I never really get it when someone in fashion does not "get" vintage. And whenever I say that sentence out loud to someone I immediately think of Anna Dello Russo, who, though I love her, has on many the occasion spouted out that she only like how new clothes smell and does not like vintage. First, I think perhaps she shops at the wrong places for vintage as you can be assured that properly cleaned and cared for vintage does not smell, and second, I am always floored at this view since she adamantly collects and stores her wardrobe on par with a finely curated museum collection! In fact, her collection is beyond even that, since most museums could not in their wildest fashion-porn dreams manage to raise enough funds to have even close to the closet of Ms Russo. And if one is collecting and curating the best and brightest of every season — season after season — are they not building a collection of the very thing they say they do not "get"? If vintage is defined as being 25 years old does that mean there will be a giant bail of piled clothes outside her home, sitting in the bin in 25 odds years since it is no longer relevant? Cause if that is so I will be tucked in on the sidewalk waiting though I suspect that one's own closet is seen in a different light hmmmmm?
Of course I am being a little tongue in cheek and I am in no way dissing Anna at all as I really do think she is fascinating and lovely, but really, anyone who is in fashion and LOVES fashion must love vintage.
It's like... .mandatory.
How can you possible appreciate what is on the runway now without knowing where it came from? How can you possible comment on technique and cut and drape without knowing where that originated? You don't have to schlep through thrift stores or dig through mythical garbage bins, but people, the stuff you see on the pretty mannequins in a museum are, umm — vintage. And just where do you think those pieces come from? The magic museum fairy?
If you love fashion you must love vintage and if you love vintage you must love fashion.
What is happening now is just simply the vintage of the future. What happened in 1954 was the runway of the day... then.
As you watch the video above, think not of how you feel about it just right now, but also realize that one day 40 or 50s years from now, some girl is going to have a piece of Raf's first collection in her hand and she is going to do research on that piece and this video will be part of what she will use to verify it and be able to comment on the history of Dior and its turning point and place in fashion history that took place when Raf took the rein's of the house in his hands. And how Raf did this and chose to reference what the original head of the house did — Mr Dior himself.
Who inevitably took his inspiration from somewhere and some earlier time.
Cause that is the way it works. Circle of life baby — just in brocade and silk.
It is not just vintage and cloth. It is history and it has no end and no beginning.
Get it now?