The Emergence of Vintage: An Analysis of Popular Press 1950
–
1989
1950s: Secondhand as Charity
When factory
-made clothing became widely available, wearing used clothing be-
came
associated with poverty; those who wore it were regarded with pity as cha
-
rity recipients (Crane 2000). Apparel that looked dated in comparison to current
fashions marked one as being of low social status. This association of used cloth-
ing with poverty and
charity is how secondhand clothes are generally regarded
from the 1890s through the 1950s.
The 1950s United States was relishing its post
-war abundance; there was a cel-
ebration of all things new in clothing, architecture, interior design and product
desig
n (Franklin 2002). Although economic prosperity creates the conditions for
used goods to become available in alternative economic markets (such as flea
markets, charity shops, etc.), during 1950s America, few wanted the barely
-used
cast
-offs of the growing
middle
-class.
Correspondingly, 1950s references in newspapers and periodicals to
“secondhand” or “used” clothing concerned charity. News items included poor
people’s need for used clothing and drives for donated clothes. There were three
exceptions to thi
s charity rule. In 1951, the
Times
reported on Paris’s Marché des
Puces as a tourist destination where antique furniture, housewares, period gar-
ments (described as being purchased for display in designers’ shop windows) and
army surplus clothing were sold (Barry 1951). In a
Los Angeles Times
column
called “The Lighter Side,” Henry McLemore (1951) playfully describes wearing a
favorite antique suit “having been bought from a secondhand store that buys from
other secondhand stores,” whose seams threaten to split if he sits down; here
wearing old secondhand clothing serves as a joke. The third article from the 1958
New York Times
reports on a consignment store called “Henri” in Washington,
DC that sold secondhand upscale dresses. Notes the reporter, Gloria Emer
son, “It
is a consignment shop called Henri that bears as much resemblance to an ordinary
second
-hand store as a Wedgewood cup does to a beer bottle.” The reporter’s
characterization draws a sharp distinction between ordinary secondhand shops and
the consi
gnment shop, which reveals how secondhand clothing was normally re-
garded in the 1950s – as on the same cultural level as a “beer bottle.”
Culture Unbound
, Volume 7
, 2015
[52]
Interestingly, in 1957, the use of the phrase “vintage clothes” first appeared in
The Chicago Tribune
. In a fashion f
eature with sketches and a one-
paragraph de-
scription, Mary Lou Luther (1957) describes how the latest styles display a 1930s
influence based on the Broadway play “Auntie Mame.” The phrase, “The 1930
vintage clothes sketched are at Saks Fifth Avenue” reveal
s that vintage does not
yet mean authentically old clothes. Instead, vintage is used similarly to describing
wine from a particular time where the time period –
the 1930s –
is central. Vin-
tage is not yet a way of abstractly categorizing clothing or style.