dressing from an era as dressing for a life: of lindy-hopping, hot rodding mayhem.  Her vintage period is the fifties and she trawls the rails for Swirl dresses and day dresses. Often to be seen flitting from place to place dragging a bag with a change of shoes and a studiedly sullen boyfriend behind her. Livens up any party with her exhibition-level dancing skills and spends the summer teaching festival goers how to jive. Natural habitat, any of several dozen fifties weekenders.  Yearns for Americana but is as British as an Eccles cake.

The Vintage Chick spends a fortune on Elnett and has a growing addiction to tattoos. Whilst her style may be somewhat generic you can rely on at least hearing good music whilst she is around. Sadly she is sometimes irritatingly young and her dancing skills make you feel like a geriatric hippo on the dancefloor.

25-40  The Vintage Kitten. Usually new to vintage, the kitten is enamoured of a cute idea of vintage, all afternoon teas, cup cake baking and polka dot tea services. She serves gin in tea cups and spends her time in pretty cotton tea dresses. With a mum who grew up in the Seventies it all seems very exotic. Drawn towards the forties and early fifties, she has removed the bombs, drudgery and viciousness and repainted the era in pale yellows and pinks and filled it with Cornish ware. Her hobbies are knitting, making things out of felt and if she has money she opens up a cup cake making business or an expensive little vintage boutique. She is to be seen at Blitz and Prohibition or manning a stall at Vintage at Goodwood and is, with the Vintage Hipster largely responsible for the idea of 'vintage' as a commercial lifestyle choice.

The Vintage Kitten is often charming but annoys her more committed sisters by getting things wrong and being just a little too twee.  Vintage is probably a passing phase but the kitten should be celebrated for having the sense to reject skinny jeans and plimsolls. And her cakes are very tasty.

10-24  The Vintage Hipster. The subject of great opprobrium as the Hipster has adopted vintage as an ephemeral fashion statement. Fearsome reputation for butchering ancient couture is underserved as they tend to buy naff seventies cast offs from ugly warehouses of tat. Will however happily combine a forties tea dress, having shortened the hem, with a silly hat and skinny jeans. A determined shopper, her media-savviness and income have led to the boom market in jumble and inflated prices for vintage.   Found hanging around East London and anarchically annoying other vintage girls by crashing into their nights, behaving like belligerent Sloane Rangers and gawping. Alternatively to be seen at festivals in daft outfits that involve headbands. Blissfully unaware of the fact they don’t get it they seem to be having fun so good luck to them.

The Hipster is very young and has the intelligence to realize that old clothes grant some individuality in a High Street World.  Many will soon move on to the next craze and hopefully in a couple of years there may be a crash in the vintage dress market, although sadly some frocks will not emerge from Hipster ownership unscathed.