Vintage is all the rage these days and the reason that’s true boils down to one simple fact: it’s valuable. It might be old and beat up and well beyond the end of its useful life span, but if somebody will buy it on Ebay then it’s not trash. It’s vintage. And this is as true of old clothing as it is of anything else.
One of the articles of clothing that is most amenable to the antique clothing market are vests. For one thing, people have been wearing them literally for centuries and so there are a lot of them still out there. They have also spanned a pretty big range of fashion styles over the years. There are the elegant formal vests that business men wore in the 1920’s. There are the working vests that loggers wore in upstate Maine to ward off the Spring cold. There are the bright and colorful vests that a lot of people put on in the 1960’s.
In fact, you can get as obsessed about buying an old vest as some people get about baseball cards. One is never going to be enough! But if you do start collecting them, what should you keep in mind?
Old clothes – whether it’s vintage leather jackets or wedding dresses – can serve one of two purposes. First, they can be display pieces. Even if you’re not running a museum, that doesn’t mean you can’t throw some old clothes on a dressing dummy and call it a fashion statement. If that’s your objective, than the quality of the clothing in question is pretty important.
But the second potential use of antique clothing is simply to wear it. In other words, it’s still a fashion statement, but now you become the statement. In this case, you are more concerned about fit and appearance than actual quality.
Finally, don’t discount the resale value of a vintage vest. You really can think of it in terms of an investment.