'Style Me Vintage, Clothes: A Guide to Sourcing and Creating Retro Looks'

 

I must admit that when I buy books about fashion or design they tend to be monographs about particular designers or art and design history related. This makes sense as I have a degree in Art History. I haven’t really been tempted by many of the guides to vintage/shabby chic/retro style type tomes, partially because I am probably past needing them having hopefully learnt from my many mistakes. However there are a couple of things that put me off some of those already published.  One is that advising me to look out for vintage Dior or pieces of collectable Ossie Clarke is just  pointless, I don’t have the money and if I wanted to know about them I would refer to a fashion historian not some vintage ‘expert’. Another is styling, I hate seeing that gawky modern fashion pose and gormless stare beloved by the contemporary fashion world combined with a thirties day dress. Also I don’t like ‘fancy dress’ styling, you know sticking someone in a wig or having them throw a ‘pin-up pose’.  The final thing is tone, that ‘imperious’ assertion that certain things have to be worn in a certain way because that is 'how it was done' in some past decade that often rears it's head is the worst. As a historian that really peeves me.  Or you get the breathy amateur approach which is to writing what cup cakes are to baked goods.  You can imagine that it is with trepidation I received Naomi Thompson’s new book: 'Style Me Vintage, Clothes: A Guide to Sourcing and Creating Retro Looks.' She is a friend and I know she knows her stuff, but publishers and editors can wreak havoc on even the sanest prose; happily I am impressed.

The author in her cossie.

The book is part of a set of publications which aim to help introduce elements of vintage style, sort of how to ‘be vintage’ or ‘buy vintage’ or even just ‘look vintagy’ and with it’s pretty design and light touch it is, I feel  very accessible to people just dipping their toes into polkadot-infested waters. However the dainty booklook is a bit of a Trojan horse because slipped into its pages is a lot of serious, useful and downright educational material. For example the vital details about checking for holes, inspecting armpits and counting the buttons are clearly explained. The dodgy element of vintage; the pitfalls of being conned into paying for a ‘vintage’ dress that has overlocking, a zip, and care instructions are all mentioned.  This is however nestled away in the recesses of text that expresses the author’s enthusiasm for enjoying clothes and her tone is friendly and conspiratorial rather than didactic, something emphasised by the occasional reference to her own life experiences. Naomi tends to enthuse about all the enjoyment to be had styling clothes rather than elucidating rules or condemning any particular approach. The whole point is not to slavishly follow some cult of 'what is vintage' but to find your own way, something this slim volume somewhat subversively encourages.  Possibly that is why she has kindly included this blog in the resources section of the book. If her publishers are interested in 'Style Me Vintage: The Dark Side' they know where to find me!

Fleur in swirl dress

The book is divided up into decades, and covers vintage fashion (20’s – 60’s) and retro collectable fashions (70’s – 80’s). The book also provides useful advice on accessories. The aim seems to be more to give readers a general feel for the things that condense the feel of a period. What is refreshing here is the use of real enthusiasts as models, not just some volunteers who work for the publishers which has been the case with some previous books on the subject.  This works because the clothes are worn by ordinary women who love them. Christina Wilson's photographs for the book are lovely and it would not let the top of anyone's coffee table down.  The poses quote the eras discussed and the magazine-like punchy page design gives the impression of a book you dip in and out of rather than having to study and digest.  What I particularly appreciated was that whilst Naomi stresses the uniqueness, history, collectability and high quality of  genuine vintage the usefulness of good repro brands and regular trawls of High Street stores is also mentioned. That makes this book useful to those who may not be able to afford authentic vintage or live in areas where markets and fairs are not readily accessible. This egalitarian approach is reflected by the fact that the book refers the reader to vintage dealers, repro brands and resources they can use to find their own way into styles from the past. 

Gemma

If I have any criticism it is that this book could have been longer but as it is the volume is useful, well written and has considerable charm. I don’t think that anyone could read it and not be tempted to invest in, at the very least, a pair of gloves or a vintage brooch.

It can be purchased from good bookshops or via Amazon here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Style-Me-Vintage-Sourcing-Creating/dp/1862059365

Less frou frou vintage please!!

 

Vintage is now a word that most accurately seems to mean distressed faux farmhouse furniture in white or pale blue. It means mimsy floral chintz, especially in waxed form, or miss matched china tea cups and saucers as long as they have designs including more blooms or polkadots. It is overblown cupcakes in any form, little bits and bobs of buttons and cheap mass produced knick knacks sewn on to everything. It is needlepoint cushions featuring union jacks and pugs, it is old jugs filled with expensive pink roses and green hydrangeas, it is reproduction biscuit tins and little wire things to hold eggs. It is sugary, it is cluttered, it is utterly girly and in great amounts it makes me want to throw up (over a cane chair reupholstered in Cath Kidston fabric with gingham ribbons tied on the the corners).

I can't imagine tucking into my kebab take away here...

Don’t get me wrong, I like porcelain teacups, polka dots and rickety old junk shop furniture, I like most of the stuff above in moderation: I just cannot bear the twee overwhelmingly fussed with sheer  tweeness of the whole idea.  It isn’t that I dislike excess, in the Victorian menagerie, baroque lunacy or Gothic Count gone made style I love it. Not a purist and I dislike minimalism yet there is something about all this vintage frillery frippery that grates, possibly it is boredom.  And make no mistake, to the media and mass culture as a whole that is what we are talking about when we use the word 'vintage'. 

Bloody little wooden signs everywhere, I know where I live thanks....

At Vintage at Southbank last weekend I picked up a free copy of BBC Homes and Antiques Vintage issue and it was full of this notting hilly yummy mummy stuff. I learned‘Vintage’ is ideally accessorised by two sweet little children,  Milly and Oscar, tricked out in dove egg blue corduroy and peter pan collars. Oh and a dog, probably a Shitzhu type thing with an old fashioned working class name like Bert or Sid. I can see the magazine does have its fantasy appeal and the ladies on their stall were very nice., nothing against the magazine per se, it is catering for an audience. They were wise enough to have the lovely and very knowledgeable Naomi of Vintage Secret advising and had an article on wonderful Stein jewellery.

Their introduction to what vintage was however a big fib, actually car enthusiasts and antiques buyers are right, if you call something less than 50 years old vintage you are big fat pants on fire liar.  Just because today's PR's and clueless fashion magazines and a load of 20 somethings have suddenly decided that they think 70's or 80's is vintage doesn't make it so, imagine if I tried that with anything else. I'd end up in court for misrepresentation.

Vintage 'style', if you say so, retro certainly but it ain't vintage under 50 years unless it is wine. Unless that is 'vintage' has become something else, in which case what term do we use? 40's clothes are not antiques a nd I'm unilaterally (well no one else listens to me!) reclaiming the word vintage for what it actually means genuinely old. Not something that anyone over the age of twelve has already worn before.

Here the union jack and flowers have been cleverly combined....

I suppose I am frustrated that an interest in past eras has congealed into this. I shouldn’t be surprised as I am getting serious de ja vu. It is the mid-seventies all over again. Then the country obsessed over Victoriana, Laura Ashley made a killing, the Timotei and flake girls ruled adland and the whole country went nuts for Diary of an Edwardian Lady. Everyone either had a lace petticoat sticking out from under their skirt, a folk art inspired dirndl or a Little House on the Prairie style triangle fabric tied around their head.s It was a look inflicted on me as a child. The 80’s were always better than the 70’s, they at least paraphrased the forties and pirates.  It is not that I dislike flowery things or girlishness I am, as I said, just bored of it.

Cupcakes are not the only cake.

I suppose what is irritating me is the sheer sticky vanillaish conservatism lying behind it all. Is it down to the recession? It is certainly recessive. It gives the feminist in me the heebeegeebees. I’m finding the overwhelming nostalgia irksome, I just like the look of things from the past and one reason is that the clothes often reflect, for me at least, fast changing, challenging worlds but it is not an aspirational thing. I like being in a fast moving, liberal, all sexual orientations all lifestyles modern kind of world. There is a sharp cold wind of conservatism out there and conservatism tends to be selfish and oppressive. The past got a lot of things right but I wouldn't want to live there!

Maybe I read too much into it but cozying up the 30’s and 40’s and 50’s and presenting them as a soft focus version of the past seems retrograde in the wrong way. I'm all for escapism but is there much difference between wrapping women up ‘vintage’ style and sticking us in short lycra mini skirts and painting us wag orange. It’s also yet again ageist, this style of vintage only suits the very young or the fecund, if you were middle aged you would be described as mutton dressed as lamb double quick.

I do like pastel colours, I do like flowers, blimey I even like little gloves and macaroons but with added sharp conversation, some gin, some sharp deco glass and a soupcon of sassiness. I admire Greta Garbo, Lauren Bacall, Chanel, Ida Lupino, Amelia Earheart and Lee Miller. I never remember seeing a picture of them in a pinny. 

I cannot think of a flowery dotty flowery cupcakey style icon as a comparison. If someone truly loves dressing like this I am not criticising them, I am worried by the motivations of the media in promoting just one entirely domestic, ultra-feminine housebound version of a passion with the past.  I think this is one of the reasons many assume that an interest in historic style equals right-wing conservatism, a rejection of modernism, reactionary beliefs and the evasion of real life through nostalgia.

What do you think? Do you agree or am I just a crankly old cow! xxx