I have been thinking about how popular it is today to incorporate vintage and retro styles into modern wardrobes. So, it was fun for me to read the following excerpt from the April 1933 editorial page of “The Handicrafter”, an Emile Bernat & Sons Co. publication: “With the advent of a modern style, the creative designer will appear again in our midst and the hack copyist will go.” Then I found this in Deirdre Kelly’s book, “Fashioning the Beatles: The Looks that Shook the World”. Tony Palmer wrote of the Beatles that they “were innately stylish young men who, by constantly changing their appearance (mostly to please themselves), altered the look of a generation, not once but time and time again.”
Vintage, retro, modern…what do the words mean? While clothing older than 100 years is considered antique, garments over 20 and less than 100 years might be called vintage. However, a lot of experts deem only clothing from the 1980s or before is vintage. This is because mass production of clothes largely made with synthetic fabrics began after the 1980s. Good vintage pieces would be ones made in the past with materials, patterns and techniques available at the time, and were often hand stitched. Retro clothes would be copies of vintage styles but made with current fabrics and techniques.
An advertisement by Emile Bernat & Sons Co. in the aforementioned 1933 “The Handicrafter” begins, “What better way is there for you to be in style than in wearing a garment that is knitted with your hands and designed in the current fashion?” This resonated with me since the things I sew and crochet with my own hands use age-old techniques and highlight natural fabrics and yarns.
Hats by Tracy J 