1960s: From Resale Shops to New Youth Style
In the 1960s, newspapers and periodicals continued associating used clothing with
charity, although some reveal the meaning of secondhand clothing is changing. A
1963 article, “Resale shops are a source of good buys” in the
New York Times
’s
“Shop Talk” section associates resale shops with luxury bargain hunting:
A Givenchy suit for $89, a Dior coat for $100 and even a vintage but still attractive
Norell dress for
$10. Bargains like these can be found on Madison Avenue. Tucked
above store level...there flourish a number of emporiums known as resale shops.
They eagerly buy the wardrobes of fashionable women who cannot afford to be seen
in the same dress too often.
Lik
e the consignment shop Henri, resale shops are presented here as a place where
it is acceptable to purchase secondhand clothing. Clear distinctions are made be-
tween resale shops and thrift shops through invoking fashion designers’ names.
The use of the wor
d “vintage” (to describe the Norell dress) contributes to this
distinction. Vintage does not yet connote anachronistic dressing since the article
reports how shops refuse dresses more than two years old. “Vintage” denotes
something of high quality, indicat
ing that the secondhand clothing of the resale
shop is more valuable than ordinary used clothing.
In 1965, Harriet Love opened her well
-known vintage clothing shop in New
York. In her 1982 guidebook, Love (1982: 1) characterized the mid-
1960s vintage
fash
ion scene:
When I began this business in 1965, the only thing that could be said about vintage
clothing was that it was old and used and that you had to be a little weird or theatri-
cal to buy it, let alone wear it on days other than Halloween. Today every
fashion
-
conscious woman and man has probably bought at least one old piece and worn it as
evening or everyday clothing.
In 1966, the
Times
publishes “Thrift Shops: a Small Boom in Big Bargains.”
Here, it is
thrift
stores (rather than resale or consignment
shops) portrayed as plac-
es to find designer clothes; the article mentions a thrift store where actress Barbra
Streisand shops. In comparison to the 1958 article that likened a thrift shop to a
beer bottle, the association with designer clothing and celebr
ity suggests the dis-
tinction between thrift shops and consignment/resale shops is blurring. While
secondhand clothing is being framed more positively as slightly
-dated luxury
Culture Unbound
, Volume 7
, 2015
[53]
clothing for bargain prices, anachronistic dressing is not yet mentioned. But thi
s is
about to change.
In January 1967, the meaning of vintage (and secondhand fashion generally)
shifts to encompass dressing in decades
-old clothing.
New York
Times
fashion
writer Angela Taylor reported in “Searching the Ragman’s Pack and Finding
Fashion”
:
It’s not so much beggars who are in rags and tags these days as the most fashion
-
conscious youths of an affluent generation. They are searching for the oldest gar-
ments in the ragman’s pack and coming up with moth-
eaten furs, doormens’ uni-
forms and German
Luftwaffe braided jackets....The fancy
-dress craze, begun in
London last year, branches off in several directions locally. Uniforms
—
worn like
old clothes, with a minimum of alteration –
are still in demand, and the more esoter-
ic the better.
Taylor’s article
is accompanied by two photos –
one of a group photo of five
young people, dressed in double
-breasted trench coats and hats of various sorts,
and one woman decked out in a high-
necked Edwardian coat. The second photo is
of a couple dressed in 1920s and 30s
woolen suits. The clothing is described as
“old,” “vintage” and even “laughable.” Taylor’s tone is one of amusement to-
wards this fashion trend and the youth who wear it.
The
New York Times Magazine’s
May 1967 photo shoot “The Style that Was
Is,” took a l
ess patronizing tone. Penned by
Times
fashion editor Patricia Peterson,
the shoot featured models dressed in floor
-length vintage skirts and white cotton
dresses (most likely 19
th
century petticoats) purchased from Harriet Love’s stall at
the New York flea
market. Peterson also refers to London as where such anachro-
nistic dressing began: “When England’s young began swooping down on Porto-
bello Road to buy antique military jackets and delicately handmade Edwardian
dresses, and, what’s more, wearing them in public, it marked the beginning of a
new fashion era.” Peterson featured retro reproductions and vintage fashion in
1968 with sketches of a collection of blouses dating from the 1880s
-1940s, with
one Victorian blouse explicitly labeled as “vintage.” Later, i
n 1969, the
Chicago
Tribune
reports on a church flea market with a photo of ladies dressed in “vintage
clothing” from the early 1900s on sale at the event. This suggests that the meaning
of “vintage clothing” has shifted to now connote a separate category of clothing
that is decades old rather than a specific time period such as when the
Chicago
Tribune
first used the phrase in 1957.