Thrifty
The Modern Art of Collecting Vintage Clothes
We’re going to share a secret with you and her name is Jennifer Smit. Jennifer is touted as the name to have in your little black book if you’re seriously going to get smart about vintage buying. You might ask how buying expensive vintage can possibly be related to thrift? We at SoHi are smart but not stingy when it comes to budgeting. Vintage is an investment, especially if you follow Jennifer’s advice. She is one of the world’s top stylists and her vintage clients include the likes of Kate Moss, no less, so ditch those Myer shares and start stockpiling ‘New Look’ Dior!
I’ve been buying and collecting vintage since I was 12. I started by hoarding everything beautiful and unusual that I could find in my mother’s and grandmother’s wardrobes.. I’ve bought from all over the world, and for a few years, in London, had a studio where I sold by appointment to international buyers and collectors. Vintage used to be hard to come by as you had to scour through little boutiques and market stalls, always hoping to uncover a gem for next to nothing. The wonderful world of eBay has since opened up a whole new vintage closet. These days it’s all about bidding online, often to be outbid at the last minute and left to wonder how you can possibly live without that
Elsa Schiaparelli hat.
If you are buying vintage as an investment, research is key. Never be afraid to ask questions. How long has the seller owned the item? From where did they acquire it? If you are buying in person, check the garment thoroughly for imperfections, tears in the lining and, of course, moth holes, as you want the item to maintain or increase in value. There are some great guidebooks out there (one of my faves is Virtual Vintage: The Insider’s Guide to Buying and Selling Fashion Online, by Linda Lindroth). Try to buy from a reliable source, If buying from a renowned store – such as Decades in LA, Virginia in London, The Vintage Clothing Shop in Sydney, or Classic & Chic in Bowral – you may pay a higher premium, but you can trust that the quality will be impeccable.
Rare vintage pieces (1940s sac mallette Hermès jewellery box bag) and important pieces, such as those which have changed the direction of fashion (Alaïa, Courrèges, Dior, to name a few), can be highly valuable. A great example is Pucci, which is apparently the most searched word on the fashion pages of eBay. Pucci has loyal collectors who will rarely give up a piece, making it hard to come by. Each year, vintage collectibles move later and later – the 1980s being the latest due to the ’80s revival in current fashion.
I have two favourite valuable pieces at the moment. One is an early ’80s limited edition Yves Saint Laurent navy lamb leather jacket with gold trim, originally owned by Grace Jones. The other is a hand-painted ’50s Mexican circle skirt, which is valuable to me because of my passion for ’50s design and my deep love of anything Mexican.
To maintain its value, vintage clothing needs to be loved and looked after properly. One of the attractions for me is the craftsmanship: lots of fabric and big hems means clothes are actually much more durable than you might imagine – of course, anything over 40 years old should be treated with kindness and respect. Beaded and/or heavy garments (1920s dresses, 1950s beaded cardigans) are best stored flat, never hung – fold them with acid-free tissue paper and house in a drawer. Silks and cashmeres will suffer at the hands of moths, but if you don’t want to stink up the garments with mothballs, try keeping them in a cedar chest or spraying with lavender.
If you find yourself short of a few dollars thereby needing to liquidate something from your collection, there are two ways to go about this: online auction, such as eBay, means you can control the sale of the garment and decide not to sell if the desired price is never reached; or you can sell or consign to a boutique.
My advice when selling an item to free up cash is to sleep on it. If you wake up tomorrow morning knowing that you’ll regret its loss, then you might want to think twice. Vintage fashion is an investment, but it’s also art. You can spend a fortune on a painting, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and my walls at home are adorned with Ossie Clark dresses…
Ramona West Tailored Vintage Online
We came across this incredible vintage clothing site via Daily Candy. There are plenty of vintage sites but what makes this one Daily-Candy-Worthy is that it’s curated and most of the pieces are tailored for today’s silhouette. Another advantage of the Ramona West site format is that the clothes are photographed on real girls, not as flat lays. So you can see how they would look on. That is if you have incredible legs and a tall but tiny frame! The clothes are a little bit Luella meets Isabel Marant and definitely not like the motley vintage sites we are used to. The clothes are exceptionally reasonably priced though after Daily Candy there’s not a massive amount of stock left. Why not sign up to the newsletter and keep your fingers crossed that these low nineties US exchange rates stick around? Get your debit card out and click here.
This post currently has no responses - Comment Now
New Clothes from Old
For the editors of SoHi, thrift is not a new word. We’ve been treasure hunters at markets since way back when; bargain hunters and barterers, making our outfits look glamorous with one wise investment and meals go further with one exotic condiment. Being mindful of the purse strings is not a GFC concept to us. So we are well equipped to offer some nuggets of good thrift advice to anyone who might not be so familiar with money being too tight to mention.
For our first issue we have mined the overflowing vintage bookshelves of Peppergreen, that never ending archive of vintage spoils, and found a wartime gem that is as applicable now as it was when it was written in 1940: New Clothes from Old.
Before you throw that outmoded three quarter length coat in the opp shop pile, take another look at it and assess whether the fabric is perhaps worth reinventing as a new outfit. New Clothes from Old tells us that from a used women’s coat like the one you were about to ditch, you can make a young girl’s coat, or an ‘odd’ skirt, a lady’s dress or even a gas mask carrier (that should come in handy in these days of animal species flu.)
From Father’s old suit and shirt (or even uncle or grandpa’s) you can fashion a braced skirt (that’s a skirt with braces), a tiny tot’s dress and even have fabric over for an oven glove. Or if you have an old slip handy you might try creating a baby’s bonnet, some girl’s knickers, an apron or a handkerchief. Why, repurposing old clothes is going to save you on wasteful disposable kitchen paper and tissues too.
There are tips on combining garments to elegant effect, and renovating your outfit in an up-to-the-minute style.
Now, if you are intrigued and inspired by this war-economy wisdom and wish to go one step further, putting some of these zany, but smart ideas into practice, we have made the pamphlet’s patterns easily available to you on our web site; www.sohimagazine.com.au just follow the links to our Thrifty Online section and adapt away!
Peppergreen is a unique store in the world, and it is here in our very own SoHi. Room after room of floor to ceiling antiquities, ordinary and rare objects, are all worthy of closer inspection. Inspiration galore, and plenty of haberdashery trimmings to style up your new clothes from old. The catalogues of knitting and crafting patterns can be found in the third room, beyond the quilts, jugs and bowls somewhere near the walking sticks.
This post currently has no responses - Comment Now
This post currently has no responses - Comment Now