Retro clothes are not vintage clothes.<\/p>\n
Retro clothes are new-made garments designed to imitate or evoke the fashions of as bygone era — often, the 1940s, \u201950s or \u201960s. Vintage fashion is the real thing: sturdy garments well made in America (usually by union labor, if that matters to you) that remind us of an era when all the best stuff, from movies to muscle-cars, was \u201cmade in the U.S.A.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about nostalgia, yes, but in this unrelenting recession it\u2019s also about the \u201crecessionistas\u201d — that\u2019s what Alison Houtte calls her growing new customer base — realizing they can get not only a distinctive look but also a better-made garment by \u201cgoing vintage,\u201d at a fraction of the price they\u2019ve been paying for today\u2019s toss-off foreign made garments at the big name stores.<\/p>\n
Unanswered so far: Are people from overseas now visiting us to buy American vintage — mid-century antiques of all kinds, but particularly fashion — not just to wear, but also as a \u201cnot-making-them-anymore\u201d appreciating asset to sock away, just as those with wealth have always hedged their bets against a withering paper currency by stockpiling gold and silver coins, first edition novels, engraved antique fowling pieces?<\/p>\n
If you want a quick course on vintage, start with Alison Houtte\u2019s book, \u201cAlligators, Old Mink & New Money,\u201d in which she describes her own transition from top fashion model to purveyor of vintage rags in far-from-stylish downtown Brooklyn, N.Y.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw that 12 years ago when the Japanese were running after the Levi Big E, but that\u2019s faded away a little bit,\u201d Alison told me last week in answer to my \u201cforeigners stocking up\u201d question.<\/p>\n
The foreigners she sees now are visitors who have read the translations of her book in Europe and are making the pilgrimage to Brooklyn to seek her out, Alison says. Otherwise, \u201cWhat I\u2019m seeing now is a boatload of new faces I\u2019ve never seen in 12 years in business here in Brooklyn. These are women who were shopping Macy\u2019s and they\u2019re going to give Hooti Couture a try.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the \u2018Mad Men\u2019, the whole TV show the \u2018Mad Men\u2019,\u201d (set on Madison Avenue in 1960, with appropriate attire) \u201cI think this Halloween is the best Halloween I\u2019ve had in 12 years in the business, they come in saying \u2018I\u2019m dressing for the Mad Men.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when it comes to Dior, Lanvin, Pierre Cardin, those are being snatched up at the right price because that\u2019s a great investment. At Hooti Couture I wish I had those labels.\u201d (But) \u201cIn this recession my Hooti Couture customer is hunting down a gorgeous dress she can wear tonight. I don\u2019t think the (designer) label business right now is moving their merch. My approach is everyday vintage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are other neighborhood stores that are the high-end label store. These gals aren\u2019t running to the bank right now. A woman right now wants a beautiful dress for 25 to 75 dollars; these labels that run 300 dollars, 1,500 dollars, 1,800 dollars are on hold right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Hooti Couture is at 321 Flatbush at Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. — the name is the way Alison\u2019s grandmother always insisted the family name should be pronounced, though Alison herself says \u201cHoot.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Annie Lee, co-owner of Annie Creamcheese vintage salon at the Shoppes at the Palazzo on Las Vegas Boulevard, sees both sides of that price-tag divide — a huge difference between her customer base on the Strip and at her other location, in the toney D.C. suburb of Georgetown.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the D.C. store it\u2019s definitely that $25 to $75 price range, that\u2019s in a college town, so that\u2019s definitely where I sell more of my vintage. The Georgetown store is kicking butt, that\u2019s a big part of the reason this store is still open,\u201d in spite of a recession which has pared down the Vegas high-rollers, Annie told me last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere they\u2019re collecting … the designer labels. What surprised me is that we are totally destination; a lot of our customers are from New York and California, a lot of the customers say \u2018I tell my husband I want to stay at the Venetian, I want to stay and the Palazzo, and the first place I\u2019m going is Annie Creamcheese — Oh my gosh you\u2019ve got this Missoni dress from the 1950s.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just had Allison Janney in here from \u2018The West Wing\u2019 with her entourage and they bought a ton of vintage, she says she loves to wear vintage on the red carpet, I just wish this mall was down on the ground level. Alice Cooper and his daughter were in here last week.\u201d<\/p>\n
And was it Alice buying the vintage rags, or the daughter?<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, the daughter, definitely,\u201d Annie says. \u201cAlice was the bag holder, he was the purse holder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Customers from overseas?<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely: Canadians, people from Dubai, a lot of British people. … I just sold a gray wool Pierre Cardin dress for $1,800 to a woman from Mexico. It\u2019s hard to find the good pieces, though. The young girls, 17 to 25, are starting to stockpile their vintage, I only see vintage prices going higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
Annie Creamcheese has lots of stuff under $1,800, make no mistake. Though I wouldn\u2019t call it your $50 bargain destination, either.<\/p>\n
(Annie Creamcheese, open every day at 3327 Las Vegas Blvd., 2nd floor, Shoppes at the Palazzo.)<\/p>\n
Some in search of Ms. Houtte\u2019s \u201c$25 to $75 vintage\u201d here in Vegas opt for the Cat\u2019s Curiosities vintage boutique in the downtown Charleston Antique Mall, West Charleston Boulevard at I-15. (Disclosure: I help out with the vintage books and records at Cat\u2019s.) It\u2019s there I first learned of the arrival of the foreign vintage buyers.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s one group of three Asian 20-somethings who show up at the mall every couple of months, using a tax resale number issued out of Newport Beach, Calif., reports proprietor Michelle Tully. Vendors at the mall call them \u201cthe Japanese kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Are they buying to wear, to stockpile as appreciating assets, or to ship home to Japan to be reverse engineered?<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of both,\u201d figures Amy Lawrence, who runs Cat\u2019s. \u201cThey seem eager to snatch up things from the 1920s and earlier. It doesn\u2019t seem likely they\u2019re buying those to wear. They\u2019ve got a good eye for rarity, for things I\u2019d have expected to go to collectors. I had a beautiful pair of \u201940s beaded collars in excellent condition. One of the Japanese girls snatched them right up a couple weeks ago, after they\u2019d been sitting here for weeks; the Americans just walked right by them. …<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a way it\u2019s funny — they\u2019re buying up \u2018real deal\u2019 vintage that I think is undervalued by most Americans, and whether they\u2019re reverse engineering them or not, we end up importing much cheaper mass produced \u2018retro\u2019 versions of our own designs,\u201d Amy says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure in years, decades past it was the shoe on the other foot, where Americans were buying up stuff from Europe, Asia, that either due to hard times or a lack of appreciation, was kind of, orphaned is a good term …\u201d<\/p>\n
Why vintage clothes?<\/p>\n
\u201cJust study economics: you buy low, sell high; buy things that are out of favor, unappreciated. With the Japanese kids and the Australian women … I think it\u2019s a form of debt collection. They\u2019re unloading their hoarded dollars on us, exchanging them for things of real value. … I expect if the dollar\u2019s slide continues, we\u2019ll see more and bigger foreign buyers. …<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stuff Americans will almost certainly want in twenty or fifty years is disappearing under our noses. … I want to make sure these things go to good homes, where they\u2019ll be cared for and treasured. …
\n\u201cThere\u2019s bound to come a day when Americans wake up … and wonder what\u2019s become of all that stuff, the family heirlooms and treasures that quietly disappeared over eBay. Maybe this generation didn\u2019t want grandma\u2019s silver or her wedding dress — but if the next generation has a change of heart and wants to buy them back, will they be able to?\u201d<\/p>\n
(Cat\u2019s Curiosities, open seven days in the Charleston Antique Mall, 307 W. Charleston Boulevard, Las Vegas.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Retro clothes are not vintage clothes. Retro clothes are new-made garments designed to imitate or evoke the fashions of as bygone era — often, the 1940s, \u201950s or \u201960s. Vintage fashion is the real thing: sturdy garments well made in America (usually by union labor, if that matters to you) that remind us of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-town","category-collectibles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-66","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}