Vintage Clothing – 1000’s of items in Stores and Online | Ragstock.com

Vintage clothing wasn’t always cool. In the early 1950s, when the booming postwar economy sparked modern day consumerism in the United States, people sought out the newest, shiniest products they could find, and clothing was no exception. Used clothing wasn’t fashionable. In fact, it was really only worn by people who couldn’t afford new clothing. It wasn’t until the hippie and mod movements of the mid 1960s that ‘used’ stopped being a dirty word when it came to clothing.

According to the New York Times, the vintage clothing trend started in 1965 when English kids began visiting the Portobello Road London, scooping up elaborate ‘antique’ clothing like embellished dresses and military jackets. The same year, “Vintage Chic”—New York City’s first trendy vintage clothing store—opened in SoHo (Harriet Love, who opened the store, released a book about in 1982: Harriet Love’s Guide to Vintage Chic). On the West coast, hippies were hitting up second hand and military surplus stores, making vintage dresses and bell bottom trousers common sights among the crowd at Haight-Ashbury. For the counterculture, second hand clothing not only fit in their low budget lifestyle, it was also a way to reject the rising tide of consumerism that was sweeping through mainstream America. By the early 1970s, with the cool kids on both coasts embracing vintage clothing, the mainstream consensus about used clothing starting to shift. In 1975, Caterine Milinaire and Carol Troy published “Cheap Chic”, a fashion guide the espoused the benefits of secondhand clothing, with the subtitle “Hundreds of Money-Saving Hints To Create Your Own Great Look”. As the seventies wore on and used clothing continued to become more popular, the next wave of counter culture kids found new ways to embrace vintage clothing.

As the hippies faded and used clothing continued to become more popular, the new counterculture of the late 1970s and early 1980s, led by punk and new wave bands like the Ramones and the Talking Heads, gave new life to vintage fashions. By the late 1980s, with vintage clothing becoming increasingly popular and increasingly scarce, some manufacturers began producing reproductions (or “repros”) of hard-to-find vintage clothing items. The 1990s saw an increasing modernization of the used clothing industry, with websites like eBay (founded in 1995) making it possible for people to buy and sell vintage clothing worldwide. As the internet has become more advanced and broadband access more widespread, sites like Etsy and apps such as Depop have made shopping for vintage clothing online more popular than ever.