There are common signs of getting older we all probably share. Realizing that most of your significant milestones (high school, college, wedding, birth of your children) happened in “the last century.” No one besides you can remember your original hair color. Your mailbox is stuffed with Medicare postcards. Add one more: Your clothes and possessions are now considered vintage.
When I was a teenager and first got interested in the wider world, vintage meant things from the World War II era: uniforms, medals, flags, hats, toys. Antique was something my grandparents brought over from Ireland in the 1920s, like a picture frame or a scarf. Some of the items were still usable, but most felt like museum relics to be admired and not touched—and certainly not given new life.
WWII had been over for 30 or 35 years when I was a teen, which back then seemed like an eternity. For today’s teenagers, their look back at 30-plus years places them squarely in the late 1980s and early ’90s—which certainly is not an eternity. It was just yesterday. Are The B-52s my kids’ Andrews Sisters? Is George Bush (the first) their FDR? Is the fall of the Berlin Wall their D-Day?
I kept a lot of clothes from those years, because I just couldn’t give or throw away my event and band shirts—those, in particular, have a lot of “feels” attached to them, as the saying goes. So my 97X, Clash, English Beat, Elvis Costello, Lollapalooza, and Neville Brothers shirts went into a bin on a shelf.
Until my kids found them last year. They liked some of the designs, colors, frayed necklines, and references to years long before they were born. I was the same way at their age, wearing a shirt or jacket that told the world I embraced people and places from before my time and they weren’t all stupid and boring, but actually interesting.
I made the kids listen to my story about each piece of clothing they wanted—a small price to pay. But I believe anything that’s truly vintage comes with a good story. You’ll find plenty in this month’s “Everything Old Is New Again” section.
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