Are You Ever Too Old to Wear Vintage?

I’ve at all times loved carrying classic clothes and used to like going to flea markets, selecting up gadgets and saying: “My grandmother wore that,” or “My mom had these.” Then it occurred: I picked up a costume and mentioned, “I owned that!” Once you get sufficiently old to recollect the primary time round, can you continue to put on retro with out wanting dated? — Ilene, Larchmont, N.Y.

It’s true that once we take into consideration classic clothes today, we frequently give it some thought as a teen’s sport: Gen Z rediscovering the ’90s (or the ’80s or the early 2000s) and discovering the enjoyment in low-slung cargo pants, cropped tops and mini backpacks as everybody celebrates them as champions of sustainability; or fresh-faced celebrities wanting hip in midcentury high fashion.

Loving resale is an efficient factor, no query, however it has additionally led to a scenario the place the entire which means of “classic” has develop into confused with “used garments” and “retro” — that are, in actual fact, not truly synonyms.

There may be, because it seems, no usually accepted definition of “classic” — The Vou.com publication describes it as “any object representing a earlier period or social interval, no less than 20 years previous however not older than 100 years.” Vestiaire says that vintage is “15 years previous or older.” Many different websites use the time period merely to imply previous — and by “previous,” I imply final season. Which is itself a growth that may be attributed to our bizarrely truncated sense of time, because of social media, and the fixed stream of latest info.

Let me inform you: “Classic” doesn’t imply final season. It doesn’t even imply final yr.

But when we consider the which means the best way the Cambridge Dictionary does, as “of top of the range and lasting worth, or displaying one of the best and most common traits of a selected sort of factor,” then it turns into a signifier of connoisseurship, data and style. And that, in reply to your query, has completely no age restrict.

It’s not when a garment was made that dictates whether or not you can purchase it — or whether or not, as soon as upon a time, you wore an identical fashion — and never even its worth, however its high quality and the way it suits into your new wardrobe. And self.

In any case, as Simone Hines of Erstwhile Style Vintage identified, no matter garments you bear in mind from your individual youth will look completely different by means of the lens of now. You could have modified through the years, as has your physique. What could as soon as have felt frumpy to you might now appear elegant; what may need appeared like weak social signaling might now look sardonically cool.

Rachel Zabar, a classic vendor in Los Angeles who says she nonetheless wears the Norma Kamali ruched minidress she wore to her promenade, supplied a number of pointers after I known as.

First, she mentioned, method classic “mockingly.”

“I grew up within the Nineteen Eighties, and I like a striped knee-high tube sock,” she mentioned. “Typically I put on these on the tennis court docket with a cute Stella McCartney for Adidas tennis costume.”

Second, suppose high-low, as in “a classic Diana Ross Stay in Central Park tee with a pair of high-waist denims.”

And at last, take a web page from the classic seems Carrie (a.ok.a. Sarah Jessica Parker) modeled within the final season of “And Simply Like That…,” lots of which got here from Converted Closet, a label that upcycles classic clothes. Then, alter the look.

See, for instance, Carrie’s white lace jumpsuit, which was made out of a Nineteen Eighties Victorian-style marriage ceremony costume. Or, for that matter, her precise Vivienne Westwood marriage ceremony costume, which grew to become a last-minute Met Gala robe. A turquoise wrap, a kooky hat and that costume was given a complete new, extra fashionable, which means.

Your Fashion Questions, Answered

Each week on Open Thread, Vanessa will reply a reader’s fashion-related query, which you’ll be able to ship to her anytime through email or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.