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This year’s vintage
A record-breaking 60 vendors attended the Fall 2013 Ottawa Vintage Clothing Show, giving customers a lot to look through.
It feels like a time warp at the Ottawa Civic Centre. A buzz of excitement fills the air as a line twists and turns its way inside, waiting for the Fall 2013 Ottawa Vintage Clothing Show to officially begin. Men and women of all ages look as if they have stepped right off the pages of a vintage catalogue. Suspenders, mid-length skirts, red lipstick and armfuls of bracelets are everywhere.
The most noteworthy outfits seem to mash-up fashion favourites from decades past. One woman wears a polka-dot full skirt, a studded collared shirt and beat-up combat boots. Another wears a sleek shift dress with a feathered fedora hat. These outfits are as eclectic as they are witty and joyful.
The doors to the show finally open, and the buzz turns into a high-pitched squeal of excitement. Now the hunt for that one-of-a-kind find begins.
The mash-up
These one-of-a-kind vintage pieces make outfits unique. So unique, they are starting a new trend within vintage clothing: the mash-up. The mash-up mixes items from different eras into one outfit, to create a truly original look. The woman in the polka-dot skirt with boots and the lady in the fedora and shift are not the only two who have caught on.
Type “vintage fashion blogs” into Google: You’ll find many top-source posts showing bloggers in 1950s dresses paired with 1930s coats. Or glance at the New York Times’s video channel called Intersection. These videos showcase street style around the world — with, most recently, people wearing vintage pieces from all eras.
“I think, in the past, people wanted to be more true to certain eras,” says Catherine Knoll, co-organizer of the Ottawa vintage show, who says she sees the combining of different styles and eras of vintage becoming increasingly popular. “So if you wore something that was from the Art Deco era, you wanted to make sure your accessories, like your purse and your shoes, matched.”
This 1950s cocktail dress from collector Ian Drummond was just one treasure found at the Ottawa vintage show.
“Now,” she says, “I think people aren’t afraid to mix it up.”
“Personally, I don’t care what people think. If I feel like wearing a studded necklace with a floral dress and converse, then I will,” says Megan McClean, 20, an Ottawa fashion blogger for Broke the Blog.
McClean shops local thrift stores and vintage boutiques to find one-of-a-kind pieces for deals beyond belief, to showcase on her blog. She couldn’t agree more on mixing up these unique pieces.
“I notice, and usually admire, someone wearing a peculiar outfit that shows off their personality and one that I would never have thought to put together, over someone wearing an on-trend taken-straight-from-an-Aritzia-mannequin outfit,” says McClean. And she is not the only young fashion enthusiast to catch on to the idea of vintage mash-ups.
“I personally love it when one person can wear a lot of different styles. I don’t think we should be confined to one style,” says Lacey Ward, social media coordinator and editorial assistant at FAJO Magazine, Canada’s leading digital fashion journal.
As the line to the Ottawa Vintage Clothing Show steadily streams inside, it is clear the attendees are not afraid to show off their array of fashion flair.
“They’re concerned with finding something unique and one-of-a-kind,” says co-organizer Knoll. “The typical vintage collector is no longer a purist but likes to mix and match pieces from different eras.”
The old and the new
Knoll says the other popular option is to pick one vintage piece and use it to showcase the rest of an outfit. Combining unique vintage finds with items already in your wardrobe is a great start for anyone who’s experimenting with vintage. Online fashion magazine DFW Style Daily agrees, reporting that now it is more popular than ever to see a mix of old and new as one style.
‘The typical vintage collector is no longer a purist but likes to mix and match pieces from different eras.’ — vintage show co-organizer Catherine Knoll
Ottawa’s boutique Victoire is hot on the heels of this mash-up trend. The Dalhousie Street shop sells a mix of new and vintage clothing and accessories. It also holds a vintage clothing sale every year. This vintage collection proves how easy it is to integrate pieces of the past into everyday style.
After all, these vintage pieces are what inspire the current trends in mainstream fashion.
“Vintage clothing is always prevalent for the trend setters and people looking for classic or funky pieces,” says FAJO Magazine’s Ward on the importance of incorporating vintage aspects into a wardrobe.
An article on FAJO’s website confirms the prevalence of the mash-up throughout North America. The article focuses on the trendy Greenpoint neighbourhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., where small, unique vintage boutiques are more popular than mass retail chains. In street-style photograph documentation, every person incorporates at least one vintage item into his or her outfit.
Individual style
Ottawa blogger Megan McClean poses in mash-up style, with a vintage sweater and a dress masquerading as a skirt.
At the end of the day, vintage clothing will continue to reinvent itself and find new forms of expression. The mash-up style that has evolved — whether it be mixing different eras in one outfit, or combining old and new — is just one of the new pathways to individuality through style.
“I’d say I always look for uniqueness,” says McClean about the pieces worth hunting for. “Whenever you wear your vintage finds, you’re creating a look that nobody else has. Mixing your pieces together is just another chance to show that and to branch away from the mainstream, mass-generation fashion.”
Vintage as the key to fashion?
The design
“Designs are always resurfacing, and vintage clothes are where those designs are coming from,” says Amy Tahmizian, a fashion design student at Ryerson Univeristy. She calls vintage “the backbone” not only to all of her design pieces, but in her everyday wardrobe.
“Vintage clothing is very important to design because it is the history of where all the styles and designs came from,” she says. “Vintage clothing gives us inspiration for new-age designs.”
Learning from the past
Ryerson University recently opened a new archive of 3,000 pieces of vintage clothing to fashion design students. Tahmizian says the archive gives students a chance to learn hands-on, which does more for her than a textbook ever could.
“Not only is it a place we can go to get inspiration, but we can use the archives to learn things about how the garments were constructed, what fabrics were used and what silhouettes there were in which era,” she says.